Feb 04
Currently they are headed back to Mexico.
Let’s keep it that way
The Center for Immigration Studies sent me an e-mail noting that using the Senates own statistics that the stimulus bill under consideration now could mean 300,000 illegal aliens could get jobs in construction projects funded by the bill:
- The current version of the Senate Stimulus bill (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) contains $104 billion in construction spending, including highways, schools, and public housing.
- Government estimates suggest this spending should create about 2 million new construction jobs.
- Consistent with other research, the Center Immigration Studies has previously estimated that 15 percent of construction workers are illegal immigrants.
- This means that about 300,000 of the construction jobs created by the Senate stimulus could go to illegal aliens (15 percent of 2 million).
The House Bill had provisions requiring those winning the construction contracts to use E-Verify (an easy online system employers can use to verify workers are legal).
The Senate Bill currently doesn’t have that provision.
I want the atrocity of a bill to fail, but if it passes, I hope it has E-Verify requirements on the spending within it. Now is not the time to let illegal aliens benefit from the mortgaging of our future.
February 4th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Oh, the temptation to want a neat, well regulated employment system. Unfortunately, realism, the profit motive, and economics say it won’t happen. Your entrepreneur compatriots will find a way to use the cheapest available labor while avoiding legal niceties. Otherwise, the bill for the work will skyrocket and the time to finish it will be drawn out by administration. The cheapest labor will appear from across the border, even in the northern states, since passing out money for jobs creates a giant vacuum.
February 4th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
E-Verify and enforcement against employers will make the cost higher than it is worth to those seeking to profit by having me pay for the social problems they import.
You say it can’t be done, but the evidence is clear – E-Verify and going after demand works. It would work in drugs too.
February 4th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I agree that it might work in the long run, but my observation was about the near impossibility of getting it in place without noticeable costs and delay in the time frame of the stimulus. Starting and adjusting wide scale government programs do not happen quickly. The government is NOT a small entrepreneurial software company. It is a complex web of overlapping jurisdictions that does not respond to profit motives nor do-or-die demands of efficiency. At least three or four US departments would be involved along with their Congressional oversight committees.
I’d also like to see the compelling evidence in support of the claim that E-verify and demand suppression works as advertised. Although it is true that illegal head count has dropped dramatically, that could be completely explained by the fall in economic activity. What do the economists say about demonstrated cause and effect of E-verify?
February 4th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
There is nothing to get “in place”. The system is there, it is used by hundreds of thousands of employers now. It just takes a web connection.
The answer on demand vs supply is that fighting the supply side doesn’t work. So try the demand side. I don’t need “evidence” – it hasn’t been tried.