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Thinky Thoughts
A thought came to mind this morning as I was working my accounts. Now, I am far from the most knowledgeable political person out there and am solely stating an observation mixed with interpretation and thoughts, so take of this what you will.
Is there still slavery in America?
We have thousand of illegal immigrants crossing the borders and seeking out a new life. They have no papers, no documentation, and have to take what they can get or be discovered and sent away. In return for their desire to “live a better life” in the “land of the free”, we offer them jobs at or below minimum wage with little to no benefits and the ability to drop even that at a moment’s notice.
Many work hard labor jobs that may vary from day to day, if even available daily, and are paid on a daily or weekly basis with nothing on the books of who “hired” them and no right to complain about the sub-standard wages. Their children, or even the lucky few who forged the paperwork, may scrape through a rough education and one day aspire to be dishwashers, janitors, or gardeners. They, however, are better off than the others as there is at least a chance of receiving Federally regulated benefits, as long as their employers don’t play the game and keep them at just below the required hours to earn those perks.
Each generation gains just a bit more, eventually settling into a possibly comfortable standard of living after decades of sacrifice from their family before them. They earn their emancipation through the forfeiture of their predecessors freedom, but they do eventually have the possibility of earning it.
Perhaps it is not slavery, per se, but more of an extended indentured servitude? The price for coming to our great country: put in years of your heart and soul and earn the right to call it home?
When talking with my partner the other night, she pointed out the cost of illegal immigrants on the nation as a whole. It’s not just that non-citizens are taking jobs away from citizens (if they really wanted to work, there are more than enough opportunities out there – they just pay less than welfare and public support). Non-citizens are not having to pay taxes on their wages, social security is not taken out of their check, and you cannot track how much is missing as no one is officially being paid.
This is not a rant about evil illegal immigrants. This is a proposal for feeding new funds into the economy and potentially solving some of the lingering issues of the image of slavery and servitude. Why not make it so that everyone who has lived in the U.S. for a certain timeframe, say a year or more, are now welcomed in as fellow citizens? They earn the right to Federal protection of their wages, and the government earns the right to a cut of their check to apply towards the increasingly daunting deficit.
I don’t pretend to know anything about any way of tracking who’s been here for how long and if they traveled legally or illegally or any of that. There’s an incredible opportunity for everything to go horribly wrong and those tracking the countdown to use the information to snuff out illegal immigrants and send them how (or worse, exploit them even more). However, there’s also an incredible opportunity treat people who want to be here and want to work with respect, and to actually potentially benefit the country as a whole in the long run.
This is, of course, why a proposal like this will never work.
Is there still slavery in America?
We have thousand of illegal immigrants crossing the borders and seeking out a new life. They have no papers, no documentation, and have to take what they can get or be discovered and sent away. In return for their desire to “live a better life” in the “land of the free”, we offer them jobs at or below minimum wage with little to no benefits and the ability to drop even that at a moment’s notice.
Many work hard labor jobs that may vary from day to day, if even available daily, and are paid on a daily or weekly basis with nothing on the books of who “hired” them and no right to complain about the sub-standard wages. Their children, or even the lucky few who forged the paperwork, may scrape through a rough education and one day aspire to be dishwashers, janitors, or gardeners. They, however, are better off than the others as there is at least a chance of receiving Federally regulated benefits, as long as their employers don’t play the game and keep them at just below the required hours to earn those perks.
Each generation gains just a bit more, eventually settling into a possibly comfortable standard of living after decades of sacrifice from their family before them. They earn their emancipation through the forfeiture of their predecessors freedom, but they do eventually have the possibility of earning it.
Perhaps it is not slavery, per se, but more of an extended indentured servitude? The price for coming to our great country: put in years of your heart and soul and earn the right to call it home?
When talking with my partner the other night, she pointed out the cost of illegal immigrants on the nation as a whole. It’s not just that non-citizens are taking jobs away from citizens (if they really wanted to work, there are more than enough opportunities out there – they just pay less than welfare and public support). Non-citizens are not having to pay taxes on their wages, social security is not taken out of their check, and you cannot track how much is missing as no one is officially being paid.
This is not a rant about evil illegal immigrants. This is a proposal for feeding new funds into the economy and potentially solving some of the lingering issues of the image of slavery and servitude. Why not make it so that everyone who has lived in the U.S. for a certain timeframe, say a year or more, are now welcomed in as fellow citizens? They earn the right to Federal protection of their wages, and the government earns the right to a cut of their check to apply towards the increasingly daunting deficit.
I don’t pretend to know anything about any way of tracking who’s been here for how long and if they traveled legally or illegally or any of that. There’s an incredible opportunity for everything to go horribly wrong and those tracking the countdown to use the information to snuff out illegal immigrants and send them how (or worse, exploit them even more). However, there’s also an incredible opportunity treat people who want to be here and want to work with respect, and to actually potentially benefit the country as a whole in the long run.
This is, of course, why a proposal like this will never work.
no subject
At least here in Texas, children, if they're here legally or not, can go to school (which is one of the things the right-wingers bitch about constantly without considering the obvious benefits) and MANY, many, maybe most, illegal immigrants *do* pay taxes, in that taxes are withheld and then never returned to them (even though they would likely get every dime back) because they're working with forged papers. And, for states like Texas with sales tax instead of income tax, they pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than most citizens.
The cost of illegal immigration has been exaggerated by those who like having, as you say, pseudo slave labor available.
I don't think anyone has ever done an honest cost/benefit analysis of illegal immigration. There's entirely too much greed, hysteria, bigotry and blindness involved in the equation. What too many seem to forget is that at the bottom of the page isn't a profit or loss it's people's lives.
no subject
If people happen to have forged documents, yeah, there's taxes taken out and never returned to them because they never file. There are other jobs though, that are pay-by-work or same-day-cash-pay which look the other way if there are no papers and usually prefer to have people with none so they have pay less for the same work and not have to even pretend to pay benefits on the books. There are farms come harvest times that pick up a truck load of people, let them work their ass off in the field all day, give them a twenty or so and call it a day. If you were to calculate how much a full-time farmhand would have made for the same work, not to mention insurance costs and the like, the difference is rather staggering.
A cost/benefit analysis has been a long time coming. At the very least, it would give numbers in a world that requires facts and figures to even begin inching along. We would be able to at least get an idea of how little people are making for how much they are working, how much is being lost to whatever reasons, and what can be done to help both the employer and the employee meet reasonable living standards.
Again, I have no problem with immigrants, legal or no - it's kind of the whole reason the country was founded in the first place, you know? I do have a problem with people taking advantage of others, and I think it does go both ways in this situation, depending upon the specific aspect being examined.
no subject
Fear is a terrible thing to base policy on. Have we learned NOTHING in the past 8 years?
no subject
The money states spend on printing documents and signs in both English and Spanish could be spent toward funding adult ESL classes, and learning English could only help an immigrant with employment and other daily interactions. Anyone registered for (and regularly attending) an adult ESL class is also considered a "registered worker", which provides protection from deportation and allows them to pay taxes AND file for tax refunds.
Oops! I forgot... that fear of being deported is what allows the abusers of the system to exploit their off-the-book employees.