Immigration in the US

I would agree in a perfect world that congress would come to a meeting of the minds and pass something that is best for the country. But when was the last time it worked that way.

There are a few. Obama vetoed a bill championed by then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that would have allowed 9/11 victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia. A Republican-controlled Senate voted 60 to 30 (and joined a Dem-controlled House) to override Regan’s veto of a supplemental spending bill.

It’s rare, but not unheard of.

I do remember the Saudi Arabia vote. But by it going that way it almost gave Obama (and future presidents) a certain deniability when or if the Saudi’s brought it up in the future.

Another piece about that odious ‘report’ issued by the Do’J’ (Office of Public Affairs | DOJ, DHS Report: Three Out of Four Individuals Convicted of International Terrorism and Terrorism-Related Offenses were Foreign-Born | United States Department of Justice - the link is to the Do’J’ press release about the report).

Another manifestation of the nativism that rules this administration is the insistence on distinguishing not just between citizens and non-citizens, but also between Americans who were born here and those of us who were naturalized. In addition to highlighting the number of naturalized citizens that it claims were involved in terrorism, the DHS-DOJ report notes that it was unable to verify the “citizenship status of the parents” of the U.S. citizens on the list. It seems that investigating ancestry is now central to counterterrorism and immigration policy – the only question is how many generations back the administration will dig to prove its claim that immigration poses a national security threat.

More from the Parody Project from Norway.

I think she could do a better job as Senate Majority Leader than our current one, maybe after a week or so of ‘How to Govern’ classes. Hell, then she’d understand government better than Trump.

You would rob her of a happy childhood if you made here a senator.

Ihre Papieren, bitte.

So the story of the Kalamazoo, MI doctor who emigrated with his family from Poland as a 5-year old in 1979 and was scooped up by ICE last week has been making the rounds of my social media feeds. Perhaps you’ve seen it, too. If not, here’s the story:

In reading that, I felt tremendous sympathy and anger on behalf of this doctor and his family. But then I started to have all kinds of questions, too. Questions that make me wonder if we’re getting the full story here.

This thing get anyone else’s antenna twitching?

The main thing that twitches when I read that is the same thing as this NPR story from today:
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/22/578930256/undocumented-irish-unexpectedly-caught-in-trumps-immigration-dragnet

Are they publishing these because they think stories about white people will be more compelling? That really bothers me.

Sort of how they use the (mostly white) opioid epidemic to draw attention to public health, but not the (mostly black) cocaine epidemic. Dunno maybe.

I mean… yes. The narrative from the right is that it’s only brown people that are affected by this stuff. Showing that isn’t the case is a valid thing to do. Shitty that we have sunk that far? Probably, but getting information that it isn’t all Mexicans or whatever out to people isn’t a terrible idea, even if it shouldn’t matter, the reality is that to a lot of people it does.

If someone cares only because someone is white, then they don’t care about immigration at all. It’s just racism.

I suspect it is primarily his profession. Doctor is high prestige job that is very costly for society to train. Based on the little I know about the Irish kid, I see no reason he shouldn’t be deported.

Over staying Visa is a big problem, in the past, we’ve lacked the technology and/or will to enforce them. It is a good idea to start.

I would think it is more a matter of a large group of people having no idea how many white illegals there are. That not all those evil illegals are brown.

Right, but again, if they actually cared about immigration, they would already know that. Racists caring about not sharing space with brown people, well they wouldn’t because they don’t really care about immigration at all. They’re just hiding their racism behind it.

I don’t really appreciate people coming here illegally. I’ve known people in the past who tried to come here and were not allowed in or are waiting in line. Doing it illegally is unfair to those who try to pursue their life here legally. Whether they’re brown, white or spotted… that doesn’t matter to me.

I also have a problem with companies creating positions designed not to appeal to local employees and then claiming they have to hire from other countries. I think that is BS too, no matter what field it is.

I figure in general, we should work on our legal process. They’re saying some of the individuals trying to do it legally… five year wait…why is it so long?

Well, I think for the most part if you depend up the media for your info you probably are told that most illegals are brown. I think people in the know are aware that there is a huge problem of people over staying their visa’s but I don’t know how much of that is known by the average person.

To be honest, if I didn’t spend so much time on forums like this and others I probably wouldn’t know nearly as much about what is going on as I think I do. :)

Heh. It’s true. I do a learn a fair amount on here, read too many links you guys post, and of course the local stuff I would never know about if a local didn’t post it here.

I did know previously that overstaying visas was an issue, and in college I think the overstay of student visas was specifically spoken about alongside how hard it seemed to be for some, college grads, to stay. It was odd because there were concerns about students coming here and leaving with their skill set to other countries and in the same breath concerns about overstaying visas which just means it’s all…well it’s complicated.

As of last year, I read that about 45% of the approximately 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the US entered in legal fashion on a valid visa, and then just overstayed it.

But once their visa is expired, they no longer have the legal right to work in the US. Valid immigration status is required. So once the visa is expired, a visa-overstayer is legally in the same boat as a person who entered illegally. Neither one can work in the US legally. No US employer who actively verified documentation would be able to hire them.

And yet these people are almost all working and have supported themselves for years, sometimes decades, by working illegally.

How can that happen? B/C so many employers, especially those offering low wages, simply don’t verify Social Security numbers. One of the huge, gaping, laughable holes in our system is that although we require employers to “check” Social Security cards and report the SS# to the federal government, employers are not actually required to verify that the Social Security number is valid. SS#s are simple 9 digit numbers that are laughably easy to fake: just come up with a random looking number that starts with 2-8 and you are good to go.

There is a free website where employers can electronically verify for free . And yet, there is a big group of low wage employers in the US who simply never use this free service.

And what’s really funny to me (is a dark humor kind of way) is that the employer routinely sends the invalid SS# to the federal government (so the government can assign credit for the payroll tax withholding in the Social Security database). And the federal government then routinely checks the name and SS# and about 3% to 5% of the time the SS# doesn’t match the name and date of birth is the SS database. So what does the government do? Do they perhaps notify the individual of the discrepancy and request valid documentation? No, they do not. Does the government perhaps notify the employer and ask them to provide valid documentation? No, it does not. There was a federal case during the George Bush administration where the government did not appeal a decision that found the “no match” letters that the SS had been sending to employers were “unduly burdensome” (this decision being a result of some extremely high priced legal talent for low wage employers beating the legal crap out of some poor schlubs from the federal government.) As a result of this, the government does literally F-all when they notice that the SS# is invalid.

Of course this screws the worker, b/c they don’t get credit in the SS database for their earnings, which reduces their SS benefits down the road.

And the employers are able to illegally the workers for bottom-end wages.

And although internet technology and e-verify makes this all easier to fix now, Even before the internet and e-verify, it was easy to check SS#s via the US mail, and the government could have been sending “no-match” letters, for decades, but they just didn’t.

Illegal employment is the real economic engine behind illegal immigration. And the real legal reality of illegal immigration in the US is laughably lax enforcement, both statutory and in vivo . Our laws were intentionally written with loopholes, and enforced in such a lax fashion, that we have allowed unnumbered thousands of employers to illegally employ tens of millions of workers at the lowest possible wages over the last 40 years.

This issue gets framed as one of “foreign invasion” vs “humanitarian concern” and there is a lot of sturm and drang about the immigrants breaking the law, but you hear very very little about the true reality of illegal employment and lax enforcement. Illegal employment and lax enforcement are the real problems.

This whole issue would be fairly easy to resolve with a 2 part “comprehensive reform” (you do have to do both simultaneously, doing one or the other would have severe negative consequences.) The flow of illegal immigration can easily be dramatically reduced by strengthening our labor laws, improving enforcement and using technology to verify legal status to work. At the same time, the people who have been here for a long time need to be given a legal status and a path to citizenship. If you just do the enforcement side, it causes a humanitarian crisis and also disrupts the labor market. If you do just the path to citizen side, the economic locomotive of illegal employment will simply draw another few million people into illegal employment going forward. You have to do both.

And for those people who say “AMNESTY NEVER NEVER!! RAGH!!” I say, we as as society have given the illegal employers de facto amnesty for forty fucking years. So unless you want a big chunk of US employers to receive retroactive fines, jail sentences, and pay clawback taxes on all the excessively low wages they paid to illegal employers over the last 40 years, IMO you have no credibility at all on the amnesty issue.