Here's what the latest NBC poll has to say about what Congress should be doing this year:
Normally polls like this are kind of worthless because the crosstabs invariably tell us that 100% of Democrats think one thing and 100% of Republicans think the opposite. Not exactly news.
But when you get to the edges, you find a few topics that are so widely liked or disliked that they mathematically have to be fairly bipartisan. In this one, the United States is pretty united that Congress should pass a moderate immigration bill and shouldn't screw around with abortion.
This is good to know, but I wish someone would ask about support for mandatory E-Verify. As you know, this is my hobby horse on immigration policy, and I'm a little surprised that it never gets much attention. Immigration arguments are almost exclusively about the wall, DACA, and a pathway to citizenship. But why stop there? We should also talk about E-Verify, which might actually reduce illegal immigration, and massive reform of the asylum process. Unfortunately, the former is opposed by the business community and the latter would cost a bunch of money, so even if you had significant Democratic support you'd never get any Republican support. "Might actually work" is just not anyone's top priority.
You mean the "build a wall" folks don't actually propose a way to pay for it? On either the Northern or Southern border?
I am shocked.
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Reframe the questions: (A) Is this an existential issue; (B if yes) should Congress pay more/less attention to it?
That would help people prioritize their issues.
Demanding that businesses E-Verify is a good put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is policy; Trump would have to let go nearly his entire Mar-a-Lago staff. But I don't think it is anything but a small part of a rational immigration policy.
E-Verify is completely useless w/o some kind of biometric id component. All it does is check an employee's name and SSN against the government database. All you need to do to skirt the system is submit the name and number of someone who is legal and it will get approved. Also, it does not affect under-the-table cash labor, which is what a lot of undocumented workers end up doing.
It's far from "completely useless." It's likely that undocumented workers avoid workplaces (and probably entire states) where this system is used, because it raises the bar in terms of creating false documents. Also, the knowledge that "regular" employment is harder to come by (only under the table employment is available) renders undocumented employment in the US less attractive.
The one peer-reviewed study I found on the topic suggests E Verify has a substantive, disincentivizing effect on undocumented employment.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40176-016-0053-3
I agree E Verify isn't a panacea, and alone it certainly won't put an end to undocumented immigration. But it could potentially play a role in reducing the problem. Also, as it happens, there are proposals in Congress to add a biometric component.
Open the border. People shouldn’t be screwed just because of where they were born. None of us natural born citizens did anything to deserve it.
How about a discussion on reducing legal immigration? That's where the numbers are. That's where the business-friendly GOP has been for decades (and they have no interest in working or middle class interests). That's what unions have historically opposed. Democrats were wary of mass immigration until childish mid-century optimism pined for a borderless world where everybody was going to got along, and the Democrats shifted their stance. I attribute that to post-colonial euphoria best encapsulated by the 1960 "winds of change" speech by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
The numbers are not trivial. Two-thirds of California's growth from 20 million to nearly 40 million over fifty years (1965-2015) can be attributed to post-'65 immigrants and their descendants.
Result: Increased density, further strain on natural resources, lower quality of life, higher housing costs, complete disruption of cities that were planned with a particular population in mind (e.g. street and parking capacity).
Another thing. History shows that rapid demographic change usually results in substantial civil strife*. The Great Replacement Theory is incorrectly phrased. No one is being plucked out of society and being "replaced" by another. But the mathematics are the same: a large *and rapid* change in demographic distribution. And then you get the reaction, which we are witnessing today: A Trumpified GOP competitive throughout the nation. Dems won Senate seats, but by narrow margins in key races. That's not reassuring.
* years ago when Kevin was at Mother Jones he looked at the post-WW2 redrawing of borders and forced movements of people that resulted in near-mono-cultural states (e.g. Poland overwhelmingly Polish) - a contrast to the poly-cultural states of the past, which were riven by internal tension and led to WW1 and WW2. IIRC, he ruefully concluded that, yes, that culturally unified and distinct states were a big reason Europe has been tranquil for 70+ years.
We need MORE legal immigration because of our national age distribution. Already the Fed is able to raise interest rates a lot without increasing unemployment--because there aren't enough workers to go around. Partly COVID-related, but it just accelerated the trend.
The business wing of the GOP doesn't want E-Verify because they enjoy being able to exploit undocumented workers as cheap labor. We should implement E-Verify, but if we do, make no mistake--an increase in legal immigration (at least temporary work visas) will be required to offset the labor shortage.
Actually, it's supposedly "business-friendly" red states that typically mandate e-Verify while states like California don't require it (where it's not required by federal law) and have in fact placed a lot of restrictions on how/where it's used. Nobody cares either way, though, because it doesn't work. See my comment above.
I don't find it at all surprising that California doesn't mandate it because agribusiness is huge there and highly dependent on illegal migrant labor.
What, in your opinion, is the maximum acceptable population of the USA? Population growth, which is almost entirely driven by immigration, has to stop some time.
"Result: Increased density, further strain on natural resources, lower quality of life..."
Lower quality of life for who?
Yet another opportunity to trot out the old line: "Nobody wants to live in CA. It's too crowded."
I really love it when people, pretty much exclusively rightwingers, depict my home state as a dystopian hellscape that people are fleeing as fast as possible.
Lower quality of life for who?
Immigration keeps wages low because the immigrants are willing to work for less than residents, and the more workers the lower the wages. So resident wage-earners are generally worse off as their wages are kept down. The residents who are most affected are those at the lower end of the income spectrum, which means proportionately more non-whites, including those who were themselves recent immigrants or their parents were.
Immigration benefits higher-income people who do not compete with immigrants for jobs, because it keeps prices low. It also means more demand for their products and lower wage costs if they are businesspeople.
Of course the immigrants themselves are better off, getting paid usually much more than they would get in their home countries.
But most Americans probably do not feel that the country should be run for the benefit of people born in other countries, or even for the benefit of high-income people in this country (most people are wage-earners), and so they want immigration to be limited. Individuals who disagree with this nationalistic selfishness are free to donate part of their income to people in other countries, or maybe they could facilitate immigration by giving over part of their own houses or apartments to the use of immigrants.
I don't mean to say that the racial xenophobia promoted by Trump doesn't motivate many people. But the polls that Kevin often cites seem to indicate that most people do have a reasonable attitude to immigration - they don't want to kick all illegal immigrants out.
"Individuals who disagree with this nationalistic selfishness are free to donate part of their income to people in other countries, or maybe they could facilitate immigration by giving over part of their own houses or apartments to the use of immigrants."
Sure, just as people who agree with that nationalistic selfishness are free to give up part of their own homes for the use of homeless citizens. I mean come on, I wouldn't expect that from anyone on either side of the issue.
But yes, you did pick up on my point that the improvements in the immigrants' quality of life was disregarded in the original comment. I do agree with you that most Americans don't think the country should be run to benefit people from other countries, I just happen to not be one of them.
Also, employers keep wages low, not immigrants.
PS - I realize my opinion on this is "radical." I've just lived and worked with people in various parts of the world, and it is truly a tragedy how much people can get screwed just because they were born on the wrong side of an "imaginary" line.
Expanded legal immigration and expanded legal work visas would give workers more leverage against illegal worker abuses that undocumented workers are afraid to report. This would raise wages for everyone on the low end, which is why the GOP Business Wing doesn't want it.
There's an old joke. "We pay our people the going rate, which is defined as the amount we have to pay them to keep them from going". Employers do not raise wages out of the goodness of their generous hearts; they pay "the going rate". Labor shortages means that employers have to pay more; that is a good thing. Immigration policy should NEVER be driven by a goal of mitigating labor shortages.
Increased population density causes quality of life reduction for the whole population.
Not if they were coming from somewhere with an even lower quality of life.
Increased population density causes quality of life reduction for the whole population.
Median living standards are higher in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and higher in the Netherlands (and probably Japan and South Korea and Germany and Singapore) than the United States.
Population density is only one factor of many—and probably not a very important one—in determining living standards for most people.
The vast majority of Americans are utterly ignorant of how our immigration system actually works. People think all the migrants and asylum seekers coming over the border now are somehow just scofflaws who are purposely skirting reasonably-available legal immigration options. That's simply not the case. Some poor peasant farmer from Honduras has virtually no legal way to come to the US. Yes, there are some visas for temporary workers and such and there is a refugee lottery, but those have very specific requirements and there are hardly enough of them.
Not to mention it is highly possible that a major reason that peasant farmer is struggling and looking for a new opportunity is that the US government interfered for decades (or more) to thwart any efforts at land reform in his own country that were counter to American business or political interests. Maybe even killing (directly or indirectly) his past relatives! But sorry buddy, there's no room at the inn.
We know that tone deaf bunch in the capital have their own agenda. Who ever thought they were there to represent us.... Good heavens! It only says that in the Constitution and that doesn't matter to them. Those repulsives are going to shred the Constitution and the laws. They have the judicial in their pockets or in their beds, what ever...
What member of Congress is going to vote to gut America's food supply by cutting off most of our farm workers?
It appears Ron DeSantis is forcing some Florida companies to use e-Verify: https://reason.com/2023/01/31/desantis-revokes-licenses-from-businesses-that-fail-to-use-flawed-e-verify-system/
I have a really great suggestion: fucking vote for people who want to reform immigration and dont want to restrict abortion.
That wasn't hard.
Did somebody ask white Americans? Because they overwhelming vote for candidates who oppose immigration reform and want to prohibit all abortions. And they have voted that way for 30 years.