David Frum expresses skepticism over the short-term efficacy of fence-building—and prints an email pointing out the impossible position employers are in if employer sanctions are enforced.
Meanwhile, Robert Novak reports that the Senate immigration bill gives guest farm workers the civil-service-style right not to be fired except for just cause and puts them under Davis-Bacon, opening up whole new possibilities in employment litigation. What precisely makes this Congress Republican? As an Instapundit reader notes, the Davis-Bacon language might be a poison-pill provision to de facto end immigration hiring, since immigrants would cease to have a wage advantage. Then again, Title VII wouldn’t be half as broad as it is today if Southerners hadn’t inserted poison-pill provisions they mistakenly thought would crater the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
One Comment
The prevailing-wage boondoggle in the Senate immigration bill would create a lot of new work for federal bureaucrats, who would have to calculate wages for a host of new private-sector occupations never before subject to federal oversight.
It’s symptomatic of larger failings in the Senate immigration bill.
Although the Senate immigration bill was mostly supported by Democrats, some Republicans went along with it, engaging in libertarian rhetoric about the need to allow employers to freely contract with willing immigrant workers.
But there’s nothing particularly libertarian or pro-free-market about the Senate immigration bill, which is chock full of anomalies and welfare.
The Senate bill does vastly more to amnesty illegal aliens present in the country (many of whom do not work) than to provide a practical way for future immigrants to come here legally to perform useful work.
In many respects, the Senate’s immigration bill treats illegal aliens almost as well as legal aliens (and occasionally better than legal aliens), eliminating any incentive to comply with immigration laws.
The Senate immigration bill, which perpetuates these anomalies, should be rejected for that reason. (I say this even though I favor expanded legal immigration).
To get her green card, my wife, a legal immigrant, had to sign a waiver of her rights against double taxation under international tax treates (a form I-508), meaning she pays taxes to both her home country and the United States on the same income.
Meanwhile, illegal aliens work for cash and avoid paying income taxes to either the United States or their home country.
Supposedly, the Senate immigration bill would require illegal aliens to pay a “penalty” of $2000 for being in the country illegally to get their green cards.
That’s less than my wife pays in double taxation every year to be here legally. And it’s not radically more than the cost of replacing a lost green card.
Clearly, by treating illegal aliens better in this respect than my legal immigrant wife, the Senate bill is offering amnesty, and its sponsors’ claims that it does not contain an amnesty cannot be taken seriously.
Denying that the Senate bill is an amnesty for illegals is just politically correct wordplay, and is likely to create a backlash among the public against immigrants generally.
Moreover, the Senate bill actually rewards illegal immigration, rather than just letting them stay on equal terms, by letting low-paid illegal aliens receive an earned income tax credit for years they were here illegally, even if their tax credit more than cancels out what little income taxes they, as low-wage unskilled workers, pay.
The Senate thus actually gives low-wage illegal aliens money for having been here illegally, more than offsetting the small $2000 fee it imposes on them for having been here illegally.
And Senators Kennedy and McCain had the gall to accuse those who object to this taxpayer subsidy of illegal immigrants of racism, with McCain saying that people who oppose tax credits for illegal aliens want them to put to the “back of the bus” in a manner reminiscent of segregation.
By all means, expand opportunities for legal immigration. But don’t give illegal aliens the right to receive taxpayer subsidies, such as earned income tax credits, affirmative action, in-state tuition, bilingual education and multilingual ballots, or food stamps. That’s what the Senate immigration bill would permit.
(As someone who used to sue universities over their admissions policies, I have personally seen cases where illegal aliens were admitted to colleges with LSATs and index scores much lower than most rejected white citizen applicants.)
(The Seattle Times, amazingly, editorialized in favor of giving illegal aliens in-state tuition, and in favor of a Hispanic Washington state legislator’s bill to exclude legal aliens from the in-state tuition available to illegal aliens, because illegal aliens, in its view, were more “disadvantaged” than legal aliens).