-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The Florida Chamber of Congress cites out-of-date error rates and concerns over identity theft as the basis for their objection to mandatory E-Verify.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.
@Roco: I am not a socialist. But you have apparently surrendered the debate, my points have drawn blood, and you have chosen to retreat and nurse your wounds with invective. Thanks for conceding.
It is a term which was coined in either the late 18th century or early 19th century.
So based on what you wrote are you a follower of Staint-Simon, Owen or Fourier?
Socialist is socialist. It is a term which was coined in either the late 18th century or early 19th century.
Are you a follower of Staint-Simon or Fourier?
@Roco: Perhaps you could have finished reading the sentence. You ignored the portion after the semicolon:
… at all; they ALSO, like the extremes you promote, …
See? They are the extreme opposites of the extremes you promote, and share the feature of inevitable failure and corruption.
You don’t have to convince me Socialism is a step toward Communism, Marx said so himself.
However, what I (and other liberals) advocate is not socialism and not communism. Look it up.
I do not believe in central planning, I do not want the government owning the means of production, I do not want the government to control the economy or decide who can sell what or at what price. I think a regulated market that prevents monopoly and fraud and abuse can work just fine at determining fair prices for about 99.9% of products and services currently sold (although the 0.1% exceptions constitute a disproportionate share of the economy; probably 25% or so).
Marxist Socialism believes in an unmeasurably vague idea that people should be compensated in proportion to their “contribution to society,” actually something free marketeers believe is measured by how much money they earn, so in that sense YOU have more in common with a socialist than I do, because I am a scientist that does not believe in vague bullshit (especially vague bullshit that lets a politician justify why they should earn ten or fifteen times the average wage of their constituents).
I am not even a Democratic Socialist; they believe in public control of capital in a market economy, and I do not.
Unfortunately for people like me, the word “socialist” was hijacked and repurposed, so those of us that believe in collective action to reduce costs and increase the standard of living cannot really use it without triggering moronic-hysteria.
Tony C:
I am sorry but I don’t agree with your assertion. First of all no one knew the long term effects of those chemicals or of asbestos.
“As the Sun pursued the story, the newspaper reported on cozy relationships existing between safety regulators and builders.”
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/topics/construction-deaths/
That article points to the corruption of both business and OSHA or whatever the state version is.
In 1933 there were 37 fatalities per 100,000 workers, in 1970 there were 18 per 100,000 in 1993 there were 8 per 100,000. So 23 years after OSHA was started there were 10 fewer deaths per 100,000. But the trend was already in place and in the 20 years prior to 1970 deaths per 100,000 workers went from about 28 to 18. That was prior to OSHA.
Near as I can tell that is like a rain maker coming in the middle of a storm and saying “see I made it rain.”
Additionally OSHA has done nothing to control lost time accidents which are at about the same historical levels.
This all jibes with a paper I wrote in grad school back in 1989, basically, at least for the construction industry, the single most significant factor was the amount of total hours worked. The more hours worked the more accidents. This was based on a single companies many divisions so it doesn’t necessarily extrapolate to the larger economy. But within that microcosm, OSHA played a very small role. But what I did hear about were insurance rebates for good safety records.
“Richard Butler of the University of Minnesota, who studied National Safety Council data on workplace fatality rates, summarized his findings on OSHA: “Not only is there an absence of an OSHA shift in death rates as reflected in . . . trends, there does not appear to be any shift after controlling for other factors. Generally, the OSHA variable is statistically insignificant.””
“OSHA in the future is unlikely to reduce workplace fatalities in a cost-effective manner no matter what reforms are implemented. The leading causes of work-related deaths are now highway motor vehicle accidents and murders by customers and coworkers. Those are difficult to control using workplace safety standards. Further, the self-employed suffer a disproportionate share of work-related deaths. OSHA’s inspection-and-fine approach to safety is ill-suited to preventing accidents in one-person operations.”
” Most protection on the job comes from state workers’ compensation insurance programs and market-determined compensating wage differentials.”
“State-run workers’ compensation insurance programs are currently the most influential public attempt to promote workplace safety. Insurance premiums that take account of workplace safety encourage firms to establish safe and healthy work environments. As the frequency of claims rises, the price of workers’ compensation insurance increases, thereby penalizing firms for poor safety records. Michael Moore of Duke University and W. Kip Viscusi of Harvard University estimate that, without workers’ compensation insurance, the number of fatal accidents and diseases would be 48 percent higher in the United States.”
You could easily privatize workers compensation insurance, whoops it already is in most states.
So I guess the question to ask is which program provides the least amount of lost time accidents and fatalities. I will leave that up to you to determine, you already know what I think the answer will be – private insurance has a better record of preventing deaths and lost time accidents because the money is earned and not taken.
Tony C:
“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.”
“I think neither of those extreme opposites”, I assumed you meant in regard to socialism and communism since they did occur in the same sentence. I also assumed that is what you meant because others here seem to think they are different. As I said above the difference is a shade of gray.
@Roco: 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.
This is just bullshit. Anybody that wants to read the history of OSHA, with verifiable footnotes, can do so HERE.
A few footnoted lines:
For most employers, it was cheaper to replace a dead or injured worker than it was to introduce safety measures.
Tort Law provided little recourse or relief for the survivors of dead workers or for injured employees.
In the two years preceding OSHA’s enactment, 14,000 workers died each year from workplace hazards, and another 2 million were disabled or harmed.
Not to mention those increasingly sickened, cancered and disabled by the post WW II industrial chemical environment, which was revolutionizing industry, because those effects were not even measured before OSHA.
Which means, Roco, you are once again mistaking your imagination for reality. Insurance companies didn’t improve workplace safety, because the companies didn’t carry insurance for that, because before OSHA they weren’t doing anything illegal by endangering workers, and when lawsuits were filed the courts declared the workers to have “assumed the risk” by taking the job.
In other words, it was the libertarian ideal! Workers could agree to be mangled to death in return for the few bucks they need to feed their kids!
it was Libertarian Nirvana, and NOTHING stopped it until SOCIETY, in the form of worker unions and government regulation, made it a criminal offense.
@Roco: Your reading comprehension is pitiful; socialism and communism are the extreme opposites of YOUR position, which is libertarianism and free markets.
The labels of Democrat and Republican don’t mean anything over the long term; Ike believed in public works and infrastructure to the tune of trillions, the modern Republicans do not.
If paying homage to the Constitution is all you require, then you should have said so: We’ll justify universal health care as part of the war on terror, it is for national defense!
The minimum wage — NATIONAL DEFENSE!
Heck, if everything we DON’T want is going to be justified as part of the permanent war on terror, we might as well justify everything we DO want with it.
One lives to be of service, raff.
Buddha,
“venal Koch sucker”, you do have a way with words! 🙂
OS,
You beat me by 300%. I tipped a gal 200% once because her ex came in and started a scene and then the owner jumped on her case. We could hear him yelling at her back in the kitchen. She was a great waitress too. I’m pretty sure the party at the next table did something similar. We left at the same time and she ran out to the parking lot and gave us all hugs on the way out.
“Roco”,
You mistake the accuracy in the term “sociopath” for mockery. Mockery is when I call you “greed boy” or “douche bag” or “venal Koch sucker”. Then again, you do have problem with basic definitions of words as evidenced by your proclivity to make definitions up to suit your needs. I don’t do what I do for your entertainment either. I know it’s hard to accept that you are not the center of the universe, but then again I never said it would be easy. I said it would be true.
OS,
That was a great gesture on your part. I have seen that scenario played out before and it disturbs me when the waitress gets stiffed. You’re the man!
I hope it made her week. It did mine.
Otteray Scribe:
that was a very nice thing to do. I imagine it made her week.
Roco, you are being disingenuous. You know that Lincoln was a Republican, but the southern Democrats were DINOs who opposed the Civil Rights Act. It was passed over the objections of Republicans and DINOs of the day. Those DINOs revealed their true colors by switching to the Republican party. Those anti-civil rights Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s are today’s Republicans.
But you knew that.
Yawn, you need a new arsenal. Same ole same old is getting tired and lame.
You will have to kick it up a notch like Emeril.
But I don’t think you can, your imagination is very limited. Greed boy and sociopath are so passe. Frankly I am disappointed, I was hoping for a more robust mockery.
The most I have ever tipped was 500%. Left the young woman a hundred dollar tip. A table of eight people next to us was giving her a very hard time, and had a big bill. They got up and left, leaving her no tip at all. I made up the difference for their behaving like selfish jerks. She cried. The expression on her face that evening was worth a c-note.
I normally tip 20%.
“Is it the lack of a free, insanely valuable infrastructure us big government liberals have built up?”
There you go again, if I am not mistaken it was the Eisenhower administration which funded the interstate highway system. I believe they said it was for defense, at least they paid homage to the Constitution.
Ike was a republican or did you learn something else at progressive school?
Tony C:
socialism and communism are not opposites, they are a matter of degree.
Freedom is congruent with human nature, freedom in both the political and economic spectrum’s. Having one without the other is like having a body with no mind or a mind with no body.
People need freedom that is what we were meant for.
Sorry dude I know you dont like freedom but many people do.
I also like a little government to protect my rights. which is what it should do instead of going off on tangents like it does.
You still dont get it, you are promoting tyranny. You and all the rest here. Maybe some day you will see the light and the error of your way.
Frank:
last time I checked a republican freed the slaves and our boys basically passed the civil rights act over the protestations of many democrats.
Get your history straight. I am all for freedom for everyone so you are off base on that anyway. Learn about what you are going to talk about before you blow shit out of your ass.