U.S. pays for care of illegal aliens

shootinstudent,

Illegal immigrants are entitled to make legal claims for all violations of minimum wage and other fair-labors laws, and they have done so in the past.
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Clearly you don’t have much experience with this issue. There are fact galore substantiating that illegal immigrants almost never report any crime done against them for fear of deportation.

The claim that employers hire illegals because it's easier to illegaly deny them benefits is untrue.
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If you’re going to make a radical statement like that, you’re going to have to back it up with some documentation. The overwhelming majority of the evidence supports the assertion that employers of illegal aliens deny them benefits. I will willingly concede the point that there are plenty individuals and businesses that hire illegals without being aware that the employee is illegal. However, there are many more that are knowingly employed and done so in order to avoid providing benefits. As I said, with a radical claim such as you this, you have to provide supporting documentation.

I think it's most likely that your friend is angry and merely surmised as to the reason for his termination, especially considering that it would be very poor common sense for an employer to tell the guy he just fired that he's doing it to hire someone else illegally.
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He isn’t my friend, he isn’t even an acquaintance. As far as his story being true, you’re just going to have to take my word for it. You can believe me when I say though, that his story is most assuredly true.
 
] I also only deal in my own personal experience that is vastly different than yours apparently. I guess I've been hanging out on the right side of the tracks, or perhaps once you gain a proficiency in Spanish and can actually converse with some of these folks, (if you do), you realize that they're human.
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Without a doubt our experiences and exposure to this issue is different, I’d wager that mine are more accurate than yours simply because I deal with this on what I would guess is a far more regular basis than you. I can converse with these individuals in Spanish, and in fact do on a regular basis. I realize the human side of this issue far better than you probably think; Have you ever given an illegal alien the last of your water on a day with temperatures over 100 degrees? Have you ever sacrificed your time and energy to try and save the life of one? Have you ever rescued one from a situation he would most likely have died from? Have you ever gone without a meal in order to feed a poor family of illegal aliens? Have you ever done any of those things? I have, and many more, and I’d do them all again.

O'Riley and Lou Dobbs make a fortune stoking the flames of resentment. I don't usually fall for that.
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I make a point of never listening to O’Riley, and I almost never catch Lou Dobbs on CNN. I would guess that the grand total amount of time that I have spent listening to their programs at less than 5 hours.

It isn't like our borders have ever been secure and there is a good reason for it. The expense would be enormous compared to the benefits of enforcement.
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These are two separate issues; securing the border, and the detrimental effects of illegal aliens in America. We as a nation are faced with a far greater risk due to an open or semi-open border than we have ever faced before. Sept. 11th has created a new paradigm and operating under then old one will cost the lives of countless Americans. When it comes to the detrimental effects of illegal immigration, we are also facing a situation we have never faced before. The level of illegal aliens in America is higher than ever before, and I believe that they also pose a risk to America and our way of life. While these two issues are certainly intertwined, they are two fundamentally different issues and making the same arguments or even claiming “it’s always been that way” are no longer valid.
 
You know, it never occurs to me that people might think I'm racist--for reasons which will become clear. Just in case someone is thinking along those lines, I thought I'd throw this out.

I am from Colombia. I was born in Bogota and lived in Colombia for the first 10 years of my life.

My views on the topic of this thread have to do with what is right and what is wrong. Not on what race of people happen to be on which side of the border.
 
There are 10 to 15 million illegal aliens in the United States today. Virtually every single one of them have a job somewhere. A link of a few instances like you posted doesn't really prove a thing. Like I said, you posted a radical claim, that hardley any illegals were not given benefits by their employers. Provide some credible evidence supporting your assertion.
 
Ahenry,

What I've shown is that courts will enforce labor standards against their employers. As far as proof that this happens, in those cases you have many more instances, documented by courts, of immigrants being able to enforce those rights than you've provided to support your claim.

I'm quite puzzled that you expect us to react to a "my friend told me" story as if it's good evidence to support your point, yet you demand more when I give you references to numerous court cases to support mine.
 
Ahenry,
OK- maybe my post won't be such a shock to you after all. I am not against enforcement of the law. I only would like to see more realistic limits placed on work permits so that more could come and work above the table. Obviously we still have jobs that need doing otherwise they'd be flooding into Guatamala. Right now the unecessary red tape in getting here to work is so incredible that most believe (rightfully so) that they don't have a chance. Hence, they come anyway and live under the radar.

In my perfect world, coming here would consist of providing non-related character references, having several weeks to find employment here and having an employer verify that employment, and a certification by a US doctor of no serious contagious diseases (plus the criminal background check). I believe we could make them pay for it all, and then approve them more rapidly than we do.

Once we don't have an army flooding accross our border illegally, then we can worry about the few who still do. It isn't the workers I worry about it is the ones leaving Quoran's lying about the desert with prayer rugs that I worry about since I've never met a muslim Mexican.

I think trying to catch them now is an impossible task and we seem to be p1&&ing in the wind to even try with the kinds of numbers we have now coming accross illegally. Like you've said in a previous post, let's increase the quotas for legal aliens, and then we can get serious about border security. It is better that we know who is coming here than to be totally blind to who is here and why they came.

I think we both agree on a fair portion of the above. I want laws and quotas that are prudent and will effect our safety more surely than the current situation that is untennable as it stands. Knowing government like I do, their next law will make the problem worse, not better.

We've done a good deal to put ourselves in this situation anyway. On the plus side, we are the world's economic powerhouse. That's great for us, but our neighbors are in the 3rd world and so immigration from Mexico is going to happen like it or not. We might as well know who is immigrating.

The negative side of our own misdeeds is that we have become more and more socialized and employees here must pay into social security, Medicaid, and any number of employment costs that raise the cost of employing us higher than the market will bear (assuming a global market). I think privatization of Social Security is a step in the right direction. I'd like to see the minimum wage rephrased as a "training wage", so as not to confuse the morons out there who believe you should be able to raise a family of five on it.

This of course is from a rose-colored lens. The gritty reality of our situation is how do you filter the million or so people here illegally? We can't afford it. If we could weed those numbers down by making it more wise to do it the right way (from their point of view), I think we could then get serious about the real security threats we face from non-Mexican immigrants coming over the southern border.

It isn't the jobs their filling that worry me. It is the ones coming here with no intent of real employment that worry me most. Those are the Al Quaida folks and God knows who else. I want those good people to sit out their time in a jail cell somewhere in the Big Bend region w/o A/C awaiting deportation.
 
this has been quite interesting to sit back and watch.

i would like to throw this in:

can anyone try to convince me that we don't live under a socialist government?

oh wait, i don't get free health care. but i still pay for those who are, shall i say, fortunate enough to not be able to pay hospital bills.
 
Now, I ended up in the hospital recently, not of my own choosing.

I am now smacked with an ambulance bill, and a bill from the hospital.

Who has to pay that? I must not be a favorite nephew. Not only will Uncle Sam not pay for my healthcare, he takes my money to pay for his illegitimate children.

Fair, huh? :confused:
 
Kjm
In my perfect world, coming here would consist of providing non-related character references, having several weeks to find employment here and having an employer verify that employment, and a certification by a US doctor of no serious contagious diseases (plus the criminal background check).
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There are two problems with this; allowing millions of foreign workers to do low-paid jobs here on work permits drives down the average pay of all American workers.

Secondly, the criminal records and databases of all these third world nations can not be trusted, and neither can any "official" documentation these people might use. And unless people are quarantined at the border the propectives have to already be physically located inside our borders to be "certified healthy" by a U.S. physician - thus already exposing people to all the health risks.
 
LAK,

Those are great reasons to support the Bush plan. Rely on workers who already came here and have a track record of working steadily, staying out of criminal trouble besides immigration status, and who're healthy. Our records are much better than foreign ones.
 
shootinstudent
Those are great reasons to support the Bush plan. Rely on workers who already came here and have a track record of working steadily, staying out of criminal trouble besides immigration status, and who're healthy. Our records are much better than foreign ones.
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Well no; because they are already here and "staying out of trouble" does not change the fact that they have driven down (and will hold down) the wage for all American workers. And just because they have not gotten into trouble here - yet - does not mean they have no criminal history of the most serious kind, or could be planted "terrorists" for that matter with completely false identities - even country of origin.

This is sheer folly; from the standpoint of American citizens and their wages and livelyhood, and the issue of national security. Wait, I retract that; it is not sheer folly - it's treason.
 
Well no; because they are already here and "staying out of trouble" does not change the fact that they have driven down (and will hold down) the wage for all American workers.
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It depends on if you view the American economy on a global scale or as an island. Depending on the jobs held, those illegals may be keeping a business tottering on leaving to more friendly environs (i.e.: India, Pakistan and other 3rd world countries) in the United States. I see us a having to be globally competitive. These people are keeping wages where we can be globally competitive. If American wages were doubled overnight, I believe things would bode ill for us on the global market unless we somehow managed to double our productivity too.

Wages are tied to productivity (or should be). Short of serious changes in the tax code to make us more productive, the illegal problem will continue to benefit our economy as a whole in small, unseen ways.
 
shotinstudent,

I'm quite puzzled that you expect us to react to a "my friend told me" story as if it's good evidence to support your point, yet you demand more when I give you references to numerous court cases to support mine.
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As I said, this wasn’t my friend. My exposure to this individual was in a way that enabled me to establish his assertion as valid. Moreover, my use of this example is for the purpose I stated when posting the story, "it helps illustrate my view" [that illegal aliens create an artificial market for labor that by its very nature holds the actual market price for labor below its true equilibrium point. In other words, illegal aliens have created a price ceiling for labor, leading to the same end result of all price ceilings, shortages and black markets].

I’m not going to spend a lot of time re-researching this point for a couple of reasons. Common sense should make it clear that an employer does not have to provide the same level of benefits to an illegal alien that he would to a legal worker. For those that knowingly hire illegal aliens, there can be no doubt that they will attempt to avoid the additional costs of hiring workers (health care, retirement, etc). The very nature of employing an illegal alien is an “off the book” proposition, and to provide these benefits would in fact, put the illegal “on the books”. Moreover, the very information you provided establishes the fact that employers do hire illegal aliens without providing benefits. This in turn establishes a wage, by definition, lower than that any legal employee can work at. In order to provide just a small level of documentation, look at the Department of Labors’ Foreign Labor Certification Programs: The System is Broken and Needs to be Fixed audit. It says, in part, that 19 percent of H-1B workers were not even being paid the salaries promised by their employers on their labor application forms. It also found that employers use H-1B employees to get around prevailing wages and personnel costs. If a legal employment system is exploited by employers in order to avoid personnel costs, how much more is an illegal labor market exploited for the same purpose? As I said before, you are making a radical claim that flies in the face of good sense as well as the widespread belief of virtually everybody researching illegal immigration. If you intend to sway anybody to your point of view on this, the burden of proof lies with you.
 
Ahenry,

Your claim is not "common sense", or else there wouldn't be pages of caselaw on the subject. You illustrated your view with one example and a fact sheet, and then said "hey, this is obvious!". I cited for you a page full of major legal decisions showing that labor laws are enforced against employers of illegal immigrants.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time re-researching this point for a couple of reasons. Common sense should make it clear that an employer does not have to provide the same level of benefits to an illegal alien that he would to a legal worker.
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If it were that much common sense, you'd only need the 30 seconds it took me to find all of that legal material relating to immigrant labor rights. That's pretty good proof to me that the law is being applied against violaters in this arena.

If you intend to sway anybody to your point of view on this, the burden of proof lies with you.
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Ah, shifting "the burden of proof." That's a time tested argument pattern: make a claim, claim that your claim is so obvious you don't need to support it, and then demand that someone disprove your claim. Then, when proof is offered....claim that it's not enough proof, and ask for more.

I'll provide more proof when you tell me why those cases I cited don't prove anything.
 
kjm,
I am not against enforcement of the law. I only would like to see more realistic limits placed on work permits so that more could come and work above the table.
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Whether there should be more guest workers is a valid point of debate. However, I am more than willing to cede you the point. My contention however, is that we do not need to allow more guest workers nearly so much as we need to improve the speed with which the current number of workers are able to come here and work.

Obviously we still have jobs that need doing otherwise they'd be flooding into Guatamala. Right now the unecessary red tape in getting here to work is so incredible that most believe (rightfully so) that they don't have a chance. Hence, they come anyway and live under the radar…Once we don't have an army flooding accross our border illegally, then we can worry about the few who still do.
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I don’t deny this. However, I have never believed that you should reward criminal behavior with modification of the law. If the law needs to be modified because we decide it should be, so be it. It should never be acceptable for a society to see widespread abuse of the law and decide, for that reason, to modify the law.

I think trying to catch them now is an impossible task and we seem to be p1&&ing in the wind to even try with the kinds of numbers we have now coming accross illegally.
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Truly eliminating 100% of all illegal immigration is probably impossible, at least as long as we remain a society allowing free and relatively unhampered mobility. I’m O.K. with that. However, there are a myriad of options still available to us that could put a serious damper on illegal immigration. Some of those options are currently being tried; far more need to be. Nevertheless, as I said before, we should never reward illegal behavior by modifying the law solely because the number of people flaunting the law are substantial.

Like you've said in a previous post, let's increase the quotas for legal aliens, and then we can get serious about border security.
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I don’t doubt that I said we should increase the quotas for legal aliens. I do doubt that I ever said we should modify the number and then improve the enforcement of the law. Doing so goes against the very fiber of my character. If I ever made such an assertion, I was wrong.

It depends on if you view the American economy on a global scale or as an island. Depending on the jobs held, those illegals may be keeping a business tottering on leaving to more friendly environs (i.e.: India, Pakistan and other 3rd world countries) in the United States. I see us a having to be globally competitive. These people are keeping wages where we can be globally competitive. If American wages were doubled overnight, I believe things would bode ill for us on the global market unless we somehow managed to double our productivity too.
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This belief sorta sticks in my craw. American labor has always been capable of competing with anything thrown at it. To imply that we must have non-Americans working here in order to be competitive with other nations goes against history itself.

Wages are tied to productivity (or should be). Short of serious changes in the tax code to make us more productive, the illegal problem will continue to benefit our economy as a whole in small, unseen ways.
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Perhaps you could provide something to backup this assertion? There is a myriad of evidence that illegal immigration has been detrimental to our economy as a whole, and I have provided a tiny portion of that evidence. I’d like to see you provide something to substantiate your claim.
 
This believe sorta sticks in my craw. American labor has always been capable of competing with anything thrown at it. To imply that we must have non-Americans working here in order to be competitive with other nations goes against history itself.
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If that's true, why are you so worried about keeping the illegals out? Americans should be able to compete them right out of the labor market, right?

I think history itself proves that vast influxes of immigrants fueled economic growth that would've been crippled without it. If it weren't for a ready supply of cost-effective labor during all our periods of industrial growth, I don't see how it would've happened.
 
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