Who did or did not enter the US one or two centuries ago is not relevant to the issue today. America is not infinite. At some point the hole fills up.
What that argument boils down to is a complaint that some people were born on the wrong century. Well .... yeah.
Ethel:
This removes much of the risk from the farm owner, who can plausibly claim ignorance of the immigration status of the workers
I don't know how ignorant these employers really are. Eru asked how the fake social security number thing works ... any woman who's been through a divorce should have an idea how that works because we have a problem very similar to that of the illegal worker, namely that our SS number does not match our name unless we remembered to change it when we got married and started filing joint returns. The IRS catches this immediately and notifies the person and the employer. (I forgot to do that when I married, and when I divorced I got letters from the IRS about the fact that I do not exist! It took me the longest time to figure out what the problem was - that my SS was still under my maiden name.)
I'm guessing that there's a market for the SS number of dead people, but then you have to use the dead person's name, and ... what? open a bank account in their name? How else would you cash your paycheck? Or maybe they're paid in cash - a clear indication that the employer knows what's up. Then you need a driver's license or some other i.d. in the dead person's name ... so, a whole fraud organization has to be behind this sort of thing. It's organized crime, of a stripe which we simply ignore.
Teremia:
as I understand it, billions and billions of dollars come into Social Security from people using fake numbers who will therefore never collect Social Security themselves.
I think that the fact that these people have taxes and FICA withheld from their wages without ever receiving the benefits is one of the best arguments for cracking down on illegal immigration. It's just one more way that these people are exploited for the sake of US profits.
The Senate Bill is sure to undergo changes of language when it hits the floor. But the whole idea of Amnesty just makes me shake my head ... the folly of hoping for A while planning for B ... the attraction of the illegal worker to employers is the absence of benefits or labor law. If those people who are currently employed illegally are made legal workers, the employers will suddenly have to start contributing to SS, to unemployment insurance, etc. and those people will be FIRED and replaced by new illegals. We'll have 12 million unemployed legal immigrants on our hands! No, not 12 million, if Teremia's stats are correct only about 6 millions of them are operating completely outside the system. So 6 million unemployed legal immigrants.
Any bill that does not include RICO-style punishment for the employers who hire illegals, e.g. confiscation of real property, is just going to create a revolving door.
Cerin:
I would think it is these people who fuel the success of Wal-Mart because they can't afford to pass up the lowest price, and who would set up a loud clamouring if their food prices rose exponentially.
It's complicated to predict exactly what will happen to food prices if labor laws are enforced. Generally it is true that the overall price level
will not rise as long as the Fed or the Treasury does not try to accomodate rising prices in one sector by increasing the money supply throughout the economy.
What happens is that demand for all consumer goods changes. So people will, for example, buy fewer strawberries if the price goes up. The strawberry industry shrinks as a result. People spend their money on something cheaper and that industry expands as a result. Without increases in the money supply, all those changes are ultimately offsetting. Consumption patterns change but the overall expenditures remain the same.
But ... that may or may not represent a decline in standard of living for lower income households. They spend a larger percentage of their income on food, so any increase in the price of food hits their discretionary spending harder than it hits that of a higher income household. The net effect depends on the nature of available alternatives, e.g. whether alternate foodstuffs are available at cheaper prices ... imports, for example.
But there's something else that happens as well. When labor laws are enforced and proper wages are paid, national income is transferred from the business owners (as a class) to labor (as a class). Generally, we get more 'multiplier effects' when this happens ... that is, national income on the whole increases as a result because the lower income households spend a greater percentage of their income as opposed to saving it.
Back in the 1950s, the net affect on national income of class differentials in savings rates was a sort of budding topic of research, but it has been pretty much abandoned here in the US, though it remains of interest to Marxian economists ... I'm familiar with some of this research for Latin America but don't know of any research done on the US economy in recent years.
Anyway, it is not a foregone conclusion that higher wages in agriculture would be bad for the US economy. The counter-argument holds just as much weight, that multiplier effects would cause higher wages in this sector to raise GDP.
Clear as mud, right?
Jn
