State Action on Illegal Immigration
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-10-05/state-action-illegal-immigration
There is an exodus going on from the state of Alabama. The country’s strictest immigration law went into effect over the weekend. Among other things, it is the first state law to require schools to check the status of children. Alabama’s schools are now reporting a huge increase in absences among Latino students. The justice department is suing Alabama and Arizona because of their statutes and is reviewing similar laws in four other states to make sure they don’t supersede federal government law. Guest host Laura Knoy and guests explore the situation in different states that are taking the lead on U.S. immigration policy.
Guests
Angela Kelley
vice president for immigration policy and advocacy, Center for American Progress.
Campbell Robertson
national correspondent for the New York Times
Jonathan Turley
professor of public interest law at George Washington University Law School
Steven Camarota
director of research, Center for Immigration Studies.
Comments
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Today I sent an email to Governor Bentley.
http://governor.alabama.gov/contact/contact_form.aspx
I called on Governor Bentley to correct the negative ramifications and consequences of this terrible law.
I also expressed this to Governor Bentley:
As a retired Alabama teacher and a member of AEA and NEA,
please know how ashamed I am of this Alabama immigration
law.
Some of us in Alabama share a strong disdain for the disgusting law.
However, I live in a state with much too much of this attitude:
Consider these recent headlines:
"UA economists see grim fourth quarter in Alabama,"
"Immigration law impact: Hispanic students vanish from Alabama schools,"
"Central Alabama farmers warn state immigration law leaves crops at risk."
It appears that no matter how rotten the Alabama economy and its schools, nor how rotten the unpicked crops in its fields,
Alabama is determined and steadfast:
"Audemus jura nostra defendere -- We Dare Defend Our Rights."
Shout out this Republican declaration from the fertile sands of Alabama's Sand Mountain
to the once brilliantly white sands of its tar-balled Gulf Shores:
As Alabamians we must sacrifice for the "right" and "justice" and indeed "liberty."
Rather than sharing the goodness and blessings of
fresh foods, jobs, and economic prosperity, we must
embrace the grand yet simple wisdom of these four words:
Better Rot AND "Right."
Indeed, "right" here is just stupid, shortsighted, and defies common sense.
Yes, yes, wicked, evil, and immoral might better describe.
This Friday in the third hour of DRShow News Roundup we will be discussing the Foreign Policy and Diplomacy of Alabama. (They may apply for statehood status at the UN.)
My tax dollars pay to educate and protect illegal immigrants and their children. My family health costs are higher due to illegal immigrants. My ability to earn higher pay is blunted due to illegal immigrants. State dollars of MD go to Casa MD and other welfare benefits, while my family dollars are not going as far as before. if illegal immigrants are afraid, let them leave. I am beginning to strongly consider leaving expensive MD, and when I do relocate it will be to a state such as Alabama.
The issue always comes down to an economic concern... one way to actually solve the problem is to enforce the Albama laws AND increase wages for all lower end jobs... then you will get people to work in these jobs. The end result will be work for American workers and we all will have to pay higher costs for the goods and services. Bottom line for us to enjoy the life style we had in the 50's and 60's we have to establish a living wage.
Darryl
It's a truism that whenever a Captain of Industry makes a newspaper headline that "We have a labor shortage; People aren't applying for X" that the left-unsaid followup is hardly asked in any newspaper: "Does that mean you're not offering a high enough wage?"
I wish that guy would stop talking about how it will raise the wages. You can't raise the minimum wage with out sack cloth, gnashing of teeth, woe is me whining from employers. You really think it will work for some of the lowest paid people in America?
I'd like to see a halt to legal and illegal immigration(2 million per year) until the Country can get back on a strong footing. I love these people too but they would do just fine in their country and be very happy.
Already there are laws on the books to thwart illegal immigration, however, nobody is willing to enforce those laws. The major problem, as I see it, is the ability of farmers, the construction industry and many others to hire, at far below the minimum wage, the illegal immigrants. In 1980s, there were laws enacted that penalized companies who hired illegal immigrants: Nobody enforces those laws.
The republicans once proposed a plan that they are now against to help solve the problem. Stop blaming the President for the inaction of the congress, we are not in an autocracy, where the leader can decide the law alone. It takes the 535 people on at the capitol to enact a law that the President can sign.
I am sure that most of the people cheering this law in Alabama claim to be christians and believe every word of the Bible. But, as usual, they forget the admonition that says, "And if a man from another country is living in your land with you, do not make life hard for him".
These are incredibly dangerous and misguided state bills that will lead to discrimination and racial profiling in Alabama's streets and school rooms. HB 56 will lead Alabama back to a dark past that they have attempted to move away from, except now toward Latino's instead of African-Americans. Regardless, this should certainly be of great concern to all minorities ion Alabama and all Americans. As MLK said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." We need a legalization program through comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level, the only place where immigration can be dealt with.
Yes.. if we wish to enjoy the kind of America we used to have we have to pay for it... I am think we have to INCREASE wages to pay a living wage for all who will work and pay taxes etc... bring jobs back into the US and pay a living wage to American workers.
One assumes that, if those supporting this Alabama draconian immigration action are really interested only in curtailing illegal immigration, then they will be in favor of making it easier for those wishing to live in this country to immigrate easily. If not, then we must assume that what they are actually against is those pesky brown-skinned people moving here at all.
Thank you Alabama, I hope more states follow your lead. What is the point of a law if it will not be enforced. On a slightly different note, I wish people would quite complaining about the criminalization of illegal immigrants. If you came here illegally or stay longer than you are legally allowed, then you broke at least one law thereby making you an alleged criminal. So lets call them Allegedly Criminal Immigrants.
Regreteably, our present history of ignoring illegal immigrants and their presence here has created a Defacto system of Slavery that compresses wages for native born Americans as well as organized Labor.
Fox5411
We also need to simultaneously crack down on employers that hire illegal labor. When I was a child, my classmates fathers made their livings as plumbers, carpenters, brick layers, etc. Today - particularly in the south - this labor is ALL illegal. It has served to drive down wages and has taken entire elements of the labor base and drive it from middle class status to a wage scale impossible to support a family.
Also, this bill at comes at great costs to the state. AZ lost $750 million due to this loss and the Georgia agricultural industry expects up to $1 billion dollars of losses due to their bill. Racial profiling legislation is a bust. 26 states have rejected this kind of legislation since SB 1070, and most of them have done it because of high costs. TN found that their bill would cost 3 million. It was rejected. KY found it would cost 89 million. It too was rejected. 26 states have rejected this law, and the few that have passed it will suffer economically as a consequence.
@Stephanie1122:
Do you really think your pay will go up if there are no illegal immigrants in MD? Do you really think that your health care costs will go down (after all, those benefits are provided by an Insurance Company) if health care is no longer provided to illegal immigrants? Do you really think your family dollars will go further if the state gov't in MD stops supporting Casa MD or paying welfare benefits?
If you do, then you are one seriously misguided citizen. Or, you're simply buying, hook, line and sinker, all of the anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Right.
Thank you for the thoughtful discussion. I live in Alabama. Our labor force has been dependent on illegals for decades. Our state didn't enforce the laws it had on the books for years and now is overcorrecting. I'm appalled by the profiling aspect of the law and the unfunded burden it puts on law enforcement and schools. Yes, we need to reform the way we handle immigration legal and illegal.
@StLouis:
The reason those trades (plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers, electricians, etc.) or being done more and more by immigrants (legal and undocumented) is not simply because employers want to save on wages by hiring people who will work for less. It's much more complicated than that. It's education policy, where there is a paradigm in place that assumes every student be prepared for college, as if that's the only path to a satisfying professional life; the only exposure to these trades are the woefully pathetic "shop" classes in secondary education, if they still exist at all. Further, the systematic dismantling/disempowering of trade unions begun by the Right during the Reagan administration has removed much of the wage-protection these trade workers enjoyed; since these trade unions were also responsible for much of the training that was never being supported by education policies and programs, through the age-old system of apprentice to journeyman to master, we've also lost the very system that trained our next generation of tradesmen (or tradespeople, if gender-correctness is important to you).
What continues to amaze me is how so many of the arguments coming from the Right that explain the diminishing middle class and the wages that support it are pointed at the very people who would become that middle class, whether they be "illegal immigrants" taking their jobs or "overly entitled union workers" who make it "impossible" for an employer to compete. Never do those arguments look at the very policies and rhetoric that brought about this situation - the policies and rhetoric of the Right.
i invite all the bleeding hearts to invite them to your state. you pay for them and see how much they contribute vs. how much they take.
the rest of us who have to live with them know already.
'comprehensive' reform is just more amnesty.
they're illegal? why golly gee, let's just change the law! then they won't be illegal any more! wow, what are we going to do with all those falsified social security numbers now?
now we can have legal people who will accept lower pay than native born citizens, but heck they probably vote republican so who cares about them?
On the show,it was stated that we need to have employment regulation applied to make it so people overall can,for years to come,have a job to go to.Well a problem with that is,as,anyone who checks out bullying or to put it ,'anti-bullying'sites will see the stat.'s on people reporting their company's policy app.'s.To mention,of the people who have gone to supervisors or upper-supervisors,or perhaps to Human Resources,to make complaints of violations of policy,the numbers that do report policy violations is about 40%.And of those numbers only a small percentage experience any kind of corporate response to the violations.Of the people that choose to confront the bully personally,whether the manager see's that as being the route to take to solve the problem or not,it's about 11%.Of those that do that,said it made the job experience worse.Together,it says,to an average person,no matter what goes on at work,keep your mouth shut.That's not suppose to be the view we have in the US about employment.But it is a fact,to be the'individual' in the US,is to risk being a street bum.No one long hires a person with multiple p/yr jobs on paper
The Society of Professional Journalists recently became one of a growing number of organizations that has come out against the use of "illegal immigrant" and especially "illegals." The term is pejorative and the SPJ resolution states that only a court can determine whether someone has "committed an illegal act." "Undocumented" is more accurate.
Please explain your statement that President Obma is a multiple felon. A felon is someone who has been convicted of a federal crime. To my knowledge, this has not occurred. Your statement could be considered libel and that is punishable by law.
Please order a FREE copy of the U.S. Constitution from the Heritage Foundation and read it.
I was really surprised listening to this discussion today to hear Angela Kelley say, without correction by the other commentators, that children born of (legal or illegal) immigrants are not automatically U.S. citizens.
I pulled out my pocket Constitution and read Article 14 that states "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
The article goes on, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the Unites States; no shall any state deprive any person (not just citizens) of life, liberty, or properity, without due process of law; nor deny to any person (not just citizens) within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
There are a lot of opinions here, but none that trump the U.S. Constitution.
2 issues that are not being discussed right now on your show......
1. these illegal imigrants are paying payroll taxes and I believe that part of the problem is that the government doesn't want to give up that tax revenue (is that why they aren't addressing the issue?).
2. I would be willing to bet that at least 40% of these illegal immigrants have applied for citizenship but their applications have been "lost". We now have a zero quota for immigrants from Mexico so we're not processing any applications. How can these illegal immigrants do the right thing and apply for citizenship when the US won't even process their paperwork???
Gayle Starr
I can't believe that NPR allows the term "illegal alien." This is a word, as negative as the "n" word, used by the far right that carries a world of hate, ignorance about this country's immigration, and Mexico. Your discussion was thorough except for one thing -- the humanity of people who want the best for their children and their families. It's also clear to me, growing up in Texas, how fearful mainstream Americans, particularly, Anglos, are, of change. Come visit my father's nursing home (a World War II vet who is "tejano") and see who cleans the elders, bathes and feeds them. As the daughter of a mexicana whose mother crossed the border in the forties, I am appalled and offended by the term "illegal aliens." That is not what my mother was.
Omission #1-Farm productivity from planting to harvesting has greatly increased, not because of human pickers and planters, because of mechanical methods, except for strawberries.
Omission #2-Recently, a well known company, requested and received a guest visa for a person from India. The person was trained by a regular company employee. When fully trained, the regular employee person trainer was discharged. The immigrant was employed full time at reduced wages, and became a citizen.
Ain't God and capitalism great? How easily we are puppets responding to the string manipulating puppeteers.
I'm trying to understand if the issue is about illegal immigration or the fact that there are immigrants here at all? I think it's the guest Steven C. who continually has said the intention is to get illegals to go home so that there is job availability--so what if all those illegal immigrants become legitimate immigrants?
True transparency in immigration is to identify [diss? normal??] how many immigrants from each country are actually allowed? especially NORTHER EUROPEAN PEOPLES/countries/"cultures" as America must have tradition & normalcy/jobs [diss? capacity...] disambiguated! And how exactly "leagal immigration" works [with the stated... quotas]. If we know who could be doing what where, and how they rate on the diss-traction scale, and the clearified cultural harmony reality -eco [by] name/"identity".
I personally grew up in a west coast immigrant [spanish speaking] and transplant dominant population, and I know well the strong diss=concern for the environment and economy south of America's border (that many {transplant} persons glamorize as "different"/better{?}).
The deeper reality with immigration is normative geographic weak links within America and our own cultural geograPHy, where America "works" and where [specifically, leagally and normatively] America is diss-funtional or "funkt..." [drug pusher oppertunity and eco-logical tradition... or action -within!].
If you gracefully remove the normative weak links [diss-angelic eve-vent-tool... to pre-Vent a million mistakes with a tiny solution is not diss but pro-America and eco... nominal solution to immigration harmony/control], to relieve "america's problems" will make immigration much safer, more leagal, and more american with diss-traction Rolling in the correct direction, before! criminal menality even shows up.
.We have in our midst the worst kind of liberal, one who flags posts she disagrees with. She attacks and labels in a mean spirited way other posters and does not get flagged because most of us are tolerant generous people.
((((pisces62)))) do you really want to play this game, others might take note and do the same to you!
As an Arizonan, I'm of two minds about our recent law. I understand how there would be a substantial economic impact if the law had been allowed in it's existing form. But I did support the law, because I am tired of the current situation.
Two points occur to me; first, how do you think the discussion about the 'rights' of illegal immigrants, or the panelists' support for the illegal immigrant point of view, might change if we substituted the term 'rapist' or 'thief' or 'drunk driver' for the term 'illegal immigrant'? These people ARE criminals, after all. Yes, I understand why they come here, to feed their families and so on. And I might make the same decision, were I in their shoes. But I would do it knowing, and the unarguable fact remains, what they are doing is a crime, by the laws of my state and our nation, and has been for decades. I don't see rights groups supporting too many other categories of criminal activity the way support has sprung up for this particular crime.
Secondly, I'm not aware of too many other criminal activities in which you can make application to change your legal status, and get everything you were trying to obtain previously in a criminal manner. But this IS the case with illegal immigrants. The small amount of research I've done regarding immigration policy, and how long it takes to become a US citizen -especially if you have been caught one or more times previously trying to get in illegally- indicates we need to have major reforms in this area. Still--come legally, enrich our society, make us better by your presence. But coming here to break our laws, and take advantage of our taxpayers' generosity? I disagree.