by Robert M. Traxler
Is mass immigration a good thing? Is it shortsighted to not have a guest worker program? Are we playing politics with our long-term future?
All difficult questions, but questions we all need to ask to properly plan our long-term national direction. They are also questions that are associated with this election.
Our population growth rate is approximately 0.77%, down from highs of nearly 2.5 %. Factors that influence the numbers are a very aging population, medical and safety advancements that ensure we all live longer, and a low birth rate. I did a slow burn when the media called our health care system a “third world medical care system” during the debate on Affordable Care Act, AKA Obama Care.
In 1900 the American life expectancy was 46.3 years for men and 48.3 for women. The most recent figures I found for today are 76.4 for men and 81.2 for women. We need an infusion of young blood to balance our population; our birth rate is not sufficient to provide the growth rate we need to fund the programs for older Americans and provide the work force we need to grow the economy.
One of the most powerful factors in world history is supply and demand, capitalism is an undeniable economic factor; illegal drugs are a classic example. As I have written before, I was involved in international drug interdiction in the 1980s; we were very successful in eliminating the manufacturing process in one country, only to discover that the only thing we accomplished was to move manufacturing to a different country. As long as there is demand, and enormous profit, there will be a supply. America needs a supply of labor to fulfill the current demand.
We are all told Americans will not take low-paying “demeaning” jobs; I maintain that all work is noble work, and there is no such thing as a demeaning job. The good folks who remove the garbage protect our health and welfare by preventing the diseases spread by rats and flies associated with uncollected garbage, nothing demeaning about that, in fact it is a noble thing.
Let there be n
o doubt in your mind that the immigration debate is about votes and the power it brings to a political party. The Democrats want open borders and to allow everyone who wishes to become an American citizen, as many new arrivals vote for Democrats. Republicans want a guest worker program to allow foreign labor, but not put them on an abbreviated track to citizenship, thus denying the Democrats a political advantage.
So what is wrong with Mr. Trump’s plan to screen illegals and keep good folks and deport the bad folks? The basic problem for Democrats is that it will deport more people who tent to vote Democrat and keep the very hard-working people who tend to be blue collar Republicans. A guest worker program is a direct threat to the delicate balance of power, as is blanket amnesty.
No surprise that I favor the guest worker program, giving us the ability to have a program similar to an internship or a probationary program. An immigrant who works here for a few years learns to love our country and wants to become a citizen, or wishes to leave and rejoin their native nation. Any guest workers who commit a felony will be required to depart our nation after they serve whatever sentence they receive for the crime.
An immigrant who works here for two to three years and maintains a clean record, pays income tax, state and federal, will earn the privilege to apply for citizenship; we may even have an expedited process. We have a national need for good honest immigrants, so why not have a guest worker program, why not have a screening process similar to existing intern and probationary programs that are so successful in our current employment system?
A guest worker program will not be perfect, but should we deny the good because it is not perfect? Supply and demand, our capitalist system has a demand for labor; we can legally or illegally import the labor, the choice is ours.
Time for a change to a non-politician, a non-Washington insider, a change to President Trump.
The Department of Labor issues labor certifications for permanent and temporary employment under the following programs:
Permanent Labor Certification
H-1C Nurses in Disadvantaged Areas
H-2A Temporary Labor Certification (Seasonal Agricultural)
H-2B Temporary Labor Certification (Non-agricultural)
D-1 Crewmembers Certification
Foreign labor certification programs permit U.S. employers to hire foreign workers on a temporary or permanent basis to fill jobs essential to the U.S. economy. Certification may be obtained in cases where it can be demonstrated that there are insufficient qualified U.S. workers available and willing to perform the work at wages that meet or exceed the prevailing wage paid for that occupation in the area of intended employment.
Foreign labor certification programs are designed to assure that the admission of foreign workers into the United States on a permanent or temporary basis will not adversely affect the job opportunities, wages, and working conditions of U.S. workers.
Employment based immigration is a complex process that may involve a number of government agencies within the Federal Department of Labor, the State Department of Labor, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) and the Department of State. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.) regulates the admission of foreign workers into the United States. The INA designates the Attorney General and the Secretary of State as the principal administrators of its provisions. https://www.doleta.gov/business/gw/guestwkr/
Mr. Salisbury,
Thank you, good point if the programs were working we would not have 8 to 20 million illegals or undocumented workers 2% to 6% of our population. Up to 6 times the number of folks in our entire military. Once again the government has made the process so cumbersome few employers can use it. If this program worked why are the liberal folks calling for blanket amnesty?
If our current government were to publish a rule on how to flip a light switch it would be a 40 page document.
Appreciate you pointing out how bureaucratic the existing program is and how cumbersome and costly the current program has become.
Thank you for the comment.
Sen. Marco Rubio appeared on ‘Fox & Friends’ to discuss a wide range of issues on July 22, 2015.
Sen. Marco Rubio said that while people sneaking into the United States is a legitimate problem, the immigration system is so broken that almost half of all illegal immigrants came into the country through legal channels.
“We have a porous border, meaning not just the border with Mexico, but 40 percent of people in this country, illegally, are overstaying visas,” he said on Fox & Friends on July 22, 2015.
If that’s a stat that sounds familiar, it’s because Rubio has said it before — including during his 2010 Senate campaign. Former Gov. Jeb Bush has cited the number, too.
But is it true that 40 percent of illegal immigrants are people who have overstayed their visas? It turns out that we hear the figure so often because it’s the most commonly accepted estimate, although it’s getting a little long in the tooth.
An old problem
We didn’t hear back from Rubio’s office when we tried to contact them, but in all likelihood he was referring to a calculation done by the Pew Research Center, an independent “fact tank” that doesn’t take policy positions.
In a 2006 report, Pew estimated that “nearly half of all the unauthorized migrants now living in the United States entered the country legally through a port of entry such as an airport or a border crossing point where they were subject to inspection by immigration officials.” While the source data gave an estimate that ranged from 33 percent to 50 percent, the report went middle-of-the-road and called it 45 percent.
That report relied on a 1997 study from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. While trying to ascertain how many immigrants arrived and departed, INS concluded that in 1996, 41 percent of illegal immigrants had entered the United States legally.
Robert Warren, a former INS demographer whose work was a part of that 1997 report, told PolitiFact that immigration trends had changed over the years. Since 2008, there are more immigrants overstaying their visas than crossing the border illegally, but there are fewer illegal immigrants in the country overall. The generally agreed upon total of illegal immigrants in the United States now is about 11 million, down from a high of 12 million in 2007.
But Warren, currently a fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Migration Studies, said the percentage of all overstays “had been consistent over the past 30 years.” Most people crossing the border illegally come from about a half-dozen countries, especially Mexico, he said. Unauthorized immigrants from all other countries are almost all overstays.
There have been other estimates of overstays: In January 2003, INS released an updated report that said 33 percent of the illegal immigrant population in 2000 had entered the country legally. A 2004 report from the General Accounting Office, based on 2000 data, gave estimates on visa overstays ranging from 27 percent to 31 percent to 57 percent.
But no one has truly updated those estimates since then, mostly because there is no data available from which to draw new conclusions, the Migration Policy Institute’s Marc Rosenblum said.
He said Homeland Security developed a methodology for estimating visa overstayers among people traveling by air and sea, but doesn’t have an official way to count people entering by land. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman confirmed to us that they have not recently released statistics on the number of overstays.
Rosenblum said for now the old estimates are the best ones available. Homeland Security has promised Congress it would compile new data, he said, but no results have been made public. Until then, there’s no research that would truly dispute Rubio’s claim.
(From a Politifact article a few months ago)
We can find common ground on the fact the current guest worker program is not staffed to carefully track visa holders. Plus emp!oyers must not be properly self reporting.