Ideas on immigration

[MaC]

My compilation.
I know some say 'build a wall'; I think this would be a better plan.

1.  Anyone found to be an illegal will have all social services paid by taxpayers cut off immediately.  No education, no fire protection, no driver's liscence, no welfare, no social security, no medicare.  Not even anything for the children, as they use that as a sympathy getter to become illegals with priviledges.

2. If you're going to increase Mexican border defenses, you need to increase Canadian border defenses.  This may sound stupid (ex. how many illegal Canadians are there).  But if worrying about terrorists that jump the border is an issue, then it would be a double standard to not hold Canada to the same standards.  Chances are they could probably enter a lot easier that way.

3. Work with Mexico's president and leaders to close the Mexican southern border.  Many of the Mexicans that illegally cross are southern Mexicans, many are second generation from Central and South American countries.  If Mexicans from northern Mexico generally don't jump.  Block off the Southern Mexican border.

4.Make it easier for legally entering Mexicans to get a citizenship.  Governmental red tape makes it harder for law-abiders to get what they earn and makes illegally jumping more appealing.

[adam]

My Illegal Immigration Plan:

Stop it.

[they don't love you like i love you]

My plan:

Live in a northern state and not have it be an issue.

[ag]

Your plan would do very little, if anything.  This is why:

1. Virtually no Mexicans who come up north illegally do this because of the public services (if anything, their access to a lot of these - such as healthcare - is already far better south of the border). While I will not argue that there aren't immigrants who come primarily for the sake of public services (I myself know a lot of these), nearly 100% of these are in the US absolutely legally.  When people come up north illegally they are not planning to get sick, so they are not planning to go to the hospitals - making them ineligible for hospitals is not going to affect their migration decision.  They go to work and earn money - not to get public goodies.

2. Cutting off access to services by American-born kids would be illegal, since these are US citizens, legally in the US.  The only kids you can cut off, are those born outside of the US, and these are a small minority, since most migrants are adults, who are supposed to work and send money back home.  Kids are mostly left in the care of grandparents/mothers back in Mexico.

3. Cutting access to vaccinations, police and education would have a strong negative effect on native-born American citizens: easier spread of infectious diseases, higher rates of crime, etc. For every dollar you "save" that way, you'd have dosens of dollars in losses you'd have to fund (not counting the fact that a lot more Americans would be sick/robbed/dead).

4. Closing off the southern border of Mexico would have some impact, but not great. BTW, Mexicans from southern states are not "recent migrants": most of them lived in the same area since well before Columbus. Though ethnically, of course, Mayans of Southern Mexico are closer to Guatemalans than to the rest of Mexicans, their ancestors have been Mexican citizens far loner than Texans have been American.  The real Central Americans are quite another matter, but they are a minority. BTW, you'd be surprised that Mexico is even now quite forceful in trying to have that border closed (in the first 7 months of the year they deported some 100,000 illegals).  Nationals of poorer countries of South America (who have to fly to get to Mexico) under the US pressure have been forced to obtain visas, so few of them come that route anyway (when Mexico introduced visas for Brasileans - purely due to the US pressure - the Brasilean flow accross the US border collapsed). Mexico is already spending large amounts of money to solve a US problem. It faces the same problems as the US does on its own border + the fact that much of that border is a dense rainforest. To induce Mexico to do any more you'd have to give something in return - most likely, a viable guest worker program.

To sum up, the likely consequences of your plan:

1. Negligible reduction in migration (a bit fewer families coming), probably too small to show up statistically.
2. Somewhat fewer women and children migrating - greater proportion of  young males without families. Likely more violent/sick migrant society (look at South Africa if you care to learn what that means - ain't pretty, trust me).  Also, even greater proportion of migrant earnings leaving for Mexico instead of being spent in the US.
3. Higher incidence of infectious diseases, crime, etc. affecting the U.S. citizen population and, consequently, higher public expenditure.
4. Substantial cost to be paid in trying to make Mexico even rougher on its Southern border - most likely, enactment of major guest worker program and US paying all the monetary cost of increased enforcement would be preconditions for any new major action by Mexico in this sense.

PS I am not addressing the Canadian border issue - but you should be aware of the costs involved (they are going to be staggering - both in terms of monitoring the huge length of the border and in economic cost of reduced commerce). 

[ag]

Your plan would do very little, if anything.  This is why:

1. Virtually no Mexicans who come up north illegally do this because of the public services (if anything, their access to a lot of these - such as healthcare - is already far better south of the border). While I will not argue that there aren't immigrants who come primarily for the sake of public services (I myself know a lot of these), nearly 100% of these are in the US absolutely legally.  When people come up north illegally they are not planning to get sick, so they are not planning to go to the hospitals - making them ineligible for hospitals is not going to affect their migration decision.  They go to work and earn money - not to get public goodies.

2. Cutting off access to services by American-born kids would be illegal, since these are US citizens, legally in the US.  The only kids you can cut off, are those born outside of the US, and these are a small minority, since most migrants are adults, who are supposed to work and send money back home.  Kids are mostly left in the care of grandparents/mothers back in Mexico.

3. Cutting access to vaccinations, police and education would have a strong negative effect on native-born American citizens: easier spread of infectious diseases, higher rates of crime, etc. For every dollar you "save" that way, you'd have dosens of dollars in losses you'd have to fund (not counting the fact that a lot more Americans would be sick/robbed/dead).

4. Closing off the southern border of Mexico would have some impact, but not great. BTW, Mexicans from southern states are not "recent migrants": most of them lived in the same area since well before Columbus. Though ethnically, of course, Mayans of Southern Mexico are closer to Guatemalans than to the rest of Mexicans, their ancestors have been Mexican citizens for loner than Texans have been American.  The real Central Americans are quite another matter, but they are a minority. BTW, you'd be surprised that Mexico is even now quite forceful in trying to have that border closed (in the first 7 months of the year they deported some 100,000 illegals).  Nationals of poorer countries of South America (who have to fly to get to Mexico) under the US pressure have been forced to obtain visas, so few of them come that route anyway (when Mexico introduced visas for Brasileans - purely due to the US pressure - the Brasilean flow accross the US border collapsed). Mexico is already spending large amounts of money to solve a US problem. It faces the same problems as the US does on its own border + the fact that much of that border is a dense rainforest. To induce Mexico to do any more you'd have to give something in return - most likely, a viable guest worker program.

To sum up, the likely consequences of your plan:

1. Negligible reduction in migration (a bit fewer families coming), probably too small to show up statistically.
2. Somewhat fewer women and children migrating - greater proportion of  young males without families. Likely more violent/sick migrant society (look at South Africa if you care to learn what that means - ain't pretty, trust me).  Also, even greater proportion of migrant earnings leaving for Mexico instead of being spent in the US.
3. Higher incidence of infectious diseases, crime, etc. affecting the U.S. citizen population and, consequently, higher public expenditure.
4. Substantial cost to be paid in trying to make Mexico even rougher on its Southern border - most likely, enactment of major guest worker program and US paying all the monetary cost of increased enforcement would be preconditions for any new major action by Mexico in this sense.

[DownWithTheLeft]

My plan:

Live in a northern state and not have it be an issue.

NJ is pretty north and far away from Mexico, and we have a whole bunch of them, hell one of my relatives is

[Kevin]

Whyt do people come to this country illegaly anyways?

[adam]

Whyt do people come to this country illegaly anyways?

Because at least here they have a fighting chance of making it somewhere in life...if they stay in Mexico they are F**ked until the day they die.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

No more black people immigrating for one. More ideas later.

[adam]

No more black people immigrating for one. More ideas later.

You are one of the few liberals that could wear that avatar without inaccuracy.

[ag]

Whyt do people come to this country illegaly anyways?

Because at least here they have a fighting chance of making it somewhere in life...if they stay in Mexico they are F**ked until the day they die.

More specifically: in the US the minimum wage is USD$5.15/ hour, in Mexico (varying by industry and region, but approximately) it is something like USD$4.15/day (in Guatemala it is, I believe, less than USD$1/day).  Now, Mexico has a large oversupply - even at $4/day -  of unskilled labor, that's only suitable for minimum-wage jobs, whereas US has a shortage of such labor (even at $5/hour), caused, in part, by domestic policies such as agricultural subsidies.  Consequently, a Mexican with an incomplete high school degree has to struggle to get even a $4/day job back home, whereas in the US he'd have easier time getting even a $7/ hour job, even if he barely speaks any English, but is willing to work hard.   Clearly, going to work in the US for a few years, saving every single penny and sending money back home makes it much easier to feed the family and, hopefully, retire back home w/ reasonable prosperity (buy a home, start a business, etc.) - that's exactly what a vast majority of unskilled Mexican migrants is trying to do.  Stop agricultural subsidies - you'd loose a big chunk of this migration (more of your veggies would be grown in Mexico instead).

[MaC]

hence a good reason to drop minimum wage, not raise it.

[Ebowed]

hence a good reason to drop minimum wage, not raise it.

It's not as if people hiring illegal immigrants are obeying the minimum wage laws to begin with.

[ag]

hence a good reason to drop minimum wage, not raise it.

Minimum wage in the US is rarely binding anymore - drop it or not, real wages won't be seriously affected, and, in any case would remain far above wages in Mexico. Furhtermore, if binding minimal wages make it more difficult to get jobs, this has its own disincentive effect for the potential migrants.  So, tinkering w/ minmum wage is not going to do much, no matter what you do. When I was citing minimum wages in the two countries, I did it only to indicate the relative wage scale involved in the migration decision.

Removing the artificial demand for agricultural labor by reducing subsidies would have a much more significant effect - though, of course, there are many other low-skilled jobs that would still attract migrants. For the migration flow to really stop, you'd, probably, have to have US low-skilled wages on the order of USD$1/hour or so. Alternatively, either Mexican low-skilled wages have to sharply grow, or the Mexican educational levels would have to skyrocket.  Until something of that nature happens, or the US breaks off the American mainland and floats into the middle of the Pacific, all discussions about "stopping immigration" will remain what they are:  a form of mental masturbation.

[ag]

hence a good reason to drop minimum wage, not raise it.

It's not as if people hiring illegal immigrants are obeying the minimum wage laws to begin with.

Believe it or not, they mostly do comply.  Nobody wants to appear to be knowingly hiring illegals: even if they are aware of the fact, they pretend to follow the laws. While it is hard to prove that an employer knew, he hired an illegal, it's very easy to show that he knew he paid less than USD$5.15/ hour.  The usual practice is for employers to pretend to believe whatever residence documents they are shown, however clearly fake they might be, and then behave "as if" all of their employees were legal.   

In any case, given how low the federal minimal wage is, in many cases the market wage for the unskilled labor is still higher than that.

[Nym90]

I definitely think it's becoming a huge problem, although it's a complex problem and one for which there are no easy solutions.

I'd say the primary strategy should be to crack down on the hiring of illegal immigrants by employers, although obviously that's not easy to pull off successfully. Perhaps some sort of a national database of social security number information could be made available to make it easy for the employer to check the validity of the employees' information.

I don't support building a fence or a wall, which I think would be a massive waste of money.

I'd support cutting off some government programs for illegal immigrants, although not for their children assuming they were born in the US. Some however should be kept for illegal immigrants for the reasons ag cited; it is a threat to law abiding citizens to have illegal immigrants who are denied access to things like health care or education and are therefore more likely to commit crime or to present a health hazard.

Ultimately the solution would be to improve the economy and living conditions within the countries that the immigrants are attempting to come from. I think that's the only thing that could truly solve the problem. They wouldn't be coming in the first place if they weren't trying to escape a wretchedly horrible life in their native lands.

[ag]

1. You want a database of social security numbers w/ photos and fingerprints available to every employer in the country?  Because that's what you'd need.  Any bets on how long it would take to compile it and how long then it would take for it to be hacked?  Also, once it's compiled, what's a probability that hundreds of thousands of native-born US citizens find their records containing errors, making it impossible for them to get employment (Knowing how these things work in the US, I'd estimate the latter to be 100%, at least for the first couple years of the program's functioning).

2.  Illegal immigrants are entirely ineligible for almost all government benefits anyway - for that matter, most of the legal immigrants have been ineligible for much of the stuff since 1996 as well (until they get naturalized, of course).  The only things that illegals can use are police, schooling, emergency medical care and the like - exactly the things you think they should keep. Even using things like schooling is, in fact, punishable: studying for free in a public school w/out authorization, if detected, actually makes a foreigner ineligible for future non-immigrant entry into the US (even if s/he entered legally and did not overstay his/her visa).  Illegals (or, for that matter, most of the legals) are not eligible for things like Medicaid or Medicare (that's why it's the local authorities that complain - migrants have to use emergency care, which they are responsible for, and not the state- or federal-funded programs). To the extent that any illegals use these, get housing subsidies or welfare payments or anything like that, they do this exactly like they get work: fake social security numbers and ID's.  Under the CURRENT law they have no access to any form of welfare.  Few of them do go to those lengths cheating the system, in any case: firstly, they are afraid of showing up too much in the records; secondly, properly exploiting the system requires a degree of familiarity with it, which vast majority of the migrants do not possess.  Eliminating this particular kind of cheating entirely is not going to show noticeably in the budget numbers - probably, enforcing it would be more expensive than letting a few smart alecs abuse the system.

To sum up, as usual, when people start talking how to make the system more impenetrable, it turns out that the solutions are either technically near-impossible, super-costly, or, in most cases, that the current law is actually tougher than what they propose.