-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
While Republicans have been trying to leech the credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama has upstaged them by laying out his immigration reform plan. This is a signature political issue that the Republicans have tried to make their own. However, the E-Verify program will test whether they really want to solve the problem or whether, like bin Laden, they’re more interested in maintaining the issue for its political usefulness.
The E-Verify system looks for a match between the name and SSN of the worker who applies for a job. If there’s a mismatch then the worker may be undocumented, or the worker has to contact the SSA to get the records corrected. The E-Verify program, if widely implemented, would dramatically reduce the incentive for illegal entry.
However, business hates it. The Florida Chamber of Congress has succeeded in getting mandatory E-Verify removed from a Florida immigration reform bill. Republicans are caught between their business overlords and the Tea Party.
The Florida Chamber of Congress cites out-of-date error rates and concerns over identity theft as the basis for their objection to mandatory E-Verify. Could it be there’s another reason? Maybe it’s because businesses can take advantage of the illegal’s vulnerability and pay them less than the minimum wage and violate work safety rules, as pointed out in Obama’s recent speech.
The error rates for E-Verify are steadily improving with most errors occurring due to typos and changes in names or citizenship that are not reported to the Social Security system. Workers need to get these errors fixed in order to receive their full Social Security benefits to which they are entitled.
The problem with identity theft occurs when an undocumented worker uses someone else’s (matching) name and SSN when applying for a job. That problem has been solved by something called “E-Verify Self Check” where individuals can access their status before applying for a job. The system knows whom you’ve worked for over the years and can ask the kind of questions that only the legitimate worker would be able to answer correctly. Therefore, workers can be verified and identity thieves won’t be able to verify their data.
Another problem for E-Verify is the case of Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting that is before the Supreme Court (Kagan, J., recused). At issue is a 2006 Arizona statute, the Legal Arizona Workers Act that requires all employers to participate in the E-Verify program, which is preempted by a federal law that specifically makes that system voluntary. The law was signed by then-governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano, now the Secretary of Homeland Security, the department that runs E-Verify. What you have is the Obama administration’s Solicitor General arguing against the most effective tool in the administration’s arsenal against illegal immigration.
As pointed out by Justice Ginsburg during oral arguments:
How can Arizona take a Federal resource, which the Federal Government says is voluntary except in certain circumstances, and turn it into something that’s mandatory?
The E-Verify Modernization Act of 2011 seeks to make E-Verify permanent and mandatory. It will be interesting to see if the bill suffers the same fate as the Florida legislation.
H/T: VC, Miami Herald, Adam Serwer, Daily Finance.
“I just think the construction of major roads and bridges could be done using private investors in conjunction with contractors and state governments, who would supply the land/right of way for the roads and bridges.”
So in other words, private companies should take grants from governments and hire contractors to build roads using governments power of imminent domain to underwrite their profitability by providing free resources, never mind that some of these resources would have to be seized from private owners. All that does is put a middleman into the process – namely the private investors – when the government can hire contractors to build roads directly. Like they do now. On a not-for-profit basis. Paid for by tax payers. Tax payers expecting no ROI other than safe roads for their dollars.
You should lay off the hard drugs.
“Then the investors could fund the repairs from profits and only the people using a particular road or bridge would pay for it. The mother of 6 working 2 jobs to make ends meet would not have to.”
Unless, of course, she needs to use that road or bridge to get to work or take her kids to the doctor or go grocery shopping.
And this discretionary toll road would decide who pays and when how?
That’s altogether a vividly hallucinatory solution that benefits no one but the private investors and indeed will penalize all who need to use the roads whenever the investors feel their ROI expectations are not being met. This is a perfect example of exactly how full of shit you are about free markets being the best way to provide everything.
Tony C:
who sets interest rates? What are home mortgages based on? When mortgages are low people buy.
Who allowed arms? Aren’t they approved my government regulators?
Otteray Scribe:
you misunderstand my point. I am not saying that we should let our infrastructure deteriorate, I just think the construction of major roads and bridges could be done using private investors in conjunction with contractors and state governments, who would supply the land/right of way for the roads and bridges.
Then the investors could fund the repairs from profits and only the people using a particular road or bridge would pay for it. The mother of 6 working 2 jobs to make ends meet would not have to.
Just for fun, and without looking, can anyone guess the message number when any argument directly related to the subject of illegal immigration was last heard?
I take it none of you are practicing attorneys (hair splitters), but are nuclear physicists (atom splitters)…
@puzzling: The end result of this over the coming decades will be …
Right, and you can say that all these things will happen and you can conclude the result with certainty because… Oh wait, you cannot, because you just make shit up and hope suckers believe you, because if anybody could predict the future as well as you claim you can, they would be a multi-billionaire by now, and would have better things to do than killing time here.
@Roco: No, I told you once, companies pay all the taxes.
@ekeyra: So when a family takes on 150 thousand dollar mortage and the house they bought with it is now worth 100 thousand dollars, thats just imaginary so the bank wont want that money back?
If they bought a $150K house on a standard fixed mortgage, then they agreed at the time to pay about $1500 a month for it, and they thought that was an affordable housing expense. Why is $1500 no longer an affordable expense? What has changed? A number on a piece of paper that should, by rights, reduce their property taxes?
As in my own house, who cares? The only people harmed are those defrauded with ARMs, those defrauded into being dependent upon the value increasing with the promise of future refinancing, the speculators that lost their shirt but assumed that risk by betting over their heads, and those very few, in the single digit percentiles, forced to sell into a down market (but all markets fluctuate and that is just the realization of normal risk). Everybody else just continues to pay what they agreed to pay and thought was worth it at the time of purchase.
I never said you associated with the tea party, I said your math is just as bad as theirs, it ignores reality because that is the only way you can make your hatefully irrational arguments.
You underestimated our GDP by a factor of 4, you overestimated our debt by a factor of 5, and by rights you should be 95% less concerned about the debt than you were when you made those mistakes. Are you? Of course not, because your anger was never based in reality-economics ANYWAY.
Choosing to repair an essential public structure is not like choosing a food flavor. It is a life or death matter and everyone HAS to be on the same page. The only choice to be made is to repair it, or take a gamble and not repair. Lose the bet and someone will almost certainly die. That seems to be the bet libertarians are willing to take in order to avoid paying taxes.
Otteray Scribe:
not being belligerent at all, I thought, based on the info I found that a gusset plate and bearing point were 2 different things.
It appears from the picture in wikipedia that gusset plates attach to a main support column which is bearing. But another site I found indicated the gusset plate failed right below the bridge deck. From the wikipedia picture the bridge deck looked to be above the bearing point.
So that was why I asked. Since you said you knew something about it, I thought you could clarify for me.
I am just belligerent about free markets, everything else is someones opinion and whether they like chocolate or vanilla is of no concern to me nor none of my business. I just don’t want government picking vanilla for me when I like coffee. I want choices.
roco, I know a lot more about that bridge and its problems than you do. I have neither the time nor inclination to conduct a seminar in bridge construction with you. Not worth the bother and far outside the scope of this blawg. I do not know if you are being deliberately oppositional or are just ignorant but I do not have the time to waste.
ekeyra:
that 50,000 dollar lose of value isn’t a problem because the price of money gets cheaper so the $50,000 dollar loss can be paid back at some future point with $50,000 that is only worth $10,000 in terms of today’s value.
So government spending is actually helping these people who have suffered financial loss by inflating our money.
Don’t you see? von Mises is wrong and you are just being silly. It’s all so very simple.
Otteray Scribe:
So you are saying a gusset plate is a bridges bearing point?
And here I thought a gusset plate connected 2 or more pcs of some material together and a bearing was the main support point for the bridge.
Also when have I ever associated myself with the tea party? You do love those assumptions of yours
“But this “Oh no my home is losing value!” lament is nothing but a load of crap. For most Americans (those not defrauded, and those that weren’t speculating over their head) the increase was all imaginary money and the decrease is all imaginary money lost.”
Imaginary, really. So when a family takes on 150 thousand dollar mortage and the house they bought with it is now worth 100 thousand dollars, thats just imaginary so the bank wont want that money back?
I wanted to extend a similar post from another thread.
As we face tens of trillions – and likely $100 trillion – in unfunded liabilities above and beyond our $4 trillion (and growing) annual budget, the government will pursue multiple courses of action rather than address entitlement and empire spending:
1. Raise marginal income tax rates until increases no longer increase revenue
2. Means-test entitlements against retirement income and savings
3. Introduce a Value Added Tax scheme to better hide tax increases
4. Use outright wealth seizures (wealth taxes and eventually nationalization of some industries), starting with unfavored sectors including energy
5. Mandate private retirement accounts, and force large purchases of US Treasuries in those accounts
6. Impose substantial trade tariffs
7. Issue tens of trillions in new debt, defaulting on the real value of debt obligations and creating widespread, steep inflation or even hyperinflation
8. Use the threat of military intimidation to coerce debt forgiveness by foreign entities, particularly in Asia
9. Continue to build a US empire and war policy designed to plunder foreign resources rather than trading for those resources
The end result of this over the coming decades will be many new wars, plunging standards of living and real wages, destruction of private savings through taxation, confiscation and inflation, and cradle-to-grave dependence on a heavily centralized government.
@ekeyra: Of course the fact that there WAS a bubble means for quite some time their housing prices were inflating at $90 a day (if we trust your tea party math and references, which I do not), and this all means the whole charade was imaginary money for houses (like mine) the pre-date the bubble, and for the vast majority of houses in the USA (the median home is over 30 years old).
Plenty of people got suckered in the last 10 years, and REGULATION could have prevented that from happening, and I still think some fraudsters could be prosecuted.
But this “Oh no my home is losing value!” lament is nothing but a load of crap. For most Americans (those not defrauded, and those that weren’t speculating over their head) the increase was all imaginary money and the decrease is all imaginary money lost.
More prosperity here.
Let’s start another war and get people to work.
@Roco: Does that include their house?
As I said, yes: Their mortgage, cars, student loans, furniture loans, and credit card debt (which can overlap other debts).
But why should their house be any different than their furniture or their kitchen equipment or their car debt? I see it all as borrowed money used to by the “machines” I primarily use to make a living.
“Analysts say the punky figures are not confined to the US. The entire world is slowing down. Emerging markets are being forced to try to control inflation. Europe is worried about what happens when Greece defaults – which is coming soon. And the US is suffering from the worst housing slump in its history. Prices are already down 33%…more than one out of four homeowners is already underwater…and prices are falling at the rate of about 1% per month.
This latest bit of information is worth a pause. The total value of US housing stock is about $20 trillion. So, a 1% loss equals $200 billion. That’s $9 billion every working day.
Now, say there are about 100 million wage earners. This puts the losses per day at about $90 per day per wage earner. The typical worker takes home about $2,500 per month – by our calculations, barely more than he loses in housing prices.
And here’s another fact to toss in front of you this morning. In 1980, US federal, state and local debt per person declined at the rate of $2 per working day. As recently as 2000, debt declined again – at the rate of $4 per day.
But never have we seen anything like this. Government debt per working person is now increasing at $115 per working day. And that doesn’t include the build-up in social welfare obligations.
Add housing losses to government debt, and the typical working person’s balance sheet is deteriorating at the rate of $205 every working day.”
http://lewrockwell.com/bonner/bonner473.html
Thats your prosperity?!
Load bearing structure, roco, load BEARING structure.
Have you ever been a structural engineer or inspector? Argue your naive and Googled points here at your peril. Among the collection of experts on this blawg, somebody is going to eat your lunch.