New Immigration Law

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Me neither. But there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, and there has to be waaaay less companies/businesses/people employing them, so it seems like going for the companies is a smaller job than going after the people. Plus, companies, businesses, and other people hiring them have actual addresses and are more easily traceable. Illegal immigrants have fake addresses, drivers licenses, social security numbers, etc., so it seems like that side is a much tougher job.

 

To speak tacheles means to talk blunt and clear, about what really is, without hidden considerations.

Well, what I mean is that inside the US is no conses about the size and volume of this immigration. If there would be a conses, all that are illegal know would become legal immediately.

To the immigration into US. May it be that this seems to many as a self evident axiom that there is no other country with so many immigrants, I don't think so in the least.

It's of course so, that in all stastics the USA is always the biggest in absolute terms. Mostly because there is no other country in the western world that represents 2/3 of a whole full blown continent and is not Australia. This explains the penchant for aboslute numbers in some countries and relative numbers in others. But in Australian or Swiss measures, you would have to have 1/4 or 1/5 of the population to be immigrants. I am not at all under the impression that this is the case in the US. That would be around 70 or 60 millions.

Besides, anglo-saxon (english-speaking) countries have the reputation of having very strict immigration laws, particularly New Zealand, Canada and Australia. I don't think that the US is so far from the other anglo-saxon (english-speaking) countries in strictness but maybe way behind in policiy and formulationg immigration goals.

The French prime minister is now under attack because he wants to take typical legislation in anglo-saxon (english-speaking) countries as example for the future French immigration policy (not so many unskilled labourers, but more like picking the skilled ones). In general, I think the restrictive policy of the anglo-saxons will also become usus in continental European countries.

The textil mills will soon be closed anyway. It's quite amazing that textile mills still exist in a first world country. This means they rely nearly to 100% on very poor paid immigrants.

Agriculture. Same as the topic on subisdaries and free-market avoidance in the agricultural sector. Indeed, it never occured to me to factor in the availability of cheap labour. That's why yearly subsidaries are about a 100 billon less than in Europe. Illegial immigrants (ok, and fertile plains, but...) ! Ok, that's a huge saving for the tax-payer. I bet that the agricultural sector will fight like hell for every cheap labourer there is.

But me thinks there two sectors that rely heavily on cheap low-skill laber: Contstruction and general everythink low-skilled in the service sector.

Given this, the biggest growth of immigrants I guess was exactly were the biggest economical growth occoured. Whic I guess was California. And the growing Californina screamed for labour (demand and supply) and labour came as Mexican immigrant. How would the service sector and construction in California or every other state that has seen recent strong economical growth combined with huge latin-American immigration fare without them?

The immigration is needed fuel of economic growth. And Latin-America is one of the biggest factors of recent and future US-growth.

A balance has to sides. You forgot that because of the illegal status, those immigrants get ripped off by their employer.

First lower wage anway. Secondly, the employer hasn't to pay any taxes or levies (an important factor), no mandatory insurance. Not only does the illegal immigrant not get the minimal salary, he does not get any of the mandatory securities, most of all no insurance.

What happens to an illiegal immigrant that has an accident on a building site? An illegal takes a huge risk.

And at the end of the, the demand tells a story of huge benefits for the employer. I bet ya that every marcoeconomic study will state that the overal macroeconomic benefit of an underpaid, non-insured labour... sucks in the long term because of less gains in productivity.... but short and mid-term, there is a huge amount of money to be made for the employing companies, the state that taxes the companies that make more proft and average people that get cheaper food and cheaper housing.

 

I agree, that by dint of being so much bigger than European countries one would expect that the U.S. would have greater immigration numbers than those nations. And you are correct, we do not have 60 or 70 million immigrants in the U.S. The largest group of immigrants (combining both legal and illegal) are Latinos at approximately 15 million. All other groups are about 12 million combined. So the total number of people living in the U.S. who were not born in the U.S. is about 27 million people, or around 10% of the total U.S. population.

What this fails to account for is that immigration to the U.S. has been sustatined from the moment this country was founded. We've been taking in hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year for over 300 years now. Heck, people were immigrating in droves to the U.S. before the U.S. even existed as a nation. Immigration into Europe (mostly from the Middle East) is really a phenomenon of the 20th and 21st centuries. They haven't been literally arriving by the boatload (as they have in the U.S.) since the 1600s.

It also fails to acoount for the fact that 99% of the people living in the U.S. can trace their roots back to some country other than the U.S. My family history in the U.S. only dates back to 1923. And there are hardly any people living in the U.S. that are of Native American decent - less than 1% of the population. A great many people living in France can trace back their lineage in France to time immemorial. (I'm just using France as an example, but the same applies to places like England, Italy, etc.) There's a large percentage of Europeans who can trace back their family histories in that country for as far as back as they were keeping records of these things.

I'll give you the service sector, but it's not as much with construction for two reasons: 1.) Construction is highly unionized. Whether your constructing a skyscraper or paving a road, if you're on the worksite, you're part of the union. You can be quite sure that unions fight so that their workers in most cases are paid considerably above minimum wage, and they get benefits too. 2.) Construction these days have fewer and fewer unskilled laborers. You need special certification to drive a fork lift, or use a bulldozer. Heck, even the guy that dumps asphalt from the back of a dump truck needs special certification. Sure, there are still some unskilled laborers, like the person that switches the sign from "slow" to "stop", but they certainly don't make up the majority of the workforce.

Like I said, if he's at a building site, chances are he's a unionized worker and has health coverage. But even barring that, an employer is still responsible for safety on his site. If a worker is injured because of safety issue (or a lack of safety) the employer is still the one that has to pay his medical bills, whether he offers medical insurance or not. Medical insurance is for when you get injured when you're NOT working. Or you get sick, or something like that. Work-related injuries are always on the employer.

 

Well, that difference is true for east-asia and sub-sahran africa but the migration to the USA and other colonies belongs to the domestic migration in Europe. Someone from the Netherlands in the 19th. century may have emmigrated to New York or to Berlin. Both are "dutch" cites. The same goes from French protestants in the 16th century, the Americas or Switzerland. The mix among Eurpeans is the same in the US as in Europe.

I am quite sure that average Americans know more about their ancestry then average Europeans and I don't think that a great number of Europeans could realy proof that they stem uniquely from a certain bunch of people and are not related to another. Particularly people from the industrial immigration centres.

To the construction sector. Accoring to this , there are many illegal immigrants working in construction:

That is most confusing to me. The whole concept of being illegal, at least to me, is to be illegal. As legally not existing, i.e. not being there, means to not have any legal protection. At least one should thing the word illegal emphasizes illegality.

The biggest incetive for an employer to hire an illegal to get rid of his legal duties,

1. i.e. paying a lower salary then usual or mandatory

2. having not to pay any mandatory levies for social security, insurances...

3. to have lower costs in personal administration and to avoid other mandatory precautions, like safety precautions.

4. not to have any duties towards the employee

If someone has the right to sue for damages or salary or can demand anything through a court... means the person is de facto legal.

Ok, does that mean that the local administrations and courts, endowed with common sense, skipped the consequences of the incompetence of the political leadership and made the immigrants de facto legal anyway?

Because, were I live, illegal means illegal, that means no legal claims against insurances, the employer or the state. Because they are... illegal... (except of course were doing so would lead to a morally not tolerable result, after being noticed, making the employer having to pay for not already paid salaries, because otherwise the employer would be laughing third).

 

I'm not a lawyer, so I may not be qualified to answer your question. (Where are you dmc? You even live in California so you may even be familiar with cases like these.) However, if I travel to Switzerland one day and I'm injured due to negligence on the part of some company, (I can't think of a good example. I don't know, say I go into some shop and a shelf or something falls over and injures me.) just because I'm not a legal citizen of Switzerland does not mean I am denied any legal protection.

Plus, the employer has incentive to not let it be known that he is hiring illegal immigrants. It's probably cheaper for him to pay the guys medical bills so he won't say anything (and can return to work and continue providing cheap labor) than to deal with legal ramifications of hiring an illegal worker.

Well, if 1 in 6 work in construction, that is quite a lot. It's a lot higher than the general population of the U.S. at any rate. I guess a question here that needs to be asked is does one need to be a U.S. citizen to belong to a U.S. union? I don't know the answer to that. I'm inclined to think the answer is "no" because construction is one of the most heavily unionized sectors in the U.S., and having more members means more benefits for the union.

 

As I am a jurist, I can tell you that this is a case of "ausservertraglichem Haftpflichtrecht" (something like "claim based on non contractual-obligation).

The point is, do you think that an illegal immigrant would go and seek legal protection at a court?

As far I can tell, the typical behaviour of an illegal in Switzerland is to keep a very, very low profil and avoid any attention from the authotities. Because they want to stay.
That's my view: The immigrant will avoid any kind of authorities because it would end for him in being send back. And I think that being send back equals to the illegal immigrant complete financial failure.

And secondly, to get a legal work-contract one has to have a permission to stay and to work in Switzerland. The employer would hire an illegal obviously to avoid insurances and obligation attached to a work contract, like any kind of mandatory insurance. The employer has the duty to insure the employee on inusrances like unemployment-insurance, general accident on the workplace and way to work insurance, healthcare insurance.

Now, an illiegal immigrant that agrees to work without having a work permission and subsequently a not legaly sound work-contract would knowingly and willingly renounce any insurance (that would be mandatory) and has there for not the basic social insurances everyone else takes for granted. I don't know how it's in the USA, but without a health-insurance (that's mandatory for all to have, except of course illegals) life would be very very dreary.

 

Iago, the US, Australia and to a lesser extent canada may have strict rules for immigration. But since their are traditional immigration countries, the at least have rules. Many european countries don't. The members of the EU are not even able to harmonise their asylum policies.

 

You know, the more I think about the immigration issue, the more I find I am of two minds. I have stated before that one of the problems with the compromise Congress is working on is it does not do anything to go after the people who employ illegal immigrants. But another problem with it is it does not stop more illegal immigrants from coming into the U.S. And from that perspective, the law is doomed to failure. It does nothing to stop the root cause, which IMO, is that we have half a million illegal immigrants entering the U.S. annually. By attempting to pass a law that states it's OK if you've been here for 5 years, the only thing we're accomplishing is reducing the number of "illegal" immigrants. Those people are still working in poor conditions, and we're still going to have illegal immigrants pouring over the borders. Think about what half a million per year is. It's difficult to wrap your mind around that number. That means that on average 1370 people are entering the U.S. illegally EVERY SINGLE DAY.

 

This guy summed up my thoughts pretty good

 

And I thought that the US was a 'melting-pot' of cultures!

Europe doesn't mean just France and Germany you know. Ireland has been mostly successful with its immigrants, with only cases of racism in parts of Dublin and Belfast (bored IRA/Red Hand Commando's members).

 

It is a melting pot. The problem is when a people decide they don't want to add to the pot, but instead have their own pot.

 

Well, I'm not sure the Mexicans are unique in not learning English. I would imagine that a great many immigrants from other countries never learned English either. There have always been pockets in major cities called "China town" or "Little Italy" etc. where one group of immigrants thrive and where the language of the native country is spoken.

From what I have seen, and I count my own family among this group, generally speaking it's not the immigrants who assimilate into society - it's their kids and grandkids that assimilate. Since about 10 million of the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country have arrived in the last 10 years, they haven't been here long enough to have first and second generation U.S. born children.

I'm not saying that this should be cause for inaction, only that I do not necessarily think that Mexican immigrants showing resistance to integrate into U.S. society is a problem that is particular or peculiar to that particular immigrant group.

 

Correction. The hijackers crossed on the Canadian border. There were three groups who tried to cross at the Mexican border but were turned back. None made it across.

Oh, that's a good one. Any number of hypocrites in government, but we don't do sh*t. Ditto for #9.

 

What was that song again? Oh yeah, Blame Canada. Canadian government granted some of the Sept. 11 terrorists with legal Canadian passports, which is how they were able to get that schooling done.

 

Just a note... they call it illegal immigration for a reason... its illegal. They are doing something illegal, and should be sent back to their own freakin' country.

I pretty much agree with that article, except for a few points about how they must abandon their cultures, etc. If they want to wave a mexican flag, go ahead, as long as an American one is nearby (or something to that effect). And they can speak spanish in their homes, and at school/job between other mexicans, just as long as the entire community is spanish driven.

 

I think it noteworthy that many Americans saw what happened in France with joy. Can you believe that.
I think it also noteworthy that it is not contradicted by anyone. And I think the Europeans should remember talk like this more often.

Secondly, if there was appeasement of some kind it wasnt appeasement of immigrants, rather of those self-forgotten ideologists who would shout down anyone calling for a more sensible approach to immigration. No one wanted to face those frothing Gutmenschen, finding himself labeled a racist, xenophobe or something thereabouts.

 

We did?

 

You are asking me, and not the one who posted that article?

Or perhaps you arent aware of what Schadenfreude means?