-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The Florida Chamber of Congress cites out-of-date error rates and concerns over identity theft as the basis for their objection to mandatory E-Verify.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.
Tony C:
Wages are better when there are jobs to be had. In the boom time around here McDonalds was paying 9 or 10 per hour to get people to work for them. Constuction laborers were making 15 to 20.
Safety is better now not because of OSHA but because insurance companies give large rebates for safe companies. Those rebates can run into the millions of dollars for large companies.
Any thing government can do the market can do much better and for a much cheaper price.
Tony C:
20% is standard tip with me. I will admit I have never tipped 30%.
Tony,
You should talk to yourself more often.
@Roco: people used to do just [i.e. move] that when they wanted a better life.
And why can’t you do that now, Roco? What is stopping you? You think the self-reliant Randian ideal is so great, what’s stopping you from taking up your self-reliant residence in the Outback?
Is it the lack of a free, insanely valuable infrastructure us big government liberals have built up?
I’m serious. If you don’t like it, why stay? You aren’t handcuffed to the country, you can move to someplace far closer to your ideals, even places (like India) that speak and write English, and be a happy immigrant.
While lecturing a constituent about self-reliance, and saying “You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, ‘When do I decide I’m going to take care of me?'”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=89764#ixzz1NUiMXxPB
Tony C.
1, May 26, 2011 at 3:17 pm
@Myself: I said, For example, I believe in worker safety, security, and protection, and a living wage, so for me the regulations have no effect on anything I want to do.
I can go even further; in that the regulations enable to do what I want to do, because they prevent my competitors from undercutting my prices by underpaying, ripping off, or endangering their employees. The regulations level the playing field, so the beneficial sorts of competition on products (their quality, price, guarantee, service, options and selection) can actually operate, so consumers can choose the best product, not the most ruthless bully.
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ahh…. faith begins to be restored……….
@Myself: I said, For example, I believe in worker safety, security, and protection, and a living wage, so for me the regulations have no effect on anything I want to do.
I can go even further; in that the regulations enable to do what I want to do, because they prevent my competitors from undercutting my prices by underpaying, ripping off, or endangering their employees. The regulations level the playing field, so the beneficial sorts of competition on products (their quality, price, guarantee, service, options and selection) can actually operate, so consumers can choose the best product, not the most ruthless bully.
“I find it interesting that you think government isn’t capable of making an informed decision about how to fund infrastructure yet you want them to regulate most every aspect of our lives.”
I find it very amusing that saying I’m against privately funded and owned infrastructure somehow equates to thinking “government isn’t capable of making an informed decision about how to fund infrastructure” or that you think that someone who wants industry regulated equates to wanting to regulate most every aspect of our lives. There are literally thousands of posts by me that prove that you are simply lying and/or crazy. As to the rest of your self-aggrandizing blather? It is just that – self-aggrandizing blather; par for the course for a sociopath.
As to ekeyrah and puzzling? I suggest you leave them out of your lil’ psychotic fascination with me. They are reasonable people who are simply misinformed on or have misunderstandings of the requirements of society and its necessary maintenance. Although we disagree on some things, we do occasionally agree on some other topics. You, on the other hand, are a Rand/von Mises worshiping narcissistic sociopath who actually believes greed is good. Therein lies the difference between you and them. Neither of them think greed is good, but they simply fail to see how some of their policy choices do in fact encourage greed. You, by contrast, are a true believer. So just because they happen to agree with some of your economics? Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you are the same. There is a difference between mistaken and insane and/or evil. They are simply mistaken. You are . . . well, why don’t we just leave to the reader’s to come to their own conclusions. So unless you have a better example to offer than your roads examples for private ownership of public resources? I cordially invite you to embarrass yourself some more. It’s funny.
@Woosty: I was just trying to be funny. Good luck, though.
Tony C.
1, May 25, 2011 at 5:46 pm
@Woosty: I’m getting kind of sick of our current system myself. But do you have the discipline to be a libertarian?
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I was being seriously sarcastic…at the moment my ‘discipline’ is employed in base survival as I need to accomplish the fine art of recovering from an apocalypse of law firms. Even so, as mch fun as it is to muse about the ideologies I went to the ‘Libertarian’ website and what they say they are and what they is don’t really mesh in my simple mind. But I’m seeing a lot of that lately and as I am right in the middle of a trickle down imposed ‘shock doctrine’ event I am hardly one to judge….but I will let you know what I think when I get to the other end of the f(*^ing tunnel..
@Roco: Most of the people on this blog are the ones who want to keep the ruling elite in power.
I am not among them. You keep making the same mistake of assuming that I am defending the status quo, when I am not in the least. I think both Bush and Obama are war criminals; I think 98% of both the House and Senate are corrupt and in the pockets of corporate America, if it were possible I’d overhaul the whole fucking thing.
Do not confuse me with a defender of the status quo. I’d very much like to replace it all with a working system. And even though that could be done legally by voters, I am a realist, and my best service to mankind is in producing the tools they need to make life better; and making damn sure nobody has the rights to control or profit from those tools except the public at large (including myself).
I am not defending the USA, we have lost our way and our politicians violate constitutional provisions at will with barely a whimper of protest from the public. So make no mistake: I am attacking YOUR ideas of what works, because when I do that and you prove you are incapable of defending those ideas, even by failing to address the situations I put forth, it is possible that for other readers, those whose minds are not already rusted shut forever, I can help them see why Objectivism and Libertarianism would fail, and also to see what would succeed.
Before you claim I am promoting socialism or communism, I think neither of those extreme opposites work well at all; they ALSO, like the extremes you promote, are counter to human nature and will inevitably fail and be corrupted.
@Roco: Bet all you care to lose on the charity front. Having been raised on tips and then worked for them myself, (my mother was a waitress, my father was a bartender), my tips are 20% for routine service; and in a few places where the waiters remember my name and order, 30%, which is what I tipped for lunch this Monday. Is that your standard?
Libertarians are so predictable, the only reason they talk about voluntary charity is to abstain from it, the only reason they talk about deregulation is there are rules they want to break.
If they believed in worker protections, the regulations wouldn’t make a difference. For example, I believe in worker safety, security, and protection, and a living wage, so for me the regulations have no effect on anything I want to do. If my business can’t meet those standards and still make a profit, then it is not a business I care to be in. I can think of ten businesses I can start that DO meet those standards.
On the other hand YOU complain because we have outlawed some unfair, hurtful practice you want to engage in. You want to screw somebody for profit. But at some time in the past, when we saw that some jerks were successfully earning profits by screwing people, WE decided that the people were more important than the jerk’s profits and passed a law prohibiting that particular type of screwing. But now you come along, with your complete lack of imagination, and say, “How can I earn a profit without screwing people? It’s Impossible!”
Yes yes yes, it took progressive “100 hundred” (sic – earlier sludge drop) years to really screw up this country by ending slaver, giving women the right to votes (to say nothing of blacks, Asians and other unAmerican types), enacting health and safety regulations, clean food laws, antipollution laws and an endless array of other onerous burdens that made the nation healthy, safer and wealthier. We have spent the last 30 years tearing down all that progress and have even managed to turn the tax code into something that would have made the landed gentry proud.
I asked in a different thread if you were sentient – obviously not. Go evolve for a few 100 hundred generations maybe you can join humanity.
I find it interesting that you think government isn’t capable of making an informed decision about how to fund infrastructure yet you want them to regulate most every aspect of our lives.
Very contradictory if you ask me, Mr. Give the farm away.
I would like to see your tax return, I bet we give more to charity than you do. According to the book Makers and Takers I would be right. I bet puzzling and ekeyra give more than you do as well. I bet we tip more to when we go to eat or have someone park our car.
Lefties are so predictable. They talk about using other people’s money but they dont put their money where their mouth is.
puzzling:
don’t believe that crap Buddha wrote, taxation of labor took over a 100 hundred years to be declared constitutional and only after the progressives started invading the judiciary and was done to increase the welfare state. The late 1800’s and early 1900’s was a progressives dream time.
That it took them about a 100 years to screw are country up is a testament to the awesome power of capitalism. We have been dining out on the energy created during that short period of dynamism from after the civil war to about 1920 or one could argue to TR’s administration, bad progressive that he was.
Tony C:
“So I expect to hear from you soon. Unless, of course, your libertarian ideals do not really apply to you, and you can’t just up and leave because you have too many geographical tie-downs you’d have to deal with. You know, the house, the family, the friends you’d leave behind, the job you don’t want to give up, the job your wife won’t give up, whatever.”
people used to do just that when they wanted a better life. I think it is you who let reality get in your way.
I dont know about you but my people went west. Out of all the places in America I have been, Texas, Alaska and Wyoming have the best people. They still know what it is like to be autonomous agents. Unlike their caged brothers and sisters on the east coast. You know the house boys of the ruling elite who want to keep you down. So which rulling elite do you suck up to?
Most of the people on this blog are the ones who want to keep the ruling elite in power. People like me, puzzling and ekeyra want to end that shit and make them actually compete for what they have. Most would shit themselves if the ole boy network wouldnt work like it does now.
You and Buddha and Otteray Scribe – dupes of the man. And you talk such a good game about being for the people. If you were honestly for the people you would deregulate business and reduce taxes across the board. You would let people mine and drill for oil. People could keep more of their money and not have it wasted on stupid shit the government does. It isnt their money and they have not been good stewards with our money.
But you like to keep the few firmly established in power. Tony the Plutocrat/Oligarch enemy of the little guy and doesnt even know it.
@Puzzling: In my view, compulsory giving is not charity by definition.
What Buddha said, but to add to that, I disagree with your fundamental point.
Compulsory giving IS charity, by the SOCIETY, which is the entity doing the giving. I see no way for a society of more than a few thousand adults to exist and make decisions that are unanimous. There will always be some holdouts.
So (I believe) no such societies exist, and all societies have some way of deciding policy against the will of some. If it is a fair society, all the decisions will be binding on everybody (including the leaders and elites), and that is the “decision” of the society.
Some of those decisions are prohibitions that carry punishment, like laws against crime, or endangerment of workers.
Some are compelled behavior, like a draft, or taxes to fund an army, or a minimum wage.
Some are for the common good, like a public defender program, or building free roads between major cities to facilitate trade, or a police program, or public schools.
Some are preventive, like demanding food be inspected for poisonous or disease-causing agents by experts before it is sold or used as an ingredient in something else. Or demanding that drivers, or lawyers or doctors or other professionals pass a basic competency test administered by experts before being allowed to practice.
And some are just charitable, like ensuring the elderly are not destitute or living on a third of the poverty level wages, or that children with poor parents still get medical care.
You are correct that it is not a charitable decision from you, or from any individual. But look at this poll from 3 days ago. When 72% of Americans think Medicare is an important program that doesn’t need to be cut in any way and should be preserved (70% for Social Security), that is a decision of the society. If 50.1% of voters voted on this issue alone, they could force it into the Constitution as a Right on par with Freedom of Speech.
If the policies of the society apply to everybody equally then it is not a tyranny of the majority, the laws the majority pass apply to them equally.
As far as I can tell, and for reasons I have outlined extensively on this thread, it is impossible to have a majoritarian society based on Randian or libertarian principles, because the majority will immediately vote for something else. Not just in America, but everywhere, it has been a fact of human nature for millenia that the members of a tribe want rules of behavior in the tribe, to be enforced by the tribe, because it is the only way they can sleep in their tent at night without fear of being murdered for their goat.
So yes, it is not your charity, or mine. It is the charity of the society, and for both of us it is the price we pay to be members of that society. Membership is voluntary, but it is not free, so whether you pay the price with equanimity or begrudgingly you have made the decision it is better to stay than to leave, and there is only one thing keeping us here: We find the benefits of this society preferable to the many others we could easily join that have fewer demands on our time and money.
puzzling,
But therein lies the flaw: inclined. Not all people are equally inclined to contribute in a proportionately equal manner. Some would (and do) give nearly everything back to society and some want to give back nothing while reaping the maximum benefit possible (free riders). That’s why taxation isn’t voluntary and that’s why the Framers included promoting the general welfare as a legitimate role of government: to ensure that revenues are collected for communal projects government is best suited for even from those “less inclined” to contribute and to allow for government action that can cover the gaps in the general well-being of society left by uncovered by traditional charity.
Tony, you wrote
I think we are in agreement on the core point, which is that humans are inherently charitable. I wrote so here, when I said
In my view, compulsory giving is not charity by definition.
@Woosty: I’m getting kind of sick of our current system myself. But do you have the discipline to be a libertarian? You’ll have to take every single principle, example and thought to an absolutely ridiculous extreme, even if there is no logic to that stance you have to defend it.
For example, you have to defend shooting to death a hungry shoplifter over a junior mint, because, you know, property rights are absolute. I just think its a tough gig.