-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The Florida Chamber of Congress cites out-of-date error rates and concerns over identity theft as the basis for their objection to mandatory E-Verify.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 might add that the reference to Breitbart was meant to be an example of how the right wing makes up stuff if they have no facts.
Roco, take a course in research design and get back to me. You might try reading Stanley & Campbell’s book if, a) you don’t want to take a course, and b) you can understand the complex concepts contained therein. As I told you, a sample of three or four robber barons as a trend is not a valid assessment. Talk about trying to lie with numbers, that is a prime example. If that author had studied thirty or so robber barons and not tried to deliberately skew the information, we might have a valid study. Not until.
Or childish.
It’s no coincidence that both anarchy and objectivism appeal to those with stunted emotional growth, Tony.
@ekeyra: None of those notions are contradictory at all.
The border isn’t imaginary, it has a physical meaning in the law; on one side is the USA and its laws apply; on the other is not the USA and some other laws apply. Imagination won’t change that.
But the point is a broken law. Do you even realize how idiotic you sound? The civil war was a victory because it helped to end a manifestly unfair practice of forcing people into servitude.
Seeking better opportunity is fine, but what if I see better life for myself in killing other people and taking their stuff? Will you defend that choice? How about if I only kill people when I need to feed my kids?
Seeking better opportunity through law-breaking is not acceptable, and that is what is happening with illegal immigration. I’m not treating illegal immigrants as “contraband” or objectifying them in any other way; I am treating them as criminals that are colluding with employers to break the law, avoid taxes and avoid the minimum wage. The employers should be jailed and the illegals prevented from working for less than minimum wage, and prevented from avoiding their taxes.
you plainly declare you have no regard for what actually makes the world a better place,
Bullshit, you only think that because you cannot imagine “good” that is not linked to “money.” What makes the world a better place is a reduction in unfair treatment, whether that is murder or fraud or exploitation. What makes the world a better place is caging the sociopaths like you to minimize your impact on society.
you merely wish punishment on those who offend your asinine sensibilities.
If sensibilities are to be judged, your’s are more asinine than most. You’ve said you don’t believe in any force being used on anybody ever, which means you don’t believe in government or a police force or anything but anarchy. I think roughly 100% of people will deem that asinine.
Otteray Scribe:
“I see that Andrew Brietbart was busted again today. He tried to link another doctored photo to Congressman Anthony Weiner. Brietbart is the kind of person the right wing looks up to for information. Really? Your desire to make points on questionable data are no better than Brietbart.”
Now that is just funny. I have never mentioned Brietbart, of whom I am not a fan. He does seem to make shit up but then he used to work for Ariana Huffington so the apple may not have fallen far from the tree.
But in any event I see you dissemble and still refuse to answer a simple question. I am not immune to logic as long as it is actual logic and not the made up shit logic that most here use.
For logic to work the actual underlying premises must be correct. If they are not you can logically prove anything but will it comport with reality?
But good try at obfuscation.
As for statistics? Dont people use those to lie? Didnt someone once say “Lies, damn lies and statistics”?
Tony,
Do you even realize how schitzophrenic you sound? In one post you hail the civil war as a great victory for minorities and the next you act as though crossing an imaginary line to seek better opportunities is equivalent to stealing. Which is it tony? Its not ok to be rascists to black people but its fine to treat illegal immigrants as human contraband? Must be nice to be able to hold such contradictory notions in your head without it splattering on the walls. Not only that, you plainly declare you have no regard for what actually makes the world a better place, you merely wish punishment on those who offend your asinine sensibilities.
@ekeyra: How will legislation that denies jobs and housing to individuals already in our communities lighten the burden they place on society? …
This is an empty argument; it assumes these individuals have no choice but to reside in the community, when in fact the objective of most such legislation is to prevent the illegal immigration in the first place, and to remove the incentives that are motivating some people to enter the country illegally.
This argument is the equivalent of asking why we should punish the pickpockets living among us? How will that lighten the burden they place on society? After all, if a pickpocket earns only $30K a year, isn’t the burden on society greater if we imprison him at a cost of twice that? Why shouldn’t we just let the pickpockets be pickpockets?
Both arguments ignore the fact that the illegality of the act reduces the incidence of the act; if pickpockets were never punished, picking pockets would become a crime of choice among criminals.
The point of punishing crime is to make the behavior a bad bet, on average, for the sociopaths that will engage in it if it is a good bet, on average.
It doesn’t have anything to do with “lightening the burden on society,” not everything is about the damn dollar. We punish crime even if it costs us MORE than the crime.
For example, it is entirely possible for a psychopath to argue that by killing the elderly and infirm he is relieving society of a financial burden: We still execute his ass because it isn’t about the dollars, it is about the CRIME.
Making it unprofitable or too risky for employers to knowingly use illegal immigrants and more difficult for illegal immigrants to work under the table is about stopping an activity we have collectively deemed forbidden. Those engaged in it are committing a crime that undermines our society with unfair competition due to illegally low wage cost and a flouting of tax law by both the illegal immigrant employer and the illegal immigrant, they are free riders on a physical and cultural infrastructure shifting the financial burden of its maintenance onto the rest of us without our permission; they are both stealing from us, whether they realize it or not.
When it comes to punishing crime we don’t care if that happens at a net loss, crime must be punished or it will become rampant.
@ekeyra: if the civil war was so great for black people why were they still fighting for their civil rights a century later?
You understand they were FIGHTING for their civil rights? You understand that because of the civil war they HAD rights, and at least HAD the freedom to protest and organize to GET the rights they were being denied? Now, WHY where they denied? Because it was PROFITABLE you dolt, and because of the civil war they had a foothold from which they could fight their subjugation, they had STANDING in court and with the public. When they refused to take buses in protest, the cities denied the revenue could not force them to take buses. That was the result of the civil war, it freed them to act in concert.
If you really need this stuff explained to you, you are a moron.
@ekeyra: You do know the US government put him in power and supported his regime with cash and weapons right?
Of course I do, you fool. The question is: WHY? The answer is: BECAUSE IT MADE THEIR OILY FRIENDS MONEY.
You are blind to the fact that greed is what drives evil, and I presume willfully blind because you want to participate in it.
They did not come to this conclusion after deciding to enslave people. It was not rationalization after the fact of enslavement, it was the state of mind PRIOR to enslavement
No, it was not, that is a lie, and has been shown both by historians and tested academically, and it makes perfect sense psychologically. Slaves used to be all colors, including white european caucasian, and slavery was widely accepted. It did not have to be justified, the Bible justified slavery, most cultures practiced slavery, human ownership was a widely accepted practice.
It was specifically enslaving somebody that had a visible marker (skin color and other adaptive morphologies) that created prejudice against that skin color, as people associated poverty and second-class citizenship with the skin color.
Internationally, in every country, if the people in poverty share some exclusive-to-them identifiable characteristic then the population that is NOT in poverty blame the poverty on that characteristic: Be it dress, language, religion, or skin color.
It is the poverty and culture that are responsible for the negative characteristics, but humans routinely mistake correlation for causation in the wrong direction, and then bet lives on it.
That is what happened in the south; the evidence in writings about the deficiencies of the blacks is non-existent before the slave trade begins, even though blacks are well known. The evidence of prejudice grows with the practice of slavery; and it helps to justify and perpetuate the slavery.
The same phenomenon happens in war; soldiers are taught to dehumanize the enemy (usually by invented slurs; such as “gook” or “towel-head”) so it is easier to kill them; slavers dehumanize their slaves to make it easier to subjugate them.
..rather than seeing violence as the answer to everything.
I don’t see violence as the answer to anything, I see forcible restraint by the tribe as the answer to unrelenting, unrepentant violence against others.
Oh and for something back on topic:
“How will legislation that denies jobs and housing to individuals already in our communities lighten the burden they place on society?
Is this not the fatal conceit magnified? Will they not become more dependent on social services and more likely to resort to crime to attain their daily bread and shelter from the elements? What other choice is there? This approach is similar to laws that prohibit homelessness. If we can eradicate an undesirable thing simply by legislation, why not prohibit joblessness, too? Or poor eyesight? Or stupidity?”
http://mises.org/daily/5324/Is-Immigration-Really-the-Problem
Tony,
“Evil is not done by sociopaths in government for its own sake”
Wooooooow and you claim I am naive.
“Saddam Hussein was a recent example”
You do know the US government put him in power and supported his regime with cash and weapons right? Im not sure hes the best example of who the government needs to protect us from considering that they hand picked him to ascend to power.
“A dictator that could send his police to kidnap a girl of his choice, rape her, and then literally feed her to tigers for his entertainment.”
Or you know, kidnap someone in a foreign country and send them to another country to be tortured, or order a drone missile attack on a wedding party, or build a prison and detain people indefinately, or suspend habias corpus, imprison journalists, kidnap young men and make them kill other young men against their will. I really dont see where your going with this. Your confusing the actions you imagine unrestrained business men will take with the routine daily activities of a government.
“They will fucking enslave us.”
You mistakenly believe we are not currently slaves.
“In the slaver’s case, they convinced themselves that non-whites were sub-human animals little different than livestock, and could morally be treated as such, and should be grateful that their masters permit them to live at all.”
They did not come to this conclusion after deciding to enslave people. It was not rationalization after the fact of enslavement, it was the state of mind PRIOR to enslavement that justified enslavement in the first place. Made all the more evident by the myriad jim crow laws, segregation and discrimination that followed even a century after the civil war. Rascism is a social problem and cannot be ameliorated by the use of violence to control peoples behavior and judgements. There is substantial evidence to the contrary. Most notably, america being far from the first or only country to have the institution of slavery, yet the first and only country that had to slaughter half a million of its own citizens in an attempt to eliminate it. Every other country on the planet has done away with slavery without bloodshed. If it is an economic reality that slavery is profitable it will end when it is no longer profitable. Perhaps this is the end you should address rather than seeing violence as the answer to everything. Havent you ever asked yourself if the civil war was so great for black people why were they still fighting for their civil rights a century later?
As for racism; why do you think our government did not outlaw it in the first place? It was because of the economic interests of the slavers that had, because of their wealth and power, inordinate influence over the formation of our government. The economic benefits of slavery outweighed any moral considerations, because the slavers were sociopathic and thought their greed trumped any consideration of human misery they created; in fact they elevated themselves to ubermensch status just like Rand elevated her “heroes” to superman status: In the slaver’s case, they convinced themselves that non-whites were sub-human animals little different than livestock, and could morally be treated as such, and should be grateful that their masters permit them to live at all.
Not only will the sociopaths enslave you, they will beat you bloody and murder your friends and family in front of you until they break you, they will batter you into such abject submission and dependence that you will be grateful for your enslavement. I am not kidding, it seems impossible but it has been done, time and time again, and if you think there aren’t people walking this country today that would love to do that all over again, then I fear for you, because the oblivious are the most vulnerable.
@ekeyra: I ask you again, in light of this perspective, which do you truly fear more?
Corporations, and corporations that have bought their way into the control of governments, which is the case in our country, and the source of putting George W. Bush in command of our country. Who do you think funded that operation? I’ll give you a clue, they gave him a fellow sociopathic handler in the person of Dick Cheney, not to mention Karl Rove’s role.
Once again, you seem to think I am defending the current state of affairs when I say again, I despise it.
What I fear is unconstrained GREED. Slavery was profitable to the slave owners, is that not obvious to you? Gender discrimination in pay is profitable for businesses, isn’t that obvious too?
The fact is that, largely because of slavery and a European medieval legacy of rule by combat (which favors men), the wealthy class of this country consists of primarily caucasian males. Up to fifty years ago, it was pretty much exclusively so.
For that cohort discriminating against others, whether by race or gender or citizenship status or anything else, is profitable.
The elite of this country run corporations because that is where the money is; they have engineered their way into controlling government because that, too, is where the profit is; it is how they tax us for their benefit and untax themselves for their benefit; and if that means making a few politicians millionaires: Well its millions for a return of hundreds of billions, that’s how they think of it.
If the sociopaths running corporations could just overthrow the government by force, they would. They cannot. So they have done the next best thing, corrupted it by finding their fellow sociopaths and using their overwhelming cash resources and overwhelming psychological expertise to villianize the heroes and make their fellow villians appear to be heroes.
Evil is not done by sociopaths in government for its own sake, evil is done by sociopaths in government on behalf of the greedy sociopaths in business, and it is done for profit both tangible (high living and insider profits) and intangible (for politicians the latter includes egomania and effective immunity from most law.)
I do not like this system; I do not defend it. But unlike you I at least understand what is going on. Sociopaths are driven by greed. If there were no government, the most ruthless would crown themselves King and would simply enslave us, as they have done for thousands of years, and Saddam Hussein was a recent example: A dictator that could (and did) murder citizens with impunity for any reason, including his own imagined treason. A dictator that could send his police to kidnap a girl of his choice, rape her, and then literally feed her to tigers for his entertainment.
We don’t need theory to tell us what happens when government does nothing to restrain sociopaths, we have thousands of years worth of empirical evidence: They will fucking enslave us. I am no fan of our government, but if you think it provides NO protection at all, you are an uninformed buffoon.
Tony,
“Sociopaths tend to rise to the top of large, profitable businesses, because that gives them access to the greatest flow of money and thus the largest tributary they can divert into their own bank account. It is typically the BIG businessmen that are scumbags.
That is one of the points you (ekeyra) and Roco seem blind to and refuse to admit”
Actually thats been my point all along, you just refused to see it. Yes large orginizations with hierarchies and vast resources at their command attract psychopaths. My question that you seem to think has an obvious answer, is what is more dangerous: a psychopath at the head of a corporation or a psychopath at the head of that which you truly believe protects us, a government? The question itself is highly rhetorical though, and I must give credit to stamford for the insight.
When George W Bush, who most would agree his socio-psychopathic behavior patterns, was being put in charge of numerous well funded companies by his father, were you cursing his name? Did you even know who he was? Why should you care if some daddy’s boy wannabe cowboy fuckup is squandering his CIA dad’s ill gotten gains in poorly managed business ventures?
Yet make him head of a country and look at the body count he amassed. Watch as he goes from wrecking the financial status of anyone unfortunate enough to work for him to utterly decimating an entire country’s infrastructure so that. See him go from squandering millions to transfering billions from taxpayers to failed financial giants whose former employees swell the ranks of his staff. He is transformed from a man capable of swindling only his customers and employees to a man capable of diverting the economic flow of an entire nation. He goes from creating contempt and enmity from the employees of his failed businesses to spreading death, destruction, and hatred across the globe.
Think of the worse person you know, and place them at the head of a corporation. Barring the unprecedented wealth transfers of both bush and obamas presidencies, the resources at their disposal are limited to what they can swindle from customers and employees. They are in fact finite. Yet place that same person in charge of a government, allowed to confiscate property, create new money at will, command the loyalty of hundreds of thousands who cannot simply leave their job if they dont like their new boss, and the reach to exert their will anywhere on the globe and you see the potential for the abuse of power magnified by untold amounts.
I ask you again, in light of this perspective, which do you truly fear more?
Ill also get to your rascism comments later. Right now ill merely remind you that at several moments in history the government decided that black people counted as 3/5ths of a person, and that seperate but equal was ok. The same majority that would lead you to conclude that rascism had financial motivation, would lead me to conclude it would be reflected just as much in politics.
P.S. And I did say minimal regulation; I still believe that civil rights legislation was a necessity to correct systemic discrimination against non-whites to the benefit of whites.
I will also note that as yet another example of free market failure; restaurant owners were free to serve blacks, but did not because of their own irrational bigotry and the irrational bigotry of their white customers, and there is no for-profit means of eliminating that discrimination. The fact that they could sell 25% more lunches if blacks would be accepted wasn’t enough to lose all the whites; the black market wasn’t nearly large enough to tell the white market “take it or leave it.” Failing to comply with the white’s racism by barring blacks meant going out of business, obviously not in the restaurant owner’s self-interest, even if they are innocent of racism, their financial self-interest is served by practicing racism.
For their white racist customers, they vote with their dollars, and if they drive a non-racist bankrupt by boycotting an establishment (even without the fire bombs and other violence), most establishments only have a few months of reserves before they have to shutter the store; or sell it cheap to a racist, or comply with the mob.
But of course, part of the reason for racism or bigotry against a minority is economic advantage; the work of the minority creates value and profits are to be had by preventing them from enjoying the fruits of their own labor, and making it acceptable to exploit their labor and lives and misery for personal benefit. Slavery is an extreme form of that exploitation, but it lies on one end of a spectrum of exploitation. Jim Crow laws are on the same spectrum.
Systemic bigotry and racism are proven profit centers for the sociopathic, and the only way to counter them is from outside the system and by force: It is the government’s job to protect the weak from the strong, and that is why the civil rights legislation was a necessary act. It is why minimum wage laws were a necessary act. It was why OSHA is a necessary act.
Objectivists and Libertarians believe that somehow self-interest will magically solve these systemic problems, and they won’t address in any detail why these situations were NOT corrected until legislation forced the issue. There was oppression in the form of slavery that was given up by force, then there is systemic second-class citizenship for generations before force had to be used (in the form of civil rights legislation) to give that up, then there was oppression with Jim Crow laws before THAT was forced off the table. At every step, businesses had the freedom to do the morally right thing and treat all customers equally, but the morally right thing was never in their financial self interest even if they wanted to do it, and they did not do it until force was applied.
@ekeyra: Oh yes i forgot, every businessman is a scumbag except you. Your an angel.
No, I think about 75% of business owners are well-meaning individuals that want to do the right thing for their investors, their customers, their suppliers and employees.
That is because about 95% of businesses owned are really tiny and the owner cannot afford to hire a guy to replace him, he has to work the business to make a decent living.
So in these tiny businesses the owners are working with and among their employees, talking to investors frequently (if they have any), and they personally negotiate with suppliers and service providers and advertising carriers. They do have repeat business, and rely on it for survival.
That constant level of human-to-human contact and repeat business turns their little business into a synthetic community, with them as the mayor. It keeps them grounded. The smallness factor can also pressure a jerk into the right action; his suppliers, investors, and customers might be friends with the employees or families of the employees, and may bring up his treatment of them in their conversations.
THIS is the kind of business that can remain humane with very little regulation; it depends upon the community for its survival, and there is a high degree of interconnectedness and frankly, threat to the owner if they do not meet the implied community guidelines for being a ‘good guy.’
Unfortunately, tiny business where owners must work side-by-side with employees and suppliers is not the only type of business.
Sociopaths tend to rise to the top of large, profitable businesses, because that gives them access to the greatest flow of money and thus the largest tributary they can divert into their own bank account. It is typically the BIG businessmen that are scumbags.
That is one of the points you (ekeyra) and Roco seem blind to and refuse to admit: There is a small percentage of truly evil, sociopathic and psychopathic people out there that will harm others to the point of death and misery to meet their own “self interest” and the only way to prevent them from doing that is by ganging up on them, and that is preferably done, not as an emotional reaction or response, but as the result of a reasoned debate producing a rule that everybody must follow.
Roco, I am not going to try and convince a fool who knows it all and who keeps up a logic tight barrier to evidence. Most of the people who post on this blog have ripped you up one side and down the other with facts and logic. You come back with more “prove it” comments. I do not have to prove a damn thing to you. You clearly know little of statistics or of ecological validity issues. Or of tainted and biased evidence. I see that Andrew Brietbart was busted again today. He tried to link another doctored photo to Congressman Anthony Weiner. Brietbart is the kind of person the right wing looks up to for information. Really? Your desire to make points on questionable data are no better than Brietbart. If you do not have the facts on your side, you just make up stuff.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/28/979547/-Brietbart-to-use-SEX-SMEAR-on-Rep-Anthony-Weiner-UPDATE:-BUSTED!-Brietbart-FAKED-IT!-EPIC-FAIL?detail=hide
Roco,
I have to disagree with you. It is impossible for a government to act “neutral”. Its funds being extracted from productive enterprises, it cannot take any action without first taking from someone. In this act alone it has already violated its neutrality because it must take from one to act on behalf of another. There will always be government beneficiaries and government funders.
For all you may agree with me the chasm between is vast in relation to the socialists you deride. You both agree that a government is good and proper, you merely disagree on scope and actions. My contention is with the fundamental implication that people cannot live their lives without being subjected to the whims of authority they do not wish to subject themselves to voluntarily.
ekeyra:
“No matter what you wish to label them, the businessman who has foresight, preperation, and a little luck will always favor a free market to compete in because in that enviroment he who best meets the needs of his fellow man is the one who will come out on top. The businessman who wishes to defraud, harm, or otherwise benefit at the expense of his customers and employees will always favor government intervention because he must meet only the demands of a powerful few to maintain his revenue rather than the demands of the many, which the honest businessman caters to. In this light the collapse of our economy was inevitable.”
Very well said and spot on, hard working, honest businessmen and women do not fear competition. They embrace it because they know they can succeed in a market with a level playing field where no favors are granted by government and its only function is that of referee by way of an objective rule of law.
Otteray Scribe:
“One would think that if you know less than nothing about a subject, let’s say the statistical properties of an experiment or research design, one would not bloviate on it and expose one’s ignorance for all the world to see.
One would think.”
When the apple fell from the tree and Newton did it again and got the same result do you think he worried about it being statistically significant and needing 30 data sets?
I have never dropped a ball on Mars but I know it will fall to the Martian soil. Probably at different rate than here on earth but it will still fall.
I think they call that application of a principle. Maybe they didn’t teach that where you went to school but that is what I learned in my course work. I don’t need to do something 30 times to know it works or doesn’t work. There are economic principles at work as well which can be applied to various situations.
And you still haven’t presented me with a valid criticism of the man’s work. I patiently await your criticism, it needs to be something more than there are not enough data sets to come to a conclusion or that 2 people gave the book bad reviews.