|
![[Greencastle Banner-Graphic]](http://www.bannergraphic.com/images/nameplate-small.png){kind=small}
Greencastle, Indiana ~ Friday, September 5, 2008
| Blogs | 
|
|
Immigration bill: unfair to minorities?
Posted Monday, February 18, 2008, at 2:40 PM<< Previous | Read comments | Respond | Email link | Next >>
Today, an Indiana House committee approved changes to a controversial bill that the author says will discourage companies from hiring illegal immigrants.
According to the proposed bill, businesses could lose their licenses if they are caught with illegal workers after 2009. On Monday, the House committee added a promise of $1.5 million in state money to help enforce the law, according to the Associated Press report. Politicians on either side of the aisle have had mixed reactions to the changes, with some claiming they weaken the bill and others arguing they make it stronger. The House committee that reviewed the bill approved it by a vote of 7-4. Next stop? The House Ways and Means Committee. A lot has been said about this bill in the media recently and I'd like to get the conversation going in Putnam County. Does anyone out there think this legislation is a bad idea? I know some have gone to the Statehouse and protested the bill because they believe it will discriminate against certain groups of people. I'm sure they have other reasonable arguments, but I haven't studied up on them. Feel free to share them on this blog site. I know I saw a woman from the Latino community expressing her concerns on one the Indianapolis television stations. The bill's author has also gone to the airwaves to state his case for the bill. Is there anyone out there who thinks this bill is a good idea? If so, why do you think that? My opinion is that on the surface, the bill seems like a sensible thing to do. Should not we ensure our businesses, especially small, private ones, are held accountable for who they hire? We are talking about "illegal" immigrants -- not someone who has obtained a "green card" or otherwise come to the United States through legal means. Enforcement? That's another question. I'd hate to see us spend a lot of money on an effort that doesn't work. I guess we'll see what happens. We could have this conversation and then the bill fails to pass. Comments Showing comments in chronological order [Show most recent comments first] |
Hot topics Squirrel crossing(1 ~ 3:28 PM, Sep 4)
God bless America!
Bullying: a case of boys will be boys?
Summer is fleeting. Have some lemonade
Saddened by Sandy's death
|
![[Feed icon]](http://www.bannergraphic.com/images/icons/feed-icon-14x14.png){kind=icon}
First off, I will say I do not think this bill is a good idea, but I do have mixed emotions about it.
The overall attitude of employers is something along the lines of no matter how bad we treat these immigrants, their life is STILL better here in the states.
Similar bills have already been passed in other states such as Arizona and Oklahoma. Arizona has been one of the states with the most fierce bill. As a result, a Texas paper talked about the huge increase of immigrants moving to Texas--from Arizona and Oklahoma.
There's also the issue of parents being separated from their children. Their children may be legal citizens, born here in the US, but that won't stop the government from sending the parents away with or without their children.
To make matters more interesting, police have even been arresting US Citizens that are of Hispanic/Latino/Chicano because they think they are illegal. (There was a news clip about this on TV)
Then there's the reason why I personally have mixed emotions about this bill. I know of one example of a local man who had hired two immigrants. At the time he was paying them under $3/hr and working them over 80 hours a week seven days a week. He thought it was a fair trade since he was allowing them to live there (in horrible conditions). The immigrants and I believed it wasn't.
Then there are the local restaurants, that sometimes offer horrible living conditions, and pay their immigrant employees less.
No one deserves to be treated like a slave, and I know from experience that some employers in this very area have treated people that way.
To close as a result of all this talk about immigrants I found this quote rather interesting... "The FBI says that 63% of racially motivated hate crimes are committed against Hispanics, more than ANY other group."
Molon Labe:
Could you please cite the sources of your information for points 1-4 in your comment of 2/19/08?
Thanks.
The whole question here revolves around one simple issue and only one, no matter
how the liberals try to skew the issue. We are a nation based on the order of law, are we not? When you speak of immigrants they are either illegal or legal, no other choices there. Whether they are undocumented or student visa, green card etc. they fall into one of the two categories. While I do not have the stats at hand anybody can go online and see the DOJ and FBI stats on crime. Hispanic crime and incarceration for violent crimes is outpacing other ethnicities. From an economic standpoint illegals are lowering the standard of living in this country. They are not the only cause but they are contributory. If the illegals who come to this country as well as their support institutions which are already in place here, were half as vocal and active in Mexico to bring up the Mexican standard of living, then there would be no influx of illegals crossing the border. But what is not seen or shown by the media is the ongoing progress to the formation of a North American Economic Union, similiar to the European Economic Union. There is a very concise article in the August Reviewtitled " The North American Union and the Larger Plan" by Dennis L. Cuddy , Ph.D. (www.augustreview.com) The article details what has been done and what will be done in the near future to bring about this North American Union. One of the items is the free movement of workers. Can this movement be stopped, I doubt it. Should this movement/evolution be stopped? That all depends where you sit on the economic fence.
Monandez;govrnmnt figures put the remittances at 123 billion dollars a year with 23 billion going to Mexico alone. dozens of hospital ERS in southern California have had to close because of uninsured patients who use them as primary care centers as the majority of Americans have some kind of ins.which means that they are being used by those who don't qualify for health care at regular health care facilities. Also a drug resistant strain of TB which is endemic only to Mexico is rampant here is California,and leprosy is back and brought in by Marshall islanders. This is from the world health orginization. Look it up.
Molon Labe,
I beg to differ, you are correct in saying there are three kinds of people based on citizenship status. But I have never met any aliens here, unless they're out in New Mexico somewhere.
By the way have you realized, no matter what our CITIZENSHIP status, we're all human?
Looks like you got the discussion going.
From a businessman's point of view, the only problem I have with this legislation is that it asks that we compare Alien Status against an flawed database. And... how do you check for a false name? Or... how do you prove you checked and found nothing but the name gets put on later?
In short, the burden of proof is on the employer and I'm not sure that's where it ought to be.
FAW;the data base you are talking about is E verify, once known as basic pilot. The accuracy is much improved over the original and businesses have plenty of time to correct any errors. You have "safe harbor" to protect you if you have hired an unauthorized worker unknowingly. If you check and a name gets put on later,there are time stamps that will protect you.
"Here in America we already solved that problem - with a War of Independence and a Civil War. Its time they go home and fix their country instead of bleeding ours out." If they do it the way we did, I'll be getting called up again to go down there and put a stop to that one also, Kosovo, Bosnia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Iraq just to name a few we have had to go into and fix, or try. You know the Government will not sit silent as the Mexican (or who ever) people over throw the Government in place nor any other form of Government via Civil War or War of Independence. I am with you on the fact people here illegally (no matter where they are from) are placing a strain on our system as well as hitting US in the pocket via increased taxes to maintain / sustain our hospitals, Police and School systems, ect. But do you want to pick tomatoes for Red Gold for $1.25 an hour or less? Or cut grass or clean offices / toilets or a thousand other jobs most Americans find to be beneath them? And again at wages that are not even close to minimum wage? Given half a chance at earning a green card and paying taxes to stay here and perform those jobs at a decent wage, Most would do it. As so stated, the wealth of that south of the border is controlled by the few, corruption is rampant almost to the degree of a feudal society. So why not America? We have it good, for now; it looks good to everyone else in the world, so if they are here, why not make them tax paying green card holders? By allowing American Business to take advantage of illegal labor (to the benefit of their bottom line profitability) THEY are the ones who allow this downward trend to propagate to the behest of the American worker and the driving down of OUR wages, If the American won't do it for $10.00 an hour, I get 3 illegal's to do it for $3.00. Big Business driving the American dream machine and American wages right into the ground. Can you blame the illegal from picking up the scraps? Just like the Locust you so described, but fed by the greed of the American Cooperate Profit Machines. If they hire or employ illegal workers knowingly, then they should be punished for the hiring of that person, but my spin on it would be to pay back to the state of Indiana, the wages that person made to the General fund for NOT hiring an American Worker. But you say "Soldier in Iraq, how can we verify that time?" January 1 sounds good to me if you can't provide documentation on your worker or their taxes paid.
Since someone else has answered the author's request for clarification, I'll not do that, but sort of tell you where I'm coming from here.
As an employer, I would say that we have Federal I-9 forms mandated now for employees. It just seems that enforcement of illegal alien status should not rest exclusively on the employer. And a 'one strike' and your out is not due process.
Employers are burdened with enormous amounts of checks and mandates as it stands. In the business I'm in (Health Care), it takes almost an hour for an employee to complete a new hire checklist of forms plus we do the following on line checks on every new hire: MVR (for people who will operate our vehicles) Sex Offender Registry; Criminal Records Check; Federal Health Care Programs Exclusion Database; IDHS Registry, Certification registry plus we do a pre-employment drug screen in house.
Now you can look at this two ways: the first is, "What's one more?"; or the second is, "whose responsibility is it really?" or "how many checks can we pile on." One more check is 10 minutes of my current employee's time to make the check. Where is our compensation for that? Does it improve our prductivity? The answer is obviously no.
If you want to get employers on board, why not a tax credit to offset the cost?
And... no one has yet my question about what happens if an illegal alien shows up and with a really good set of forged documents and gives you a non-databased name? How do you prove you did the check?
I just get tired of legislators dumping their issues on employers without any consideration of what it means, what it costs, and what the real world is really like.
Dear Soldier in Iraq;
First Thank You for Your Service. I am glad you came home. In your response you used the flawed logic that is parroted by the liberals and employers in this country who want the illegals here. That is "they are only doing the jobs Americans won't do" Not quite! Just who do you think did those jobs before there were illegals to do them? If all workers were paid a living wage and health benefits, and had safe working conditions you would see a lot of Americans doing those jobs. Sure products in America would be more expensive, but the standard of living would go up so things would balance out.
In case you haven't been keeping score, american business has been doing pretty well and american execs draw salaries and perks well in excess of the rest of the world.While I wholeheartedly believe in free trade across nations it has to be balanced with fair trade. In almost all trade agreements the US has entered into in the last century, this has not been the case. The US Congress has made it extremely lucrative for American business to relocate outside us borders thus taking jobs away from Americans. I could write volumes on this but in the interest of brevity I will end here. By the way, no matter what others may think the United States was never meant to be the worlds policeman.
So Molon Labe you acknowledge that we are all Human and then continue to call these humans ALIENS, I guess you don't get it huh?
As far as this quote "Its time they go home and fix their country instead of bleeding ours out."
If the US would stop meddling in everyone else's business, perhaps they would try to fix things in their own countries. Example: President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, a socialist that the US obviously doesn't like. The US has denied it's involvement in a coup attempt against him in 2002...but that doesn't seem to explain the Navy ships in the waters at that time now does it?
If greedy businessmen were willing to pay a man what he was worth, US Citizens would not be competing against immigrants and uneducated for jobs. If a businessman can pay someone less to do the job he will, hece why Bondsman is right to bring up Outsourcing.
Personally, I can barely afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables now, I surely would not be able to buy ANY fresh fruit or vegetables if we actually paid people what they are worth for doing those jobs, WOULD YOU?
Bondsman
I am still here in Iraq, and you are welcome, I love my job!! I believe the people who used to the job, especially in agriculture were referred as "Migrant Workers", another name for perhaps people here illegally? Who knows? My point is take a look around, not at the surface of your / our day to day existence, but who lies just below it. Latinos mainly in positions done by (historically?) others. Look at your Office cleaning crews, grounds keepers, kitchen help, agricultural / field help and construction crews especially. The list goes on, but mainly in a sector that is lower blue collar. A place to get in easily with no real need to either be fluent in English or have a collage degree, just a grunt doing a job that needs to get done. Cloverdale for example, may see a rise of Latino's when the horse barn is up and running. Some affluent horse owners employ Latino Grooms (illegally? some are, some are not).
I could not agree with you more, the large corporation executives are reaping untold fortunes off the backs of legal and illegal workers here in America. And yes Congress and past branches of government officials have allowed business's to relocate outside US borders. And, as you stated, given them incentive to do so. I watched a large portion of Thompson Consumer Electronics move to Mexico, only to read a blurb in the WSJ when the jobs moved there, years later, were in turn relocated to China. I wonder how those Mexican workers felt when THEY were "out-sourced" overseas.
It seems no matter how we like or dis-like it. Illegal workers are a mainstay of American life, (be they Mexican, Asian, Pacific Islander, Caribbean, African, Middle Eastern, European or whoever), an almost excepted way of business in some sectors, and integrated into our culture.
If we must utilize them and they wish to work here, then let's find a solution to identify these individuals, pay them fairly so they (and those who employ them) can pay appropriate taxes as we all do and place them on the path to citizen ship, if they want it.
I know this is an issue that will not be fixed any time soon, but it is high time it was addressed and put in priorty to be corrected.
As for the World Police, that is a WHOLE other issue
I think it should go further and not allow anyone here illegally to work or collect unemployment or welfare or anyother kind if assistance from our country. Hard line yes but thats what they do to non citizens in their country.