Do you think part of the illegal immigration problem, is that our own companies keep hiring the illegals?

Question

If all these companies just stopped hiring the illegal immigrants and simply reported them, there wouldn't be much of a problem would there? Yes they do illegally cross the border, but then they go looking for a job, and of course they get hired. The Mexicans cross the border because they KNOW they will get hired by someone here in the U.S. They wouldn't bother walking through the dessert if they knew they wouldn't get a job here. Don't you think the problem is a 50/50 thing? It's the Mexican government's fault for not doing something about the poor in Mexico, and it's also our fault because we let these companies hire the illegally in the first place.

Answer 1

The reality is
that we don't have an "Illegal Immigration" problem in America.

We have an "Illegal Employer" problem.

Yet it's almost never mentioned in the mainstream media,
because to point it out
could slightly reduce the profits and CEO salaries
of many of America's largest multi-state
and multinational corporations -
who both own the media
and contribute heavily to conservative politicians.

Encouraging a rapid increase in the workforce
by encouraging companies to hire non-citizens
is one of the three most potent tools
conservatives since Ronald Reagan have used
to convert the American middle class
into the American working poor.
(The other two are
destroying the governmental protections
that keep labor unions viable,
and
ending tariffs while promoting trade deals
like NAFTA / WTO/ GATT that export manufacturing jobs.)

For example,
when Nike began manufacturing shoes
in Third World countries with labor costs below US labor costs,
it didn't lead to $15 Nikes -
their price held,
and even increased,
because the market would bear it.
Instead, that reduction in labor costs
led to Nike CEO Phil Knight becoming a multi-billionaire

The fact is
that we have had an open border with Mexico
for several centuries,
and "illegal immigration" was never a serious problem.

Before Reagan's presidency,
an estimated million or so people a year
came into the US from Mexico -
and the same number, more or less, left the US for Mexico
at the end of the agricultural harvest season.
Very few stayed, because there weren't jobs for them.

Non-citizens didn't have access
to the non-agricultural US job market,
in large part because of the power of US labor unions
(before Reagan 25% of the workforce was unionized;
today the private workforce is about 7% unionized),
and because companies were unwilling to risk
having non-tax-deductible labor expenses on their books
by hiring undocumented workers
without valid Social Security numbers.

But Reagan put an end to that.
His 1986 amnesty program,
combined with his aggressive war on organized labor
(begun in 1981),
in effect told both employers and non-citizens
that there would be few penalties
and many rewards to increasing the US labor pool
(and thus driving down wages)
with undocumented immigrants.

A million people a year
continued to come across our southern border,
but they stopped returning to Latin America every fall
because instead of seasonal work
they were able to find permanent jobs.

The magnet drawing them? Illegal Employers.

Our borders have always been porous
but we've never had a problem like this before.

And it's not just because poverty has increased in Mexico -

Today, about half of Mexico lives on less than $2 a day,
but 50 years ago
half of Mexico also lived on the equivalent of $2 today.

Yet fifty years ago
we didn't have an "illegal immigration" problem,
because back then
we didn't have a conservative "Illegal Employer" problem.

As the Washington Post noted
in an article by Hsu and Lydersen on June 19, 2006 :

"Between 1999 and 2003,
work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent
by the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
which subsequently was merged
into the Homeland Security Department.
The number of employers prosecuted
for unlawfully employing ILLEGAL ALIENS
dropped from 182 in 1999
to four in 2003,
and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000,
according to federal statistics."
"In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies.
In 2004, it issued fine notices to three."

The hiring crimes of Illegal Employers
are being ignored by the law,
and rewarded by the economic systems of the nation.

Proof that this simple reality is ignored in our media
(much to the delight of Republicans)
is everywhere you look.

Illegal Immigration" is really about "Illegal Employers."
As long as Democrats argue it
on the basis of "illegal immigration"
they'll lose, even when they're right.
Instead, they need to be talking about "Illegal Employers.

Politically, it's not a civil rights issue,
it's a jobs issue,
as working Americans keep telling pollsters over and over again.

Start penalizing "Illegal Employers"
and non-citizens without a Social Security number
will leave the country on their own.

And they won't have to confront death
trying to cross the desert back into Mexico -
Mexican citizens can simply walk back into Mexico
across the border at any legal border crossing
as about a million did every year for over a century).

Easy, simple, cheap, painless.

No fence required.
No mass deportations necessary.
No need for Homeland Security to get involved.

When jobs are not available,
most undocumented workers will simply leave the country
(as they always did before),
or begin the normal process to obtain citizenship
that millions go through each year.

Republicans, however,
are not going to allow a discussion of "Illegal Employers."

Instead,
they will continue to hammer the issue of "Illegal Immigrants,"
and tie that political albatross around the necks of Democrats
(who seem all too willing to accept it).

Many Republicans,
looking for any silver lining in an abundance of dark clouds,
think the immigration issue might be a silver bullet
that will slay their current vulnerability.
The issue is, as political people say, a 'two-fer.'
Opposition to the Senate bill,
and support for the House bill,
puts Republican candidates
where much of the country
and most of their party's base currently is
-- approximately: 'Fix the border;
then maybe we can talk about other things.'
And opposition to the Senate bill
distances them from a president who,
although rebounding recently,
has approval ratings below 40 percent in 29 states.

Now even Bush
is talking like the Republicans in the House of Representatives -
time to "get tough"
and give Halliburton a few billion to build a fence.

But still nobody is talking about the real problem here
- The Illegal Employers.

Answer 2

Don't blame President Fox for the extreme poverty in Mexico. There is only so much wealth within a given country, & Mexicans control much less than half of theirs. The rest is controlled by the same corporations, mostly in the US, who benefit from the large, cheap labor pool of illegal immigrants. Fox can only do so much before stepping on the profits of those companies. Any Central or South American leader who has tried has been demonized as Communist. Chavez in Venezuela & Ortega in Nicaragua are good examples of this. Both were elected by their people in fair elections. Ortega served a term, was elected to go home, & recently re elected for another term. This isn't the Communism I learned in school.

You are very right for not blaming the victims in the illegal immigration debate. Whenever living standards between 2 countries vary greatly, the poor will emigrate to the richer country. As long as the corporations profit from their labor, they will continue to hire them.

Answer 3

Of course this is one of the problems. There are only a couple of ways that I see the illegal immigration problem being solved:

1) We build a wall deep and tall along the border. With this you have motion senses and automatic machine guns and lasers and you blast anything that gets close to the wall. Post signs, "This is a no mans land, approaching the fence will authorize the use of deadly force. Kill EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE THAT GETS CLOSE.

2) Annex Mexico and make it part of the US. Making Mexico and her states part of the united states will allow industry to boom in Mexico and once that happens the Mexicans will not want to come over the border, not that the border would exist. Think about it, it has a lot of upsides.

Think about these options... good night!

Answer 4

I am not an American i live in Europe but here we have the same problem with immigration. It's probably the quality of our illegals wich differs. You are invaded by mexicans and we are invaded by muselims (some of them belonging to a mix of caucasian races - iranians, syrians). I think America should build a wall :). Deploy massive armed forces at the borders to stop them... Don't give them any social assistance or citizenship. Send them back when you catch them. Report if you see new faces in your neighboorhood. etc. And pls...Mr. American vote for a decent president next time.

Answer 5

We cannot blame everything on these companies, but I believe we should fine the $h!t out of them.

I believe in opening the borders to more legal immigrants, as I know how hard it is to get in legally, but illegals no. Right now all the incentives are to immigrate illegally.

The companies hire illegals, pay them less than they would pay a citizen. Make them work long hours with no overtime frequently in dangerous environments. If they complain, they are instantly fired, so no one complains, after all lousy wages in the US beat the heck out of wages in Nicaragua

Answer 6

Yes I think if companies had to pay stiffer fines such as say 250,000 dollars a head plus fines for violating minimum wage requirements since the main incentive to hiring illegal immigrants is that they work cheaper there would be far less incentive to hire illegal aliens.

Answer 7

I agree with the companies need to stop hiring them. But if they stop they will go out of business. We are short on workers. But it's not because of the lack of workers. It's because some people are lazy. They rather let the government pay them to sit at home. Than go out and get a job. But don't get me wrong, not all of the people who the government sends a check are lazy. Some of them need the help. But the ones who don't, they need to go to work. Cause there taking from the ones who need it.

Answer 8

Companies are going to hire illegals at much lower wages and no benefits rather than citizens who want more money and benefits until the government starts imposing fines big enough to make them hurt if they ge t caught.

Answer 9

" We the people" are against them hiring illegal aliens, the simple fact is, our politicians are not doing their jobs.

You are correct in saying that we need to stop them for hiring the illegal aliens, that will kill the reason why they come here illegally. I would go as far as fin Mexico for each illegal we catch in the U.S..

Answer 10

I agree with you entirely, except it's hard to change something that's been going on (on both sides of the border) for a hundred years. For instance if your family were farmers for several generations who relied on the cheap labor of illegals, should you go out of business to set the situation straight? You would say it's unfair.