The Obama administration has replaced immigration raids at factories and farms with a quieter enforcement strategy: sending federal agents to scour companies’ records for illegal immigrant workers.What the Obama Administration is doing is going after the demand side of the problem, not the supply side. That is completely antithetical to the party of Hoover's ideas of only going after the supply side (the illegal migrants themselves), which is little more than a reprise of other campaigns which sought to only go after the supply side, such as Prohibition and Nixon's Enduring War on Drugs and Civil Rights. And we all know how well those have worked.
While the sweeps of the past commonly led to the deportation of such workers, the “silent raids,” as employers call the audits, usually result in the workers being fired, but in many cases they are not deported.
Over the past year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted audits of employee files at more than 2,900 companies. The agency has levied a record $3 million in civil fines so far this year on businesses that hired unauthorized immigrants, according to official figures. Thousands of those workers have been fired, immigrant groups estimate.
Arresting and deporting illegal migrants does not work, but it gives lots of jobs to law enforcement and those who run the private prisons that have become ICE's black sites. Trying the idea of "maybe they won't come if there is no work for them to do" apparently really upsets the party of Hoover, not to mention their donors from industries that use undocumented workers.
As to what will happen once those industries are faced with the choices of either closing down or improving their working conditions and pay to attract American citizens to fill those jobs, well, let's just say that things will get interesting, indeed.
Seems like the War on Drugs, we have the businesses addicted to cheap labor
ReplyDeletewith limited to no benefits. The drug is people needing work be they immigrant or locals (imported drugs or locally grown).
With that analogy it would seem that making it cheaper to use locally grown
(pool of unemployed citizens or legal
immigrants) should have a better return for efforts of enforcement and
employer.
What it seems like is business trying to get away with what they always have tried and an all to willing labor force filling the demand.
Gotta be a better way.
Eck!
Once you start going down this mental road it gets real interesting. The price of American labor causes food prices to rise which means that family farmers could actually make a living instead of succumbing to cheap-labor corporate farms. Local produce has a transportation-cost advantage over factory farms. Local farmers can reintroduce animals into the farming cycle. Who knows, we might even stop feeding cows corn. Nah, it'll never happen.
ReplyDeleteSadly the idea that cheap labor is part of the problem affecting American Agriculture is another fallacy from those NOT involved with American Agriculture.
ReplyDeleteAny profit in American Agriculture is largely determined by the input costs to any endeavor; whether it is dairy, beef, pork, chicken or grains. Just about 99% of the inputs affecting all these markets are controlled by Fortune 500 companies who contribure heavily to both the Repubs and the Dems. Both parties are up to their necks in accepting bride money from Monsanto and others of their ilk.
Illegal immigrants only affects a small portion of the overall picture in American Agriculture, but then that's how they want everyone to think, isn't it??
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Good. It's about time somebody gave ICE something to do other than treat me like a goddamn felony suspect every time I fly into the States.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, this strategy strikes me as much more effective than going after the illegals themselves. Of course the people who hire the poor bastards for peanuts are going to hate it.