Point 1 had been on my mind also. It seems strange to me that the largest employer changed so far is from my very small hometown. At least the only one that made the papers.
Isn't the traditional, cynical, answer to #1 that there are too many companies employing undocumented workers, and those companies liberally grease the palms of too many politicians?
Point 1 -- I think that could be good politics, but what would undocumented people do if labor laws were enforced and so they couldn't find work?
I completely agree on Point 2.
I think the point is that the laws would be changed in favor of more legal ways to work if businesses were forced to only deal with legal workers.
Point 3: You need a foreign policy. I'm assuming this got a generous ten seconds or so in the debates, but you guys seem to forget really quickly.
6: Only foreigners care about U.S. foreign policy.
I've been ignoring the Moveable Feast of the Seventeen Dwarfs in favor of brooding over the risk that one or more journalist(s) will be #MAGA-murdered before roughly this date next year and whether that will break the seal on even more political violence.
Like, for a trivial* case, you're kinda-sorta allied with the guys who did this, and are totally allied with the UAE and Egypt, which are arming them.
*Not sardonic. Literally trivial in the scheme of things. Nonetheless: "blood and body parts mixed with rubble and migrants' belongings."
I'm just hoping we don't start a war with Iran for the convenience of Saudi Arabia and Israel.
My uncle was telling me how Joe Biden was the only one who has the foreign policy chops to restore America's place in the world. But I'm thinking that ship has sailed. A lot of the damage is permanent and America won't be getting "its place" in the world back.
The next president is will need to figure out what our new place is. But that's not something they are going to want to talk about on the campaign trail because it will piss off a lot of voters and media pundits who will wish that, after four years of being a country that acts in extremely bad faith, we can easily restore the world order to the way things were.
You can't address fundamentally racist anxieties with technocratic solutions. There's no actual economic problem. It's not worth taking on big business to solve a non-problem in a way that won't satisfy the panicky white nationalist minority.
Leftists don't tend to support #1 because efforts to do it (large-scale raids on poultry plants, for example) end up directly harming undocumented workers far more than the employers themselves. A lot of the "compromise" bills that people like W tried to get passed involved creating more temporary work visas that lefties fear make workers more vulnerable to their employers.
Leftists don't tend to support #1 because efforts to do it (large-scale raids on poultry plants, for example) end up directly harming undocumented workers far more than the employers themselves. A lot of the "compromise" bills that people like W tried to get passed involved creating more temporary work visas that lefties fear make workers more vulnerable to their employers.
Yeah, I would prefer that undocumented immigrants be able to have honest work and not be driven further underground.
You can't address fundamentally racist anxieties with technocratic solutions. There's no actual economic problem. It's not worth taking on big business to solve a non-problem in a way that won't satisfy the panicky white nationalist minority.
Wait, there's no economic problem caused by immigration, but there's definitely economic problems.
Building on 13: thing is that we're trying that over here and the effect is that it turns all employers (and landlords) into unpaid immigration police. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/12/immigration-lawyer-reviews-paddington
The result is that it becomes more difficult to find a job or a place to live if you are a) an illegal immigrant but also if you are b) a legal immigrant from the EU c) a legal immigrant or refugee from elsewhere in the world d) a person with a funny foreign-sounding name e) a person with a foreign accent f) black or just a bit darkish.
And it doesn't work to discourage illegal immigration.
https://www.property118.com/why-is-the-uk-government-conscripting-landlords-as-immigration-officers/
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/01/landlords-do-not-understand-rules-immigration-checks-association
It may be useful as a clever thing for Americans to say on Twitter but it is not useful as a practical policy.
There are I think two slightly different possible policies. The one pursued in the UK goes after illegal immigrants directly. But simply to enforce labour laws -- at least in countries where they have any that matter -- so that everyone gets paid at least the minimum wage and so forth reduces the attraction of undocumented immigrants to employers, because they are no longer cheaper, and is in itself a good thing.
My father, who was a pretty unreconstructed racist, worked at one stage in the Seventies for a shipping company and explained that he and the unions were in cahoots about keeping a closed shop with good wages because it meant that there was no advantage to employing foreign (brownish) sailors and so they would not get jobs. He regarded this, perhaps rightly, as proof that the unions were thoroughly racist. This was the time when there were huge marches in support of Enoch Powell.
My policy would certainly not eliminate immigration: there are still plenty of industries that absolutely depend on the willingness of foreigners to do jobs that the natives won't. I played that role myself as a young man in Sweden. Agriculture is the most obvious example in contemporary KnifeCrimea, as we will find out next year. But it would be better all round if they were paid properly and not employed through gangmasters.
The other case of widespread hostility to immigrants -- I hear from my snout on the Mail -- is the small tradesman with a craft skill who finds himself undercut: in the French stereotype by "the Polish plumber". These people are usually self-employed and so easy to undercut: carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and so on. They had comfortable skilled working class lives in the absence of competition.
Labour laws are not going to help there. There is also a clear class interest: the kind of people who employ small tradesman benefit hugely from a more willing, cheaper workforce.
2 and 12 are right, but also, it's not just big business. Businesses of every size, in almost every sector, cheat on labor laws like this. Corner bodegas, family farms, and UMC families hiring nannies pay cash or record people as contractors when they really aren't... it would be hard to crack down on Purdue or Wal-Mart hiring undocumented workers without also affecting those people.
I'm sure it's a bigger problem for/with big business in terms of total numbers, and I realize conservatives would pretend any left-wing solution to the problem only affects the mom and pop bodega family farmers because they're always full of shit, and there's probably some way to reform the employment system that isn't too hard on the small businesses. All that being said, this is only a surefire slam-dunk political issue to liberal technocrats.
13, 17, 18: This is what gets me to my belief that basically open borders are the only solution -- not literally completely open, but if someone wants to come into the US and work legally, they can unless there's a particularized reason to keep that person out. No numerical limitations. If people are in the country illegally, and letting them work is tolerated, there's no way to enforce labor laws across the board, and they'll end up being abused by employers and used to undercut legal domestic workers. If they're here legally, we can enforce the labor laws.
But, if there's broad political consensus about anything, it's that that's just impossible, at which point I don't know what makes sense to do.
For sure if the way you enforce labor laws is by raids on non-compliant businesses, it's going to be a long, hard, slow slog. But it seems like one can do it pretty easily.
Just make it easy for an undocumented immigrant to rat out their employer (heh, we all have smartphones, it's hard for an employer to prevent) and offer a green card for immigrant and their immediate family as a reward. Near-instantly, no employer will skip e-verify. You'd have to first ramp-up e-verify so that for sure it could handle the load, but really, this shouldn't be so hard.
Why doesn't this happen? B/c businesses -want- and -need- undocumented workers, willing to work on things natives won't do, for pay natives wouldn't accept.
Just make it easy for an undocumented immigrant to rat out their employer (heh, we all have smartphones, it's hard for an employer to prevent) and offer a green card for immigrant and their immediate family as a reward.
I like this idea, and I swear someone came up with it here independently a decade ago. (Possibly me, but I genuinely don't remember.)
it would be hard to crack down on Purdue or Wal-Mart hiring undocumented workers without also affecting those people.
I wonder if that's actually true. I mean, in one sense it's clearly true because we are the United States, and we can't do anything without fucking it up. But surely you could hypothetically draw up a law that focuses on employers above a certain size.
(Also, I don't universities like Purdue should be prioritized in a crackdown. It's chicken processors that you really want to go after.)
I didn't come up with it, I saw Ezra Klein say it on Hardball in 2007.
23.last: Although they harmed so many people, I doubt Purdue will be a problem going forward; with any luck, some family members will do jail time.
Is this now the university or the pharma company? Confused.
26: I think politicalfootball was making a joke, by bringing up the university, but you'll have to check Standpipe's blog to be sure.
Neither. The one hiring undocumented workers would be Perdue, the chicken company.
Sorry, was just trying to add to the confusion. 28 is correct.
It's all a real mess. I don't know if we can trust the Secretary of Agriculture.
If Trump hasn't fired him, you definitely can't.
21/OP#1 is also what Kevin Drum is always harping on. If you're serious about reducing illegal immigration, E-verify is the way to do it. The fact that instead of incorporating e-verify into hiring, with penalties to employers for violations, the powers that be have a complicated plan of showy raids that victimize the workers, border enforcement and still largely looking the other way when whole industries depend on immigrant labor means they're not actually serious about eliminating undocumented workers.
on OP#2, my take was that when you're asked for a yes/no answer to a complicated and nuanced issue, it's simpler (for Warren, say) to raise her hand that she'd dismantle the current system than to say "everybody would be covered by MFA, but people would still be free to buy supplemental private insurance." Because, basically, she *is* proposing a complete dismantling of the current system. Why hedge and risk diluting the message? I thought others just then turned that into "she wants to outlaw any and all private insurance!" I tried to read up on it on her famous policy-rich campaign page but she was strategically vague there.
22: I can see two snags with this plan. First, the ratter-out may fell that a job is worth more than a green card. If he makes the call, the employer is busted; the job is gone; so are the jobs of everyone he works with. They may have views on his actions, if they catch him. This won't always happen, of course, but it will happen often enough to have a distinctly chilling effect.
The second snag is more obviously political. It is not just the owners of Walmart who benefit from driving the wages down: it is everyone who shops there (up to a certain point). I know that I myself am hypocritical enough to fly Ryanair on occasion and to buy stuff through Amazon. Who will vote for higher prices and slower deliveries?
I suppose what I am trying to say is that we can't eliminate some of the genuine conflicts of interest around these things -- but I'm sure we can manage them better.
the small tradesman with a craft skill who finds himself undercut: in the French stereotype by "the Polish plumber". These people are usually self-employed and so easy to undercut: carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and so on.
My last few experiences in this area have all involved the Polish plumber, etc undercutting the home-grown one by simply turning up and doing plumbing when he said he was going to. It seems that British plumbers have not yet internalised the vital importance to a viable business model of actually providing goods or services in exchange for money.
There is also a clear class interest: the kind of people who employ small tradesman benefit hugely from a more willing, cheaper workforce.
Everybody needs a plumber if their toilet's overflowing. Everybody needs an electrician if their consumer unit is fucked. Doesn't matter if you're a retail checkout clerk or Boris bloody Johnson, the time comes when you have to employ small tradesmen.
@22 I did.
The proposal is strict liability for employing illegal immigrants, with any commercial entity in the chain of commerce liable (e.g., Walmart is liable for the employment of illegal immigrants, regardless of how many levels of "independent contractors" they try to interpose to insulate themselves). Statutory damages ($ per day * number of days * number of employees). Qui tam provision with no unclean hands bar on recovery. So an illegal immigrant can work for an employer for x days and then turn themselves in and get a portion of the damages.
Maybe allow commercial entities to buy insurance from insurance companies meeting statutory requirements. Maybe require minimum level of insurance.
If it works you can kiss ICE goodbye.
34. If you live south of the river I'll give you the number of my brother in law, whose USP is that he does turn up.
32.last: For all the bad rap that socialism gets in the US, I wonder if Warren hasn't made a political calculation that nobody likes their fucking insurance company. I mean, I'm pretty neoliberal in my general outlook, and I've got a pretty decent insurance company, but I wouldn't shed a tear if it were abolished.
Re: Healthcare and Private Insurance. I think if you kept something like the current Medicare, you would still have private insurers in the Medicare Advantage market.
Maybe Sanders et al. are saying they want to get rid of Medicare Advantage?
Re: Healthcare and Private Insurance. I think if you kept something like the current Medicare, you would still have private insurers in the Medicare Advantage market.
Maybe Sanders et al. are saying they want to get rid of Medicare Advantage?
34 made me laugh out loud, not bitterly at all, oh no.
Nobody likes their insurance company but I think people find it hard to believe that if we stop having to pay $X,000 a month in insurance premiums, our income will actually go up by $X,000 such that we can afford to pay to enroll in Medicare. Better to make that a choice.
I see no political advantage at all to abolishing private medicine by fiat. I can't think of any country on earth since the fall of the USSR where a private option doesn't exist. Most people in developed countries don't use it, but it's there.
I've been crying intermittently about the camps, and went to a protest yesterday, where I intermittently cried some more.
Which made it literally: 'cry cry, protest, cry' . I feel this is quite a step down from the original.
43: I don't it has anything to do with any real-world plans, but its seems that for a few of the Democratic candidates the important thing is to signal that they are the leftiest of the lefty.
I got the impression it was a direct question in the debates - would you abolish private insurance? But like I said, I didn't actually watch.
I don't think we should abolish private insurance by fiat. The only argument I can imagine for doing so would be the claim that the US's unique history has lead to a medical insurance lobby far more powerful than anywhere else, and there's no way it will allow itself to be weakened.
I do think we should end tax breaks for employer-provided insurance. This will not lead to income going up by an amount equal to what was being spent, but it should reduce the power of the insurance lobby.
It's worth noting that a recent poll showed that Americans are much more comfortable with not having private insurance if they get to keep their doctor. It seems like 10-20% of the population has confused medical care and medical insurance.
They're not confused. It's a huge risk that if you switch insurance, your doctor won't be on your new plan.
Lots of people don't want to go with Plan B for their obstetrician.
48: Okay, then they're confused about monopsony power.
It's all a real mess. I don't know if we can trust the Secretary of Agriculture.
He's currently focused on moving all the USDA economists to Kansas City to punish them for reporting (accurately) that Trump's tariffs are terrible for farmers, so.
How many more Democratic votes that would be in Missouri and/or Kansas? Move the whole department, I say.
Kansas City's airport is weirdly designed (given current security rules) and very crowded. Maybe St. Louis would be better?
If it works you can kiss ICE goodbye.
Some further thoughts (and like LB, I'm sure I read about this somewhere -- not like I'm a genius).
(1) the idea that an undocumented immigrant would want the job more than the green card, I find difficult to believe. Employers hire undocumented immigrants because they're cheaper, b/c they'll do work natives won't do. No such worker -wants- to do such work, nor -wants- to get paid less. And the green card is insanely valuable, in comparison.
(2) The entire idea, is that if penalties were severe, NO employer would skip e-Verify. And the larger the employer, the MORE that would be the case.
(3) I do think that jail time for the highest-ranking manager in the organization, would be a valuable deterrent. But hey, I recognize that sending DJT to prison b/c his resorts systematically employ undocumented immigrants is a dream, just a dream.
I think you want a system that is -self-enforcing-. That is, that doesn't require massive government effort to police. We all know (or at least, are reassured by the captains of industry and their economist mouthpieces) that capitalism is about incentives, and that with the right incentives, you don't need regulation, enforcement, prosecution, yadda yadda. Well, here are incentives such that you should have ZERO prosecutions. Because what employer would risk serious jail time, just to shave some costs, with the KNOWLEDGE that any undocumented worker they employed, could get a GREEN CARD at the drop of a dime?
Serious, ignorant question: if you are living paycheck to inadequate paycheck, what's so great about a green card that makes it worth the loss of your job?
I think the answer would obviously vary with the local employment situation. I'm not saying that everyone would make this trade-off; only that some would.
re 36: That would work, but it's never going to get voted in. [and the element of bounty hunting would answer my objection; this only makes it less likely to be enacted.]
Because what employer would risk serious jail time, just to shave some costs, with the KNOWLEDGE that any undocumented worker they employed, could get a GREEN CARD at the drop of a dime?
You could pay an "employer" to be the green-card beard for you and a bunch of other people.
Serious, ignorant question: if you are living paycheck to inadequate paycheck, what's so great about a green card that makes it worth the loss of your job?
It allows you to work legally, which gives you access to way more jobs than you can get if you're limited to employers willing to hire people illegally.
And yeah, I can see the possible disincentive if you're in an area where jobs are scarce, but that's not the situation most of these people are in. Immigrants go where the jobs are.
what's so great about a green card
teofilo answered most of it. But here's another bit: many migrants come to America for a better life. They don't want to get kicked-out. A green card is "permanent residency" (== "you can't get kicked out" (ok, with a big-ass asterisk, but still)). This is -immensely- valuable. I mean, you remember the movie "Green Card", right? People enter into sham marriages for the green card. It is -immensely- valuable to an immigrant.
You could pay an "employer" to be the green-card beard for you and a bunch of other people.
(1) As with patents, "first to file" wins the prize. So 20 workers can collectively hire a "beard" and get 20 green cards.
(2) Again, we're talking about undocumented immigrants who are, by definition, getting paid less than native workers, and working the meanest of jobs. Even if #1 didn't apply, you'd need a TON of money to compensate that "beard" for a few years of federal prison time. A TON.
Immigrants go where the jobs are.
to support what teofilo wrote: when jobs were scarce during the Great Recession, economic migrants stopped coming. IIRC in fact the tide was -outward- to Mexico.
60.last:. I'm thinking you find somebody with health problems they can't afford treatment for, so prison is helping them.
61: Yes - I seem to remember something like that, too. But the scenario I had in mind was something like a company town (say meat-packing, because industrial slaughter houses seem unusually dependent on desperate immigrant workers, for obvious reasons) where there are no other jobs once the big factory is closed down. Presumably the American assumption is that there are always jobs *somewhere* and you can always cross America to find them. That's not the way that people think here, AFAICT
In accounts of illegal immigration in the UK, it is often said that the people trafficked in remain ignorant of the law, ignorant of their rights, and vulnerable to all sorts of blackmail and pressure from the traffickers. My only "evidence" that this should be the case in the US is the story line of Jonathan Raban's Waxwings, where a Chinese man, smuggled in to Seattle, knows that his family back home will pay if he displeases the gang who got him in or fails to keep up with his payments. This may be an uncommon scenario.
I do think that the scheme to reward with a green card anyone who rats out their illegal employer is an excellent one in principle. I'd vote for it. Like all the best egalitarian measures (cf Norwegian transparency about tax returns) it harnesses spite and envy to the public good. I just doubt it would entirely solve the problem.
Before the 80s, the packing plants were (mostly) very well-paying jobs held mostly by the descendants of the immigrants who got them when they were not well-paying jobs (i.e. white people). Anyway, locals blame the newer Mexican immigrants and not the owners of the plants for the change. I don't know where they are getting the workers from now. I think my cousin's kid is employed finding and training people to kill pigs, but we've never talked shop.
I guess its a shame about Mad, but their style of humor hadn't evolved in 50 years and the last time I bought a copy I couln't get my kid to read it.
In Canada, single-payer coverage is provided by the provinces, not by the federal government. Except that the feds have rules for (federal-to-provincial) 'transfer payments,' which means that they exercise a good deal of control over provincial spending. Flout/evade those rules, and you don't get that federal funding.
There is still a robust private insurance industry in Canada. Everyone is covered at a baseline level, but rich ar*eholes can still feel better about themselves for having superior coverage...
Hey teo, sorry if this already came up (I've been busy), but what the hell is going on in Alaska with the budget? Are there riots yet?
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The rare actual use case for weird virtual ledgers.|>
71: It is insane. People are organizing like crazy to get the legislature to override at least some of the vetoes, which they have a very short timeframe to do. There was a big civil-disobedience campout on the downtown park strip in Anchorage Wednesday, and I suspect there will be more direct-action stuff especially if the override approach doesn't work. It's not super-surprising that Dunleavy would do this, but the specific way he did it has made the impacts particularly acute and immediate. I have no idea what's going to happen.
And on top of the metaphorical burning down of the state's institutions through political dysfunction, the state is also literally on fire right now and there's smoke everywhere. There's a very apocalyptic feel to everything. Yesterday Anchorage hit 90 degrees for the first time ever.
73: This LGM article was helpful to me, as Alaskan politics are, from a Lower 48 perspective, a little obtuse. This sounds absolutely insane, especially given something like 4.7% of Alaskans are UA students in some sense. Given that it should be very clear who is causing services to be cut, how is this not political suicide?
Highly plausible narrative shared by a friend. I don't really know what to do about that apocalyptic feeling, which I know well. Let us know if there's anything outsiders can do...
Given that it should be very clear who is causing services to be cut, how is this not political suicide?
Republican governors are strangely self-sacrificing that way. It's some kind of selfish gene phenomenon at work.
74;That's a really good summary. The basic dynamic is that Dunleavy's base wants their $3000 dividend and believes as an article of faith that state spending is wasteful, so any cuts are good and the deeper the better. (Many of them also depend on the programs he's cutting and will suffer disproportionately from these cuts, of course.)
The link in 75 is also very good, especially about Arduin's role.
This probably is political suicide in the medium term, but the scary part is that the reckoning probably won't come until after the irreparable damage. The cuts are to the budget for this fiscal year and are currently in effect. The university's immediate response was to furlough all staff. There have been lots of impacts from the social service and Medicaid cuts already, and people are definitely going to die as a result; some probably have already. Even if the legislature does override some of the vetoes, which is far from a sure bet, a lot of the damage has already occurred and really is irreparable.
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Christ, what a week. On top of all the politics and stuff, I got to take my first really full vacation in a couple of years and see my niece and both sisters and many, many other relations. And then I come home to find that one of the most genuine, loving, revolutionary artists and activists I've ever met had succumbed after suffering from cancer for a year or so. Luckily, I did get to see her at a playwrighting workshop a couple of months ago when she was still able to do that sort of thing. I guess that's just how it goes, but some of these untimely deaths tend to underscore how bad everything else is.
Also, a friend is fostering some kittens from a pregnant stray cat she rescued, and two of the kittens have died within their first week. She's pretty devastated. (And she's another person who is sincerely and successfully doing good in the world, incredibly kind-hearted despite constantly running into barriers that are strongly class-linked.) Plus concentration camps.
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In the early 1970s, we had a chocolate-coloured cow. The cow and her she-calf would stand by our door. Every morning back then, my mother would take a bath, pray before the tulsi plant and Hanumanji idol in our courtyard, and then, with similar reverence, feed the cows bananas, water-soaked grams and other grains.|>
[...]
But the cows that we had have vanished. The new generation has kept jersey cows in shelters that have electricity. They supply milk to dairy farms and restaurants. The milk is simply a product. There is no devotion or reverence involved. The young no longer worship the cows the way their forefathers did. They have machines to pick up cow dung, the cows don't graze in the fields but survive off the fodder brought from retail outlets.
[...]
these very youths who are thoroughly removed from the manner in which their forefathers lived with cows and oxen are talking more and more about gau raksha or cow protection.
In other news I'm back in Arrakis. It is hot. A window in my bathroom blew open and my floor is covered in fine dust. I'll be in the Netherlands for two weeks next week if anyone is there and wants a meet up.
I hope everybody is California is well.
I'm so sorry, Nat, for the loss of your friend.
Very sorry, Natilo.
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I went out of town and fully offline just after seeing the OP, but had Opinions.
On 1, I think the reason this isn't more prevalent is, while it's clever, it just doesn't paint any clear picture of how much the proposer actually wants immigration to be part of society.
On 2, both to most left-wing activists and to many policy thinkers, making the federal government the payer and pushing the insurance companies aside (to some extent; see below) is a critical part of Medicare for All. Leveraging purchasing power, wiping out excessive profits and administration, etc. So Medicare-as-an-option-for-all (like the Medicare for America proposal) doesn't really count, in the current lingo; Medicare for All means literally everyone, on a mandatory basis.
Now, sure, you could do that while keeping Medicare Advantage an option within what you give everyone. So then you wouldn't be eliminating private insurance, but you would be so thoroughly reconstituting and reshuffling it (changing benefits, copays, networks, plans participating) that it would likely feel like having existing coverage "taken away". So unfortunately people (including, surprisingly, Vox) don't make a big distinction between "eliminate private insurance in its current form as a non-governmental system" and "eliminate private insurance as an industry".
Bernie Sanders' 2019 bill, like the Canadian system (but not many others), would outright ban the sale of private insurance duplicating the universal benefit, allowing only supplemental coverage, but with no copays there would probably be little room for such. Also, looking over the text, it might in fact be broad-brush enough as to prohibit Medicare Advantage going forward, by requiring any qualified provider be allowed to provide any covered service (so no exceptions letting HMOs limit networks). That may be intentional or it may not.