-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The Florida Chamber of Congress cites out-of-date error rates and concerns over identity theft as the basis for their objection to mandatory E-Verify.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’ll answer your other posts later”
You didnt really answer anything with this post. The margins are irrelevant to the fact that simply because one business goes under does not mean the goods or services it provided are lost forever. In fact the workers are in a much better position than any management in that situation because most people will not lay the blame for a business going under on the day to day workers. They will lay the blame, rightfully so, on management, meaning when another business steps in to fill the void left by the failed business, those workers are much more likely to hired. The piss poor management that ran their business into the ground isnt likely going to be handed the reigns of another business.
The market is an ongoing process. Businesses are started and failed all the time, the resources of a failed enterprise being bought at a discount and used to satisfy consumers much more efficiently by the surviving businesses.
If you insist on using metaphors of wildlife to compare businesses to, they are much more akin to scavengers transforming a rotting corpse (failed enterprise) into something useful.
Suppose all the hotels did close down, for good. Would that mean noone would ever have use for a maid again? Perhaps instead of getting hired on at another hotel, since there are none left, they are hired by the residents of the town at a much lower price. Seeing as how there is a sudden abundance of maids and a decrease in demand for their services. With the maids doing the cleaning, that leaves more free time for their employers. They may use this to work extra hours, increasing their poductivity and the general wealth of the town. They may choose to spend their extra time leisurely, going to restaraunts or other local businesses, which seeing an increase in customers may hire on extra help from the maids who were unlucky enough to not be employed at all after the hotel crash.
This is reality. This is the dynamic business enviroment any savvy businessman must be aware of constantly. People are much more flexible than you give them credit for.
tONY C:
more to the point is that business creates other businesses because one or more of the original businesses need something to run their companies more efficiently.
Take any large business/industry you know and think how many support services are required. And then add on support services for the support services and pretty soon you are talking a good many employed people.
@ekeyra: I do not make that assumption; the assumption I make is that after all expenses, a hotel (specifically) or other consumer oriented business has a normal profit margin around 15%.
Typically for an established business, trade does not have to drop far, (maybe 25%) before they are getting into financial trouble. Businesses are run by people, and most people adjust their expenditures to reflect their normal income. If the income drops 25%, the strain will show somewhere.
I’ll answer your other posts later, I have duties.
Its also foolish to assume that simply because another business opens that they will simply divide customers equally. Some customers will go from business a to business b. There is absolutely no reason to assume revenue will be distributed evenly among presently operating businesses. That fact you would make this assumption is just bizzare.
“People aren’t deer, businesses are deer. They forage for trade, and if you introduce more businesses trying to consume the same trade, they will naturally get less trade, and eventually, they will starve and die.”
So when those go out of business, noone else will look around and say “Hey theres no (fill in the blank hotels,banks, restaraunts, walmarts) I should open one”? When the present businesses close thats it, end of story no more businesses forever? Who isnt living in the real world now?
Also I didnt say anything about reagan, at least keep track of who is making which arguments. Im well aware reagan wasnt the patron saint of fiscal conservatism and small government the right likes to paint him as. He also escalated the war on drugs which, to this day, is an ever metatasizing cancer on our society. I have plenty of issues with him.
Fear not, as we can get to full employment again with just a few more wars.
Tony,
As usual my entire point whizzed over your head. Economics is not zero-sum. There isnt a sum total of wealth to be distributed and exhausted. Individuals create wealth everyday. My point was your examples are terrible ways of describing reality.
@ekeyra: So your point is, what? That slim-chance disruptive events change the competitive environment?
How long do you think the average town with two hotels goes before some company builds a water park, or race track, or theme park or anything that actually increases the amount of tourism to the town?
What do you think the percentage chance of that may be? one percent? One tenth of one percent?
If they have that much money, and for whatever reason they chose to build in hicksville instead of on the outskirts of a large city that could adequately supply them, wouldn’t they be wise to build their OWN hotels for their giant attraction?
Also contrary to your assertion; the existing hotels are the best positioned to take advantage of any new trade; for one they know their market and have already got the advertising channels to run new ads next week. They will also have, if they are prudent business people, maintained good relations with their banks, and can raise the capital to build a new hotel by taking out a mortgage and/or business loan on their existing hotel, and they will have the experienced management with current experience to minimize the cost of startup supplies and have everything in their heads that needs to be done before opening the doors.
You guys do not live in the real world.
People aren’t deer, businesses are deer. They forage for trade, and if you introduce more businesses trying to consume the same trade, they will naturally get less trade, and eventually, they will starve and die.
And BTW, Reagan expanded the government and exploded the deficit. Or did you forget all that?
Tony C:
humans are not deer. And ekeyra is exactly right as to what would happen. When I was in college in the early 80’s Branson, MO was a sleepy little town with Silver Dollar City as the main attraction. A couple of country western singers had a couple of honky tonks where you had to bring your own booze and the rest is history. It grew exactly as in ekeyra’s example.
That could happen most anywhere if government would leave people alone. We could have full employment and need the illegals to fill the jobs we couldnt fill with Americans because they already had jobs.
During the Reagan years the unemployment rate in certain parts of the country was under 3%. For all practical purposes that is full employment. The rest of the country was at 5 or less.
Tony,
“As a metaphorical device, consider a simplified evolutionary scenario; a forest has enough forage to keep 100 fairly equal deer from starving. If we just add 200 more deer to this equation, making 300 fairly equal deer, what happens? It isn’t that 200 die: All 300 deer starve, because in the constant competition no deer is strong enough to take three times the average share, so they all starve.”
This parable belies your belief that economics is a zero-sum game. It is not.
Lets go back to your real world example of hotels. Say a town attracts enough tourists to support one or two hotels. Now suppose someone sees opportunity and builds a waterpark, or they go really crazy, legalize gambling, and build a casino. Now they are attracting two to three times the amount of tourists they had in the past. This scenario NECCESSITATES the construction of additional hotels. If the original hotel operators are behaving in the way you describe they would be ill prepared to take advantage of new business opportunities because they have no store of capital with which to invest in an expansion of an existing hotel or the construction of a new one due to poor management. Competitors who have the capital, seeing the overflow of tourists, will construct new hotels and absorb the additional income. This does not mean the original hotel cannot continue operating just as it had before because there is enough tourists to supply both hotels with customers. This is the dynamic marketplace you seem to just dismiss as some fantasy, when the reality is that all businesses must be able to adapt to changing enviroments.
@Roco: It works both ways and people like me are armed and we wont give it up just because you feel you deserve it because your children are starving. I do deserve it and my children might be starving too.
Hence my point, which you refuse to comprehend. In order to protect yourself you pay the “TAX” of buying guns and ammunition and armor and turning your home into a fortress, and all of that won’t protect you or your children from a drive by with a machine gun or a howitzer. This is typical blah-blah macho bullshit; and just like the typical male fantasy you are the bulletproof hero that is never surprised or taken off-guard, you kill the bad guy and move on with pride, and nobody ever retaliates by fire-bombing your car, shooting your children as they play in the yard, or kidnapping and gang-raping your wife to teach you a little lesson about who’s in charge. Or just burning down your house when they see you have taken the kiddies to the movies.
Once again, I live in the real world, you live in a macho fantasy. I do not assume I am bulletproof, or needle proof, or that I can stay awake 24/7, or that my alarm system is infallible and cannot be breached, or even that I can shoot straight when being shot at in the dark, even if I was fully awake. I do not assume that criminals have some honor code and will leave the wife and kids out of it. I do not assume that criminals are stupid either.
The reality is that in the world you crave the cost to you to protect your family would far exceed all of the taxes you currently pay, and would still not do a very good job of it. But you keep living your macho fantasy, and I honestly hope nothing ever happens to introduce you to the reality you ignore.
Its been fun but this has turned into the usual “commie” – “fascist” shouting match as usual.
Roco,
“Another leftist mythology used to denigrate our military. And since our military defends our Constitution your slur denigrates our Constitution as well. But that is typical of the left, they hate, loath and despise America. And have worked very hard to defeat her from within.”
Typical psycho-babble from a conservative sociopath whose entire philosophy is based on mythology. Funny that you say I denigrate the military and slurred the Constitution … something you obviously picked out of your ass. Allow me to educate you about the “leftist mythology” pertaining to homeless veterans. In summary:
Number of Homeless Veterans & Veteran-Specific Beds by Region
The VA’s annual Project CHALENG report provides the most regular and reliable account of homeless veterans and their needs as cited by homeless veterans and service providers alike. The primary way of grouping the survey data collected by Project CHALENG is by VISN, which stands for Veterans Integrated Service Network. Each of the 153 VA hospitals are part of a VISN, of which there are 21 nationwide.
This page uses data from the 2009 CHALENG report, published in March 2010.
Transitional Beds
Available – 14,053
Transitional Beds
Needed – 7,825
Homeless Veterans – 106,558
Here’s the link where you can learn more about the “leftist mythology” on homeless veterans, mental giant.
http://www.nchv.org/page.cfm?id=81
“You are the nitwit, there is no collective in a community unless of course you are a totalitarian and wish to rule by force. The goals of individuals who comprise the community are not at odds with human well being since they are human beings themselves. What you are at odds with is the concept of liberty and individual rights. Drop the charade and go bullshit one of your liberal buddies.”
Have you always been a dumbass or is this something new for you, Rocky? What the fuck do you think makes up a community and society as a whole? Individuals … And what do collective individuals make …? Don’t over-work your one brain cell mulling this one over …
Lol – I believe in liberty and individual rights, bohunk. But I also believe that in order for society to thrive as a whole, that it is a moral obligation for those who can to help those who can’t. You, on the other hand, are a selfish dolt who
“Your ideas are evil pure and simple and cause and have caused much human misery. We are seeing it right now, high gas prices, high unemployment, 50 dollar light bulbs, high food prices and on and on. All because people like you think they can control the means of production. It is a fools dream and the cause of poverty.”
Lmao – Oh, do tell oh-bright-one … how does compassion and empathy raise gas prices? It has absolutely nothing to do with oil speculators … nah. It’s all due to compassion.
How does compassion and empathy cause high unemployment? it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with corporate America hording trillions in cash while forcing already overworked employees to work … more … while keeping their salaries at the same level as 30 – 40 years ago. It’s all due to compassion and empathy!
Love the light bulb drivel … yes, I know. It is so evil to be concerned about energy conservation! It is so very evil to spend $5 more for a light bulb that will ultimately save you hundreds in electricity and save you from having to buy light bulbs every month! And conserving energy for the benefit of the earth is just so … NAZI-LIKE!
High food prices – Damned compassion and empathy for fellow humans! They are destroying everything!
“All do work to benefit all in a community, but they do it by benefiting themselves first and foremost. The butcher sells the best cuts of meat at the best possible price, the baker produces the highest quality bread at the best possible price and on and on. They do so to serve themselves. That is what freedom and competition do, they encourage and foster excellence.”
I know, I know. You have a hard time walking and chewing gum at the same time so I wouldn’t expect a fine, upstanding douche bag like you to look beyond the nose on your face and think about not only yourself, but the community you live in at the same time.
Karma’s a bitch, sport …
Tony C:
“Actually, my need IS your concern, because ultimately my need for survival (for me or my children) will trump your need for property rights or safety. That is the real world; when unemployment rises crime rises with it, because hunger and desperation trumps principles and laws.”
Just remember though that the safety of my family and children is on the forefront of my mind as well. If you came to my house to try and force me to give you food and water, I would shoot you dead and feel nothing other than you’re not a deer so I wasted a bullet.
If you would try and force someone to give up what they have rightfully earned and saved at their own labor and expense for a rainy day, then you are nothing more than an animal and have given up any right to be treated as a human being.
It works both ways and people like me are armed and we wont give it up just because you feel you deserve it because your children are starving. I do deserve it and my children might be starving too.
What diminishes war between the haves and the have nots is for the have nots to realize they are not morally entitled to the labor of another man and that they could be killed if they take it by force.
@Puzzling: A non sequitur, I can only speak for myself, but I am not a socialist, I am a capitalist that believes competing on the merits of a product does benefit consumers.
I am just not so stupid to think that competing on the merits of a product are the ONLY way to beat the competition, there are myriad other ways that actually harm the consumer, or do not benefit the consumer, or only benefit the consumer temporarily or at the cost of creating misery elsewhere.
I am a capitalist, but that does not mean I automatically put “consumers” in a separate class that is more important than “workers.” I want both consumers and workers to feel they are getting a fair deal (and I’ll throw investors and stockholders in there as well, since they’ve been getting a raw deal as of late). There is no reason that cannot happen, other than unrestrained greed by any of those parties, and the restraints we put on that greed are called “regulations.”
@Roco: Actually, my need IS your concern, because ultimately my need for survival (for me or my children) will trump your need for property rights or safety. That is the real world; when unemployment rises crime rises with it, because hunger and desperation trumps principles and laws.
So while I personally am not in the situation where I need to risk lawbreaking to eat or provide shelter, I at least understand how people can get there, and I know people that are there.
So whether you address the poverty problem with force or aid, the problem cannot be wished away, and it is going to cost you something to either defend yourself against the demands, or have somebody (like police and jailors) defend you, or it will cost you to alleviate the poverty.
I would choose the latter as the least expensive route. Violence against a group will be answered with violence by that group and that escalation isn’t cheap. Aid to the group (for example, with a minimum wage, free education, health care at cost or reduced taxation) will shrink the group and can produce functioning economic contributors to society that can grow to contribute further to solving the poverty problem; for example by helping to support parents or others in their family, paying their own taxes to fund the aid programs, and so on.
Your route escalates the war of the “Haves versus Have Nots”, mine would diminish it, and in the long run eliminates it. Mine is better for the economy, and cheaper, becuase I address the problem with the understanding that we all bear some inherent responsibility to others. It is not 100% of my time, and it is not 0% of my time. That is the difference between you and me, you think those are the only two options, and when I reject both of them you get all confused.
– Frederic Bastiat
“just don’t forget to kick the homeless person (who is probably a veteran)”
Another leftist mythology used to denigrate our military. And since our military defends our Constitution your slur denigrates our Constitution as well. But that is typical of the left, they hate, loath and despise America. And have worked very hard to defeat her from within.
Evil is as Evil does Stamford Liberal.
A community of people is made up of individuals, the only individuals who do not contribute are those who do not work.
You are the nitwit, there is no collective in a community unless of course you are a totalitarian and wish to rule by force. The goals of individuals who comprise the community are not at odds with human well being since they are human beings themselves. What you are at odds with is the concept of liberty and individual rights. Drop the charade and go bullshit one of your liberal buddies.
Your ideas are evil pure and simple and cause and have caused much human misery. We are seeing it right now, high gas prices, high unemployment, 50 dollar light bulbs, high food prices and on and on. All because people like you think they can control the means of production. It is a fools dream and the cause of poverty.
All do work to benefit all in a community, but they do it by benefiting themselves first and foremost. The butcher sells the best cuts of meat at the best possible price, the baker produces the highest quality bread at the best possible price and on and on. They do so to serve themselves. That is what freedom and competition do, they encourage and foster excellence.
“Your need is not my concern, it is your concern. I do not owe you a living, it is up to you to earn your own way. If you cannot and come on hard times, I would gladly offer you some of what I have as long as I had enough for myself.”
Such compassion for your fellow human being … just don’t forget to kick the homeless person (who is probably a veteran) as you walk on by, and drown the kitten you find abandoned under your car.
“You and others like you are the true totalitarians and have no respect for the rights of others. You and people like you are evil and are the reason for so much human misery around the world.”
Spoken like a true nitwit – Congrats, sport. Herein lies the difference between you and me and those like me – we realize a community is not made up of one individual, but a group of individuals. In order for a community as a whole to survive, each individual must put the effort in to ensure its survival. Unless of course, you would rather live in a shit-hole community because each individual is only out for him or herself. You don’t like living in a community where all work to benefit each other? Move to the middle of nowhere so you can enjoy your individualism.
Apparently, lack of compassion, selfishness and greed isn’t just for breakfast for you anymore …