Say we legalized marijuana, given that illegal marijuana is a stupid wasteful law that costs us a ton of money and really achieves about zero social goals.
Would it be okay to at that time let out the people who are in jail for possession?
A better analogy would be if the police just decided to ignore and not go after those who had started breaking the law before marijuana was legalized.
Say we legalized marijuana, given that illegal marijuana is a stupid wasteful law that costs us a ton of money and really achieves about zero social goals.
Would it be okay to at that time let out the people who are in jail for possession?
Yes, of course it would be, its making a law retroactive, and it happens all the time.
Our unprecedented levels of Illegal immigration exist because:
1) Mexico is not a 1st world country -- it's a disaster.
2) Big business Republicans are perfectly happy to flood the labor market with low skill workers. It keeps prices down and lets Republican donors (like big aggro, restaurant/service industries) write big checks.
3) The 1986 amnesty bill's enforcement provisions were frankly ignored. See point 2: Big business republicans are uninterested in altering the status quo.
4) Isolationist Republicans (Pat Buchanan) are easily marginalized by calling them racist
5) Democrats who *should* be forming alliances with the Isolationist Republicans to fight big business Republicans on this issue are banking on the idea that Hispanic voters are going to vote for Democrats. We call this cynical maneuvering.
6) The good economy in the 90s essentially masked a stagnating minimum wage and a loose labor market for America's poorest. So, no flames were put to the Democrats' feet to alter the status quo.
This latest bill, and its downfall, can be summarized like this:
Big Business Republicans and non-border state Democrats conspire to cook up amnesty bill that grants citizenship first and has a very iffy and unknowable enforcement component. The blogosphere then reacted, putting together a bipartisan coalition of security-minded Republicans and labor union Democrats. The true bipartisans won and the bill got killed, much to the relief (check the Pew polls) of the general public. Bush's numbers continue to drop.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
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Okay, the appeals to civil disobedience are annoying me.
Civil disobedience is sometimes a good thing, yes. It was invaluable during the civil rights movement, but it wasn't because a bunch of people ignoring the law is a good thing. In general, ignoring the law is a bad thing. In general, even bad laws should be observed, though of course we should lobby to make them better.
Where civil obedience comes in is in bring to public attention a blatantly unjust law by outwardly and vocally breaking it. The purpose is to force people to acknowledge how much the law sucks, and how desperately we need to change it. But for that to work, the act of breaking the law has to be overt.
Sneaking across the border to find work isn't "civil disobedience", it's just breaking the law. It's also not doing anything to help the situation, because your specific actions are not bring attention to anything. Quite the opposite - instead of 10 million people standing outside the US border and demanding to be let in, you have 10 million people hiding in the States and keeping their heads down and their mouths shut.
This isn't to say I don't sympathize with the folks hopping the borders, or that I likely wouldn't do the same thing in their position, or that I think poorly of them. But people keep talking about them like they're a legion of hispanic Rosa Parks, or a vast army of pocket Ghandis. They're not. They're not nobly fighting for a better world; they just want to have lives that don't suck.
edit: Also central to the idea of civil disobedience is the willingness to get caught and accept the punishment. The idea is that you're willing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. The people hopping the border sure as hell aren't willing to get caught, and they don't want to be punished. They desperately hope that they creep by under the radar. Different beast.
I seriously doubt that if 10 million -- or even 100 million -- non-white people stood outside US borders and wanted to get in and start living here, the US would let them in.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
It might be net plus, given that the people who are currently working illegally at sub-minimum wage and no benefits would then be working legally at a higher wage and at least the legal minimum of benefits.
Blogosphere is a retarded word that should never have been coined.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale.
It wouldn't automatically make them all legal. Do you have any evidence it would cause wages to decrease by much?
The Z probationary citizenship would happen the moment the ink was dry, and would only be reversed years later *if* these enforcement 'benchmarks' (which were worded vaguely) were not reached. In other words, it was an immediate and total amnesty.
As for loose labor markets having a drag on average wages: if you're arguing about whether or not it exists as a phenomenon, I'm not sure what to say to you.
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edited June 2007
Also, I should state that the main thing I dislike about the proposed bill was the retarded and punitive conditions surrounding the amnesty provision. Also the retarded "fence along the border lolz" stuff. And also that it really doesn't address our current and fucked-up immigration process.
So I guess what I'm saying is that the only thing I like about the bill is the idea of some sort of amnesty and the fact that this issue is divisive to Republicans.
Blogosphere is a retarded word that should never have been coined.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale.
It wouldn't automatically make them all legal. Do you have any evidence it would cause wages to decrease by much?
The Z probationary citizenship would happen the moment the ink was dry, and would only be reversed years later *if* these enforcement 'benchmarks' (which were worded vaguely) were not reached. In other words, it was an immediate and total amnesty.
It requires an illegal immigrant to pay 5000 dollars if he or she wants to get one,pass a criminal background check, pay a processing fee, an stay employed.
Also, I should state that the main thing I dislike about the proposed bill was the retarded and punitive conditions surrounding the amnesty provision. Also the retarded "fence along the border lolz" stuff. And also that it really doesn't address our current and fucked-up immigration process.
So I guess what I'm saying is that the only thing I like about the bill is the idea of some sort of amnesty and the fact that this issue is divisive to Republicans.
I'm sympathetic. I'm a very liberal democrat, but I hated this bill with a passion because it was a cynical sell-out of the poor by Democrats.
All the rhetoric about whether the illegals are bad or good for having broken the law are, to me, completely beside the point. They did something rational, and you would have done the same thing in your shoes. They shouldn't be going to jail, and we can't afford to deport them.
So, in the long run, I think having a plan to assimilate them and grant them citizenship is a must. But not in such a way (guest worker programs) that are obviously designed to keep down the minimum wage and the average wages for poor people. The basic idea that Ted Kennedy put forward is: Trust us, we'll make these folks citizens and then they'll all vote Democratic and *then* we'll strengthen the unions and then you poor people will make more money. Trust us!
Well, screw that. I am unconvinced that unions can have a large scale effect on the pay scale. I am unconvinced that Democrats would follow through. This bill would have stagnated or even reduced the wages of poor people with nothing but a promise that the folks in charge will make it up to them.
Let's grant them amnesty and simultaneously raise the minimum wage to the equivalent of, say, somewhere in the 70s. That would put us up around 9 bucks an hour.
That way we can help 'bring people into the system' and not screw poor people in the process.
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Blogosphere is a retarded word that should never have been coined.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale.
It wouldn't automatically make them all legal. Do you have any evidence it would cause wages to decrease by much?
The Z probationary citizenship would happen the moment the ink was dry, and would only be reversed years later *if* these enforcement 'benchmarks' (which were worded vaguely) were not reached. In other words, it was an immediate and total amnesty.
It requires an illegal immigrant to pay 5000 dollars if he or she wants to get one,pass a criminal background check, pay a processing fee, an stay employed.
Yes, but.. they would be a full (probationary) citizen immediately. The absence of those things would 'revoke' the citizenship after a certain amount of time, but all sorts of administrative things would have to happen first.
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So, in the long run, I think having a plan to assimilate them and grant them citizenship is a must. But not in such a way (guest worker programs) that are obviously designed to keep down the minimum wage and the average wages for poor people. The basic idea that Ted Kennedy put forward is: Trust us, we'll make these folks citizens and then they'll all vote Democratic and *then* we'll strengthen the unions and then you poor people will make more money. Trust us!
Well, screw that. I am unconvinced that unions can have a large scale effect on the pay scale. I am unconvinced that Democrats would follow through. This bill would have stagnated or even reduced the wages of poor people with nothing but a promise that the folks in charge will make it up to them.
Let's grant them amnesty and simultaneously raise the minimum wage to the equivalent of, say, somewhere in the 70s. That would put us up around 9 bucks an hour.
That way we can help 'bring people into the system' and not screw poor people in the process.
I agree that the days of labor unions having influence on base wages are behind us. And, if anything, introducing a fuckton of unaffiliated low-skill workers would be disastrous to unions.
I believe that the recent war funding compromise ramps up the minimum wage to somewhere around nine bucks over a number of years. I should check that though.
Our unprecedented levels of Illegal immigration exist because:
1) Mexico is not a 1st world country -- it's a disaster.
2) Big business Republicans are perfectly happy to flood the labor market with low skill workers. It keeps prices down and lets Republican donors (like big aggro, restaurant/service industries) write big checks.
3) The 1986 amnesty bill's enforcement provisions were frankly ignored. See point 2: Big business republicans are uninterested in altering the status quo.
4) Isolationist Republicans (Pat Buchanan) are easily marginalized by calling them racist
5) Democrats who *should* be forming alliances with the Isolationist Republicans to fight big business Republicans on this issue are banking on the idea that Hispanic voters are going to vote for Democrats. We call this cynical maneuvering.
6) The good economy in the 90s essentially masked a stagnating minimum wage and a loose labor market for America's poorest. So, no flames were put to the Democrats' feet to alter the status quo.
This latest bill, and its downfall, can be summarized like this:
Big Business Republicans and non-border state Democrats conspire to cook up amnesty bill that grants citizenship first and has a very iffy and unknowable enforcement component. The blogosphere then reacted, putting together a bipartisan coalition of security-minded Republicans and labor union Democrats. The true bipartisans won and the bill got killed, much to the relief (check the Pew polls) of the general public. Bush's numbers continue to drop.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
It would be easier to be poor if the immigrants were legalized.
Before you have people undercutting you by being illegal and therefore being paid under the minimum wage.
Now you have everyone being paid the minimum wage, and you win the job because you can speak english, have a high school education etc.
As I've said before, who decides which laws you can or cannot ignore? Each individual decides for himself, and they must accept the consequences for doing so. That you believe it's a dumb law has no impact on the fact that it is the law. I myself think many laws are dumb, but thinking that does not make them any less relevant should I choose to ignore them.
You're pissing me off. You utterly dodged the argument jsut go back to this whole "ignore" thing. Did you not read where I said "it isn't about ignoring"? It isn't about ignoring laws, or the right to do so.
You are advocating steadfast adherence to rule of law in this case, to the point that you won't even accept a program that seeks to legalize them unless it sufficiently penalizes them for their previous transgressions. Your stance on this makes no sense unless, beyond the notion that yes they technically broke the law, you also believe that in doing so they actually committed a serious moral or practical harm. because otherwise, your stance would be to push for a quick and simple way to fix the law and legalize them. Like I just said in my last post, violation of laws, particularly ones that only exist in the imaginary and the beuracracy, need to be weighed against actual intents and harms. That doesn't make it ok to break a law; what it does is allow us to proceed rationally through this discussion without you just repeating "rule of law, rule of law, rule of law" as a cover for your distaste for brown-skins, when any rational human being knows that there are reasonable limits to rule of law when evaluating what ought to be done to fix a bad law law and/or what punishment is to be metted out to the person who is known to have violated it. So, I ask YET AGAIN, what harm are they actually committing in this crime? Why is what they have done wrong?
The harm committed, and not just the mere fact of violating the law, is what rationally determines how we ought to proceed with fixing a bad law and dealing with the lawbreakers.
All you are doing is continuing the same circular reasoning that is more simply stated "they're illegal because it's against the law and the law is right because it's the law and therefore it's right." It has no practical or moral value, it's psuedo-ideological crap.
Shock of all shocks Yar, you and I disagree! Oh the humanity! And now, to make things worse, it's actually pissing you off that we see things differently? What's next? Will you accuse me of dodging again because I don't give an answer to your satisfaction? The fact remains, you keep asking me for an answer, I give it, and since it doesn't conform to your beliefs, you accuse me of not answering it. I'm done with this.
I've stated my case repeatedly. I'm tired of repeating myself.
No, who I am matters a lot. It matters if I've a warrant out for my arrest in my home nation. What if I'm wanted for murder? Tax evasion? Jaywalking?
I don't see what this has to do with immigration. I can pretend to be someone else just as easily as any other immigrant or native.
Can you go get a job under your new pretend name? How about file your taxes? What if there's something attached to your name that you would rather forget, like a warrant, a criminal record, an outstanding bill, anything? A minority of people will likely be hiding something. But here's the rub, if that's the process, then there's an even greater incentive to come to America if I am a criminal. Look how easy it is to start over!
Good legislation addresses the issue it was design to address. A compromise does not inherently mean it was addressed correctly or at all.
And when two sides equally share different but compromisable ideas on what constitutes "addressing" the issue, then compromise is the legal method used to resolve that. Not "ask ryuprecht and let him decide." You seem to have no concept of compromise.
You nailed it right on the head. You stated that the ideas have to be compromisable(sic) and address the issue. Just right there you showed that there are stipulations attached to make a compromise = good legislation. That was my point. Stating "but it was compromise!" does not implicitly make it good legislation. Good legislation can be reached in compromise (see: welfare reform), but it's not good just because it was compromised on.
If my child doesn't finish his dinner, and he wants dessert, but I tell him no, a compromise might mean he gets half his dessert. That doesn't mean it was the best way to address it.
Sorry, the people you disagree with in this aren't your children. I could use a "me and my child" scenario to prove any bullshit I wanted to, because he's my child and I'm always right and he does what I say for his own good.
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not always right with my child. But that's beside the point. This was just to illustrate that "good" is not automatic when there's compromise.
In the case of this bill, it seems like the compromise was pretty much one way. Issues of security, border enforcement and incentives for curtailing future illegal immigration were not addressed. I'm assuming that was part of the compromise.
It did do all those things. Regardless, as long as you continue to refuse to answer as to what harm you think they are causing, what risk they pose to security, etc., you have no merit to the notion that we need to be doing those things you say we need.
I went over all of this earlier. Risk: rapists, murderers, terrorist, drug dealers, gang members, etc, etc.
Harm: costs, assimilation, etc, etc.
Say we legalized marijuana, given that illegal marijuana is a stupid wasteful law that costs us a ton of money and really achieves about zero social goals.
Would it be okay to at that time let out the people who are in jail for possession?
Interesting proposition. Is this an old argument from before I came to D&D?
I'd have to think that one through. Does it hold the same merit as:
The IRS allows a type of business deduction because it was seen as cumbersome, confusing and harmful to economic growth. Do those that were caught deducting it illegally before get a refund on their taxes?
Off the top of my head (since I've not thought it all the way through) it seems you could make a point arguing the eventuality of a law being changed as reasoning to break it. It'd be a weak argument I think, but it could be pushed.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
It might be net plus, given that the people who are currently working illegally at sub-minimum wage and no benefits would then be working legally at a higher wage and at least the legal minimum of benefits.
I'm sympathetic to your POV though.
At issue immediately after that (since I agree with your point) would be that the market for sub-minimum wage would still exist, bringing a whole new batch in to replace those legalized.
I think you need to address that before any legalization occurs, because the demand for illegals would still exist.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
It might be net plus, given that the people who are currently working illegally at sub-minimum wage and no benefits would then be working legally at a higher wage and at least the legal minimum of benefits.
I'm sympathetic to your POV though.
At issue immediately after that (since I agree with your point) would be that the market for sub-minimum wage would still exist, bringing a whole new batch in to replace those legalized.
I think you need to address that before any legalization occurs, because the demand for illegals would still exist.
Or fix the broken global labor market, which is largely crippled by (surprise!) antiquated immigration laws that fail to recognize and address the needs and realities of the modern marketplace.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
It might be net plus, given that the people who are currently working illegally at sub-minimum wage and no benefits would then be working legally at a higher wage and at least the legal minimum of benefits.
I'm sympathetic to your POV though.
At issue immediately after that (since I agree with your point) would be that the market for sub-minimum wage would still exist, bringing a whole new batch in to replace those legalized.
I think you need to address that before any legalization occurs, because the demand for illegals would still exist.
Or fix the broken global labor market, which is largely crippled by (surprise!) antiquated immigration laws that fail to recognize and address the needs and realities of the modern marketplace.
I agree that it's broken, but how would this fix the problem of demand for sub-minimum wage labor? Even if you allowed for easier migration of workers I think there would still be ample supply and demand for workers willing to subvert labor laws.
I think you could eliminate minimum wage laws to fix that, but very few people would agree with me on that point.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
It might be net plus, given that the people who are currently working illegally at sub-minimum wage and no benefits would then be working legally at a higher wage and at least the legal minimum of benefits.
I'm sympathetic to your POV though.
At issue immediately after that (since I agree with your point) would be that the market for sub-minimum wage would still exist, bringing a whole new batch in to replace those legalized.
I think you need to address that before any legalization occurs, because the demand for illegals would still exist.
Or fix the broken global labor market, which is largely crippled by (surprise!) antiquated immigration laws that fail to recognize and address the needs and realities of the modern marketplace.
Just so we're clear: this is an endorsement of moving millions of low and middle class Americans into total poverty. Fast.
We can't fix the global market, we can only ease our slide into it. Everyone knows that low-skilled jobs are going to pay less and less over time. Suddenly legalizing 12 million low-wagers in this country is would be like going from 120mph to 45 in the span of a few seconds.
We may not be able to alter the directions of low-skill wages, but it would be nice if we could commit to helping Americans not land with a bone crunching thud.
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The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
It might be net plus, given that the people who are currently working illegally at sub-minimum wage and no benefits would then be working legally at a higher wage and at least the legal minimum of benefits.
I'm sympathetic to your POV though.
At issue immediately after that (since I agree with your point) would be that the market for sub-minimum wage would still exist, bringing a whole new batch in to replace those legalized.
I think you need to address that before any legalization occurs, because the demand for illegals would still exist.
Or fix the broken global labor market, which is largely crippled by (surprise!) antiquated immigration laws that fail to recognize and address the needs and realities of the modern marketplace.
Just so we're clear: this is an endorsement of moving millions of low and middle class Americans into total poverty. Fast.
We can't fix the global market, we can only ease our slide into it. Everyone knows that low-skilled jobs are going to pay less and less over time. Suddenly legalizing 12 million low-wagers in this country is would be like going from 120mph to 45 in the span of a few seconds.
We may not be able to alter the directions of low-skill wages, but it would be nice if we could commit to helping Americans not land with a bone crunching thud.
Once again, being legalized means that they work for minimum wage instead of less than minimum wage.
Are you saying that they aren't already in the lowest sectors of the economy? At least now we can actually enforce the minimum wage.
And really? I, as a middle class American, am going to go into poverty? I am not aware that so many illegals possessed college degrees.
Man, it's funny to me how so many people just accept the tired old hypotheticals when the research is right there. I've read similar articles in both the NYTimes and the LA Times.
What's really funny to me is that conservatives are shitting a collective brick about those damn foreigners depressing wages, and yet they are sublimely oblivious to the current trend in America of wealth being allocated ever upwards, and the fact that wages for just about everyone but the superrich have barely kept pace with inflation. In some cases, they've declined. And this trend started all long before illegals were a concern.
Oh, and in a recent LA Times article, the quoted studies showed that non-white Hispanics actually commit crimes less frequently than any other ethnicity in America. By a significant amount. Yes, the Mexican gang members with shaved heads and tattoos are very scary. But the fact is that good ol' fashioned whites commit crimes in greater proportion than Hispanics.
I'll try to dig this article up, but I can be positive of the gist of it, and that it was front-page LA Times.
People talk about them leeching our healthcare -- I'm not sure what the argument is here? I guess the one I've heard is that they flood some ERs because they can be treated there without revealing compromising information regarding their legal status. Of course, legalizing all of them would make this problem go away awfully quickly.
So, enough bullshit xenophobia, please.
Edit: this isn't the same LA Times article about immigrant crime I was talking about, but I think this Op-Ed piece might be quoting the same study. I'll keep digging.
And contrary to widespread perceptions, immigrants are less likely than non-immigrants to commit crimes. A study in Chicago looking specifically at Mexican immigrants found that "first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) … were 45% less likely to commit violence than were third-generation Americans." Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson suggests that increased immigration may have been a factor in reduced crime rates in the 1990s
Edit: Still can't find that crime article (maybe I was thinking of the Op-Ed after all?) but this is certainly an interesting article.
And speaking of integration (and speaking), the fact of the matter? Hispanic immigrants all speak English fluently by the third generation, same as all prior immigrant groups.
Fact is, most Hispanic immigrants are integrating same as other groups did in the past (like my dad's family, which came over from Italy in the early 1900s, and by the third generation was naming children things like "Patrick" instead of "Candido"), it's just that the constant influx often obscures this fact, because there's always newcomers.
Living in LA, you just see it, too. You go to school, and there are the Hispanic kids, in every single clique to be found. In every class. Honestly, the African American kids are far worse off, in terms of integration. Why aren't we outraged that blacks don't stop this nonsense and integrate into mainstream middle-class culture post haste? Oh, right, because then there wouldn't be any nationality cover to hide the racism.
What's really funny to me is that conservatives are shitting a collective brick about those damn foreigners depressing wages, and yet they are sublimely oblivious to the current trend in America of wealth being allocated ever upwards, and the fact that wages for just about everyone but the superrich have barely kept pace with inflation. In some cases, they've declined. And this trend started all long before illegals were a concern.
I thought conservatives were all for depressed wages in order to help big business and the wealthy? These stereotypes are confusing!
Oh, and in a recent LA Times article, the quoted studies showed that non-white Hispanics actually commit crimes less frequently than any other ethnicity in America. By a significant amount. Yes, the Mexican gang members with shaved heads and tattoos are very scary. But the fact is that good ol' fashioned whites commit crimes in greater proportion than Hispanics.
Not sure I believe that, seeing as I've seen studies that differ, but even conceding that point, so what? The arguments being presented here had nothing to do with overall crime rates of hispanics.
People talk about them leeching our healthcare -- I'm not sure what the argument is here? I guess the one I've heard is that they flood some ERs because they can be treated there without revealing compromising information regarding their legal status. Of course, legalizing all of them would make this problem go away awfully quickly.
So, enough bullshit xenophobia, please.
Yes, yes, yes. We've heard this all before. Legalization will cure many many issues, except for why people come here illegally in the first place, what to do about the next group of illegals, how to handle the transition from illegal to legal in a secure enough way to make compromise worthwhile (nod: Yar) and the whole rule of law debate. So aside from that, looks like it's all solved!
Edit: this isn't the same LA Times article about immigrant crime I was talking about, but I think this Op-Ed piece might be quoting the same study. I'll keep digging.
And contrary to widespread perceptions, immigrants are less likely than non-immigrants to commit crimes. A study in Chicago looking specifically at Mexican immigrants found that "first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) … were 45% less likely to commit violence than were third-generation Americans." Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson suggests that increased immigration may have been a factor in reduced crime rates in the 1990s
And speaking of integration (and speaking), the fact of the matter? Hispanic immigrants all speak English fluently by the third generation, same as all prior immigrant groups.
Fact is, most Hispanic immigrants are integrating same as other groups did in the past (like my dad's family, which came over from Italy in the early 1900s, and by the third generation was naming children things like "Patrick" instead of "Candido"), it's just that the constant influx often obscures this fact, because there's always newcomers.
Assimilation comments from this thread were all about illegal immigration, not legal.
Once again, being legalized means that they work for minimum wage instead of less than minimum wage.
Are you saying that they aren't already in the lowest sectors of the economy? At least now we can actually enforce the minimum wage.
And really? I, as a middle class American, am going to go into poverty? I am not aware that so many illegals possessed college degrees.
Extra low wage workers means everyone in the middle and lower classes make less money. It is like gravity.
If you're saying: who cares if we legalize them, they're here already, they're already having the bad economic effect, then I agree with you. But of course, you're missing the fact that the last amnesty create an enormous influx, which is how we got from 1986 to now with 12 million extra people coming into the country.
The effects are already here, is what I'm saying. Your wages are lower than they should be. Your ERs are worse than they should be. Your public schools suck more than they ought to. Your crime rate (not because Mexicans are criminals! It's about poverty, not race) is higher than it should be.
Taking in poor people is hard on a society. Our wink and nudge open door policy has been a disaster for everyone other than the rich. You think it's an accident that we're not #1 in education and health care anymore?
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What's really funny to me is that conservatives are shitting a collective brick about those damn foreigners depressing wages, and yet they are sublimely oblivious to the current trend in America of wealth being allocated ever upwards, and the fact that wages for just about everyone but the superrich have barely kept pace with inflation. In some cases, they've declined. And this trend started all long before illegals were a concern.
I thought conservatives were all for depressed wages in order to help big business and the wealthy? These stereotypes are confusing!
That's the point. The Conservative movement as a whole tends to display a fairly Panglossian and high-handed approach to the problems of low wages and low wage earners. When a factory relocates to Micronesia, the response is a resounding "meh market forces are the best of all possible worlds". But in immigration arguments, their hearts are suddenly bleeding for the market of citizens who would be competing for fruit-picking jobs in California.
It suggests that the wage arguments made by conservatives are more rhetorical than substantive.
The WashPost article just says that (I assume illegal) immigrants generate $80 billion dollars a year. I'd be making a ton of cash if I paid my workers $3 an hour too. The way the article is worded is vague and doesn't support your point that legalizing 10 million immigrants won't harm our public services. The revenue illegal immigration is generating now doesn't equate to what they'll be generating as US citizens.
If it were somehow possible to round up by close of business tomorrow every one of the millions of illegal immigrants, the thug life would still hold allure for many young black men.
Immigrant men take low-wage jobs that black males wouldn't take anyway because [black families] are accustomed to a higher standard of living, bolstered by their greater access to welfare.
Cynthia Tucker's argument is: black men like thuggin' and can't dirty their hands with honest labor. Man. Fuck Baltimore.
Anyways, get better data or shit that's not so biased.
Shmoepong on
I don't think I could take a class without sparring. That would be like a class without techniques. Sparring has value not only as an important (necessary) step in applying your techniques to fighting, but also because it provides a rush and feeling of elation, confidence, and joyful exhaustion that can only be matched by ... oh shit, I am describing sex again. Sorry everyone. - Epicurus
What's really funny to me is that conservatives are shitting a collective brick about those damn foreigners depressing wages, and yet they are sublimely oblivious to the current trend in America of wealth being allocated ever upwards, and the fact that wages for just about everyone but the superrich have barely kept pace with inflation. In some cases, they've declined. And this trend started all long before illegals were a concern.
I thought conservatives were all for depressed wages in order to help big business and the wealthy? These stereotypes are confusing!
That's the point. The Conservative movement as a whole tends to display a fairly Panglossian and high-handed approach to the problems of low wages and low wage earners. When a factory relocates to Micronesia, the response is a resounding "meh market forces are the best of all possible worlds". But in immigration arguments, their hearts are suddenly bleeding for the market of citizens who would be competing for fruit-picking jobs in California.
It suggests that the wage arguments made by conservatives are more rhetorical than substantive.
I'm not sure I completely follow what you are saying regarding the fruit-picking jobs. I believe that even in this thread, conservatives were accused of supporting illegal immigration to keep wages low for their farm friends.
That'd be more a Republican position than a conservative one, but I digress.
But of course, you're missing the fact that the last amnesty create an enormous influx, which is how we got from 1986 to now with 12 million extra people coming into the country.
But of course, you're missing the fact that the last amnesty create an enormous influx, which is how we got from 1986 to now with 12 million extra people coming into the country.
It did? That's news to me.
I guess it sort of makes sense, considering the newly legalized have to work for minimum wage, so there is market forces for people who work for less.
But thats solved by border control. Who the hell is against border control?
But of course, you're missing the fact that the last amnesty create an enormous influx, which is how we got from 1986 to now with 12 million extra people coming into the country.
That's the point. The Conservative movement as a whole tends to display a fairly Panglossian and high-handed approach to the problems of low wages and low wage earners. When a factory relocates to Micronesia, the response is a resounding "meh market forces are the best of all possible worlds". But in immigration arguments, their hearts are suddenly bleeding for the market of citizens who would be competing for fruit-picking jobs in California.
It suggests that the wage arguments made by conservatives are more rhetorical than substantive.
I'm not sure I completely follow what you are saying regarding the fruit-picking jobs. I believe that even in this thread, conservatives were accused of supporting illegal immigration to keep wages low for their farm friends.
That'd be more a Republican position than a conservative one, but I digress.
It's the difference between the anti-immigration cultural conservatives and the pro-immigration fiscal conservatives. Neither has a strong history of championing the wages of the working poor, though I keep seeing crocodile tears for the working class from anti-immigration conservative groups.
Irond Will on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
The core issue is that there is still a demand for sub-minimum wage workers.
There will always be a demand for sub-minimum-wage workers, more or less by definition. The question is how we deal with it, and what incentive or disincentive structures we erect around the issue. If legal immigration is practical and there remains a strong market for low-skill labor, there will be little incentive to illegally immigrate for a sub-minimum wage job.
That's the point. The Conservative movement as a whole tends to display a fairly Panglossian and high-handed approach to the problems of low wages and low wage earners. When a factory relocates to Micronesia, the response is a resounding "meh market forces are the best of all possible worlds". But in immigration arguments, their hearts are suddenly bleeding for the market of citizens who would be competing for fruit-picking jobs in California.
It suggests that the wage arguments made by conservatives are more rhetorical than substantive.
I'm not sure I completely follow what you are saying regarding the fruit-picking jobs. I believe that even in this thread, conservatives were accused of supporting illegal immigration to keep wages low for their farm friends.
That'd be more a Republican position than a conservative one, but I digress.
It's the difference between the anti-immigration cultural conservatives and the pro-immigration fiscal conservatives. Neither has a strong history of championing the wages of the working poor, though I keep seeing crocodile tears for the working class from anti-immigration conservative groups.
The core issue is that there is still a demand for sub-minimum wage workers.
There will always be a demand for sub-minimum-wage workers, more or less by definition. The question is how we deal with it, and what incentive or disincentive structures we erect around the issue. If legal immigration is practical and there remains a strong market for low-skill labor, there will be little incentive to illegally immigrate for a sub-minimum wage job.
The true issue behind that is managing demand. One way is through substitute goods, another is through complimentary goods. The good news is that demand for illegal workers is highly elastic. An employer doesn't say "today I'm going to hire an illegal", they say "today I'm going to hire the cheapest labor I can find."
You could help by removing the upward push on minimum wage, thereby creating a larger pool of substitute workers.
You could also increase the cost of complimentary goods. If you take the penalty cost of hiring an illegal, and assume that that cost is a good spread across all illegal workers, you can control demand by increasing that cost. Hiring an illegal also means you have to pay that penalty cost on the illegal as well. Raise the cost of one, demand for the complimentary good decreases.
ryuprecht on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
edited July 2007
Yeah I pretty much agree with that, ryuprecht. Make illegal labor cost-prohibitive (or risk-prohibitive, however you want to think about it) and make legal low-skill labor more freely available. You might wonder, if it's that easy, why isn't it being done? The answer is that the Republican party, as well as some Democrats, have to deal with the two-headed beast that is the conservative movement:
1) cultural conservatives who resent and fear dusky-skinned Spanish speakers entering their communities.
2) Business owners who will fight to the last red cent any attempt to shift "costs" onto "employers" through worker verification and punitive fines for nonadherence.
In general, it's also against the goals of Organized Labor to allow an influx of legal low-wage immigration, but the mitigating factors are that it's probably better than the status quo of illegal immigration, and the other factor is that Organized Labor has almost no presence in the Southwest anyhow.
That's my problem with this. All of the discussion about "rule of law" and "other immgrants waited years to get in, so should you" seems to be a rather thin shield for what are the actual and overwhelming motivations on this matter; that a whole lot of different groups oppose immgration for much more practical and immoral reasons.
The true issue behind that is managing demand. One way is through substitute goods, another is through complimentary goods. The good news is that demand for illegal workers is highly elastic. An employer doesn't say "today I'm going to hire an illegal", they say "today I'm going to hire the cheapest labor I can find."
You could help by removing the upward push on minimum wage, thereby creating a larger pool of substitute workers.
You could also increase the cost of complimentary goods. If you take the penalty cost of hiring an illegal, and assume that that cost is a good spread across all illegal workers, you can control demand by increasing that cost. Hiring an illegal also means you have to pay that penalty cost on the illegal as well. Raise the cost of one, demand for the complimentary good decreases.
You forget that we could also address the problem by managing supply. If we create an increased chance of waiting a year or two and then immigrating to the US legally for $6/hr, that reduces the number of people willing to hop the fence right now for $2/hr.
Ideally, we'd do both, but managing supply is much, much easier. It consists of writing a couple new laws. Your solution not only requires new laws, not only requires getting it past the business lobbyists, but it requires a serious upgrade in infrastructure to create an enforcement procedure that can actually find illegal immigrants, and can effectively punish the businesses who hire them. We'd need to dramatically increase funding for enforcement of the laws.
Philosophically, I appreciate the idea of enforcing existing laws and going after businesses before fixing quotas. Practically speaking, I think it would be easier to get the relevant parties on board if we slowed the flow of illegals down to a comparative trickle before we yanked the businesses' gravy train out from under them. If we curtail their supply, they'll need to pay more for the same workers. If they're paying more for the same workers, it becomes less lucrative for them to do so, and they're less likely to oppose more draconian labor law enforcement.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Labor should flow like capital. You wonder why I accuse you of being a communist in this debate. Controlling supply?
Yar on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
edited July 2007
So you're basically saying, Jeff, that the business interests are a more insurmountable political barrier than the cultural conservatives?
I suspect you're right in the short-term of getting a bill passed, but I think that any Republican who really comes out full-throated for increasing legal immigration will get his ass handed to him in his next election.
Irond Will on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
Labor should flow like capital. You wonder why I accuse you of being a communist in this debate. Controlling supply?
In fairness, his position revolves more around relaxing counterproductive regulations on labor flow because of unintended consequences than it does in simply increasing market regulation. Modern public policy is bent around harnessing market forces rather than working directly against them.
From my POV, labor supply is part of the economy, and hence choking it off through military-style enforcement of the border is very much "increasing market regulation."
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A better analogy would be if the police just decided to ignore and not go after those who had started breaking the law before marijuana was legalized.
Our unprecedented levels of Illegal immigration exist because:
1) Mexico is not a 1st world country -- it's a disaster.
2) Big business Republicans are perfectly happy to flood the labor market with low skill workers. It keeps prices down and lets Republican donors (like big aggro, restaurant/service industries) write big checks.
3) The 1986 amnesty bill's enforcement provisions were frankly ignored. See point 2: Big business republicans are uninterested in altering the status quo.
4) Isolationist Republicans (Pat Buchanan) are easily marginalized by calling them racist
5) Democrats who *should* be forming alliances with the Isolationist Republicans to fight big business Republicans on this issue are banking on the idea that Hispanic voters are going to vote for Democrats. We call this cynical maneuvering.
6) The good economy in the 90s essentially masked a stagnating minimum wage and a loose labor market for America's poorest. So, no flames were put to the Democrats' feet to alter the status quo.
This latest bill, and its downfall, can be summarized like this:
Big Business Republicans and non-border state Democrats conspire to cook up amnesty bill that grants citizenship first and has a very iffy and unknowable enforcement component. The blogosphere then reacted, putting together a bipartisan coalition of security-minded Republicans and labor union Democrats. The true bipartisans won and the bill got killed, much to the relief (check the Pew polls) of the general public. Bush's numbers continue to drop.
The net effect of the bill (other than legalizing about 12 million people) would be a huge drag against wages on the low end of the scale. Call me racist, but I can't get behind anything that makes it harder to be poor in this country. Let alone the stresses on our already sucky education and health care systems.
Pokemans D/P: 1289 4685 0522
I seriously doubt that if 10 million -- or even 100 million -- non-white people stood outside US borders and wanted to get in and start living here, the US would let them in.
Except that it doesn't grant citizenship first. Blogosphere is a retarded word that should never have been coined. It wouldn't automatically make them all legal. Do you have any evidence it would cause wages to decrease by much?
I'm sympathetic to your POV though.
The Z probationary citizenship would happen the moment the ink was dry, and would only be reversed years later *if* these enforcement 'benchmarks' (which were worded vaguely) were not reached. In other words, it was an immediate and total amnesty.
As for loose labor markets having a drag on average wages: if you're arguing about whether or not it exists as a phenomenon, I'm not sure what to say to you.
Pokemans D/P: 1289 4685 0522
So I guess what I'm saying is that the only thing I like about the bill is the idea of some sort of amnesty and the fact that this issue is divisive to Republicans.
It requires an illegal immigrant to pay 5000 dollars if he or she wants to get one,pass a criminal background check, pay a processing fee, an stay employed.
I'm sympathetic. I'm a very liberal democrat, but I hated this bill with a passion because it was a cynical sell-out of the poor by Democrats.
All the rhetoric about whether the illegals are bad or good for having broken the law are, to me, completely beside the point. They did something rational, and you would have done the same thing in your shoes. They shouldn't be going to jail, and we can't afford to deport them.
So, in the long run, I think having a plan to assimilate them and grant them citizenship is a must. But not in such a way (guest worker programs) that are obviously designed to keep down the minimum wage and the average wages for poor people. The basic idea that Ted Kennedy put forward is: Trust us, we'll make these folks citizens and then they'll all vote Democratic and *then* we'll strengthen the unions and then you poor people will make more money. Trust us!
Well, screw that. I am unconvinced that unions can have a large scale effect on the pay scale. I am unconvinced that Democrats would follow through. This bill would have stagnated or even reduced the wages of poor people with nothing but a promise that the folks in charge will make it up to them.
Let's grant them amnesty and simultaneously raise the minimum wage to the equivalent of, say, somewhere in the 70s. That would put us up around 9 bucks an hour.
That way we can help 'bring people into the system' and not screw poor people in the process.
Pokemans D/P: 1289 4685 0522
Yes, but.. they would be a full (probationary) citizen immediately. The absence of those things would 'revoke' the citizenship after a certain amount of time, but all sorts of administrative things would have to happen first.
Pokemans D/P: 1289 4685 0522
I believe that the recent war funding compromise ramps up the minimum wage to somewhere around nine bucks over a number of years. I should check that though.
Before you have people undercutting you by being illegal and therefore being paid under the minimum wage.
Now you have everyone being paid the minimum wage, and you win the job because you can speak english, have a high school education etc.
Shock of all shocks Yar, you and I disagree! Oh the humanity! And now, to make things worse, it's actually pissing you off that we see things differently? What's next? Will you accuse me of dodging again because I don't give an answer to your satisfaction? The fact remains, you keep asking me for an answer, I give it, and since it doesn't conform to your beliefs, you accuse me of not answering it. I'm done with this.
I've stated my case repeatedly. I'm tired of repeating myself.
Can you go get a job under your new pretend name? How about file your taxes? What if there's something attached to your name that you would rather forget, like a warrant, a criminal record, an outstanding bill, anything? A minority of people will likely be hiding something. But here's the rub, if that's the process, then there's an even greater incentive to come to America if I am a criminal. Look how easy it is to start over!
You nailed it right on the head. You stated that the ideas have to be compromisable(sic) and address the issue. Just right there you showed that there are stipulations attached to make a compromise = good legislation. That was my point. Stating "but it was compromise!" does not implicitly make it good legislation. Good legislation can be reached in compromise (see: welfare reform), but it's not good just because it was compromised on.
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not always right with my child. But that's beside the point. This was just to illustrate that "good" is not automatic when there's compromise.
I went over all of this earlier. Risk: rapists, murderers, terrorist, drug dealers, gang members, etc, etc.
Harm: costs, assimilation, etc, etc.
It's all been said before.
Interesting proposition. Is this an old argument from before I came to D&D?
I'd have to think that one through. Does it hold the same merit as:
The IRS allows a type of business deduction because it was seen as cumbersome, confusing and harmful to economic growth. Do those that were caught deducting it illegally before get a refund on their taxes?
Off the top of my head (since I've not thought it all the way through) it seems you could make a point arguing the eventuality of a law being changed as reasoning to break it. It'd be a weak argument I think, but it could be pushed.
At issue immediately after that (since I agree with your point) would be that the market for sub-minimum wage would still exist, bringing a whole new batch in to replace those legalized.
I think you need to address that before any legalization occurs, because the demand for illegals would still exist.
Or fix the broken global labor market, which is largely crippled by (surprise!) antiquated immigration laws that fail to recognize and address the needs and realities of the modern marketplace.
I agree that it's broken, but how would this fix the problem of demand for sub-minimum wage labor? Even if you allowed for easier migration of workers I think there would still be ample supply and demand for workers willing to subvert labor laws.
I think you could eliminate minimum wage laws to fix that, but very few people would agree with me on that point.
Just so we're clear: this is an endorsement of moving millions of low and middle class Americans into total poverty. Fast.
We can't fix the global market, we can only ease our slide into it. Everyone knows that low-skilled jobs are going to pay less and less over time. Suddenly legalizing 12 million low-wagers in this country is would be like going from 120mph to 45 in the span of a few seconds.
We may not be able to alter the directions of low-skill wages, but it would be nice if we could commit to helping Americans not land with a bone crunching thud.
Pokemans D/P: 1289 4685 0522
Are you saying that they aren't already in the lowest sectors of the economy? At least now we can actually enforce the minimum wage.
And really? I, as a middle class American, am going to go into poverty? I am not aware that so many illegals possessed college degrees.
What's really funny to me is that conservatives are shitting a collective brick about those damn foreigners depressing wages, and yet they are sublimely oblivious to the current trend in America of wealth being allocated ever upwards, and the fact that wages for just about everyone but the superrich have barely kept pace with inflation. In some cases, they've declined. And this trend started all long before illegals were a concern.
Oh, and in a recent LA Times article, the quoted studies showed that non-white Hispanics actually commit crimes less frequently than any other ethnicity in America. By a significant amount. Yes, the Mexican gang members with shaved heads and tattoos are very scary. But the fact is that good ol' fashioned whites commit crimes in greater proportion than Hispanics.
I'll try to dig this article up, but I can be positive of the gist of it, and that it was front-page LA Times.
People talk about them leeching our healthcare -- I'm not sure what the argument is here? I guess the one I've heard is that they flood some ERs because they can be treated there without revealing compromising information regarding their legal status. Of course, legalizing all of them would make this problem go away awfully quickly.
So, enough bullshit xenophobia, please.
Edit: this isn't the same LA Times article about immigrant crime I was talking about, but I think this Op-Ed piece might be quoting the same study. I'll keep digging.
Edit: Still can't find that crime article (maybe I was thinking of the Op-Ed after all?) but this is certainly an interesting article.
And speaking of integration (and speaking), the fact of the matter? Hispanic immigrants all speak English fluently by the third generation, same as all prior immigrant groups.
Fact is, most Hispanic immigrants are integrating same as other groups did in the past (like my dad's family, which came over from Italy in the early 1900s, and by the third generation was naming children things like "Patrick" instead of "Candido"), it's just that the constant influx often obscures this fact, because there's always newcomers.
Living in LA, you just see it, too. You go to school, and there are the Hispanic kids, in every single clique to be found. In every class. Honestly, the African American kids are far worse off, in terms of integration. Why aren't we outraged that blacks don't stop this nonsense and integrate into mainstream middle-class culture post haste? Oh, right, because then there wouldn't be any nationality cover to hide the racism.
I thought conservatives were all for depressed wages in order to help big business and the wealthy? These stereotypes are confusing!
Not sure I believe that, seeing as I've seen studies that differ, but even conceding that point, so what? The arguments being presented here had nothing to do with overall crime rates of hispanics.
Yes, yes, yes. We've heard this all before. Legalization will cure many many issues, except for why people come here illegally in the first place, what to do about the next group of illegals, how to handle the transition from illegal to legal in a secure enough way to make compromise worthwhile (nod: Yar) and the whole rule of law debate. So aside from that, looks like it's all solved!
That wasn't part of the argument. See above.
Registration required. Quoting might be the best way to share info.
Assimilation comments from this thread were all about illegal immigration, not legal.
Extra low wage workers means everyone in the middle and lower classes make less money. It is like gravity.
If you're saying: who cares if we legalize them, they're here already, they're already having the bad economic effect, then I agree with you. But of course, you're missing the fact that the last amnesty create an enormous influx, which is how we got from 1986 to now with 12 million extra people coming into the country.
The effects are already here, is what I'm saying. Your wages are lower than they should be. Your ERs are worse than they should be. Your public schools suck more than they ought to. Your crime rate (not because Mexicans are criminals! It's about poverty, not race) is higher than it should be.
Taking in poor people is hard on a society. Our wink and nudge open door policy has been a disaster for everyone other than the rich. You think it's an accident that we're not #1 in education and health care anymore?
Pokemans D/P: 1289 4685 0522
That's the point. The Conservative movement as a whole tends to display a fairly Panglossian and high-handed approach to the problems of low wages and low wage earners. When a factory relocates to Micronesia, the response is a resounding "meh market forces are the best of all possible worlds". But in immigration arguments, their hearts are suddenly bleeding for the market of citizens who would be competing for fruit-picking jobs in California.
It suggests that the wage arguments made by conservatives are more rhetorical than substantive.
The WashPost article just says that (I assume illegal) immigrants generate $80 billion dollars a year. I'd be making a ton of cash if I paid my workers $3 an hour too. The way the article is worded is vague and doesn't support your point that legalizing 10 million immigrants won't harm our public services. The revenue illegal immigration is generating now doesn't equate to what they'll be generating as US citizens.
And the Baltimore Sun? Please.
And
Cynthia Tucker's argument is: black men like thuggin' and can't dirty their hands with honest labor. Man. Fuck Baltimore.
Anyways, get better data or shit that's not so biased.
I'm not sure I completely follow what you are saying regarding the fruit-picking jobs. I believe that even in this thread, conservatives were accused of supporting illegal immigration to keep wages low for their farm friends.
That'd be more a Republican position than a conservative one, but I digress.
It did? That's news to me.
But thats solved by border control. Who the hell is against border control?
http://www.cis.org/articles/2000/ins1986amnesty.html
The core issue is that there is still a demand for sub-minimum wage workers.
Ok, that makes it clearer, thank you.
The true issue behind that is managing demand. One way is through substitute goods, another is through complimentary goods. The good news is that demand for illegal workers is highly elastic. An employer doesn't say "today I'm going to hire an illegal", they say "today I'm going to hire the cheapest labor I can find."
You could help by removing the upward push on minimum wage, thereby creating a larger pool of substitute workers.
You could also increase the cost of complimentary goods. If you take the penalty cost of hiring an illegal, and assume that that cost is a good spread across all illegal workers, you can control demand by increasing that cost. Hiring an illegal also means you have to pay that penalty cost on the illegal as well. Raise the cost of one, demand for the complimentary good decreases.
1) cultural conservatives who resent and fear dusky-skinned Spanish speakers entering their communities.
2) Business owners who will fight to the last red cent any attempt to shift "costs" onto "employers" through worker verification and punitive fines for nonadherence.
In general, it's also against the goals of Organized Labor to allow an influx of legal low-wage immigration, but the mitigating factors are that it's probably better than the status quo of illegal immigration, and the other factor is that Organized Labor has almost no presence in the Southwest anyhow.
You forget that we could also address the problem by managing supply. If we create an increased chance of waiting a year or two and then immigrating to the US legally for $6/hr, that reduces the number of people willing to hop the fence right now for $2/hr.
Ideally, we'd do both, but managing supply is much, much easier. It consists of writing a couple new laws. Your solution not only requires new laws, not only requires getting it past the business lobbyists, but it requires a serious upgrade in infrastructure to create an enforcement procedure that can actually find illegal immigrants, and can effectively punish the businesses who hire them. We'd need to dramatically increase funding for enforcement of the laws.
Philosophically, I appreciate the idea of enforcing existing laws and going after businesses before fixing quotas. Practically speaking, I think it would be easier to get the relevant parties on board if we slowed the flow of illegals down to a comparative trickle before we yanked the businesses' gravy train out from under them. If we curtail their supply, they'll need to pay more for the same workers. If they're paying more for the same workers, it becomes less lucrative for them to do so, and they're less likely to oppose more draconian labor law enforcement.
I suspect you're right in the short-term of getting a bill passed, but I think that any Republican who really comes out full-throated for increasing legal immigration will get his ass handed to him in his next election.
In fairness, his position revolves more around relaxing counterproductive regulations on labor flow because of unintended consequences than it does in simply increasing market regulation. Modern public policy is bent around harnessing market forces rather than working directly against them.