quote:That is possible the most simplified excuse for an explanation I have ever heard. You didn't even forming the straw into a man-shape, you left it in a pile.
Maybe that's because you don't know what a strawman is. My argument wasn't one.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: We need a multifaceted approach. Look at the source, home countries in poverty, and try and lift them out of it to deaden the need to leave. Look at the problem as it exists, and try to bring current illegals into the system so we can both better care for them and ourselves, and so we can make better plans for the future. And look at the draw, it being too easy to allow illegal immigrants to exist here. I think we should have an increased number of legal immigrants, and an unlimited number of guest worker visas. People won't be taken advantage of by border coyotes if they can come here to make money and then go home until the next season, and I think they'd be far more willing to participate in such a system if the advantages of legal protections, the lack of fear of being deported, and full access to a fair paycheck were all available to them. The benefits are tangible to us as well, in many, many ways.
posted
I'm with Lyrhawn and Bokonon on this one too.
In addition to making it easy for people to get guest worker permits, I'd like to see stronger laws to ensure that guest workers have all the same rights as US citizens to fair wages, safe working environments, and so on. And I'd like to see vigilant enforcement of those laws.
To me one of the worst aspects of illegal immigration are the unscrupulous employers who higher illegals in order to circumvent laws intended to protect workers and undercut their honest competitors. These guys are far far more deserving of punishment than the poor hard working people who come across the border in order to feed their families.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In addition to making it easy for people to get guest worker permits, I'd like to see stronger laws to ensure that guest workers have all the same rights as US citizens to fair wages, safe working environments, and so on. And I'd like to see vigilant enforcement of those laws.
I think there'd have to be some concession to business here. Otherwise registered workers would get too expensive to hire, no one would do it, and we'd back to people hiring illegal workers all over again.
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Only when it comes to wages, perhaps. I think that would have benefits in multiple ways. Generally I don't favor reducing the minimum wage for US workers for a lot of reasons, but for guest workers, you might be able to get me on board with some sort of two tiered minimum wage.
On the one hand it feels wrong, because typically the work that guest workers would do is very hard, manual labor that can have long term health effects. The term "back breaking" isn't so much descriptive of the difficulty as it is a foreshadowing of what they have to look forward to later in life. But I suspect that for a lot of illegals, having any minimum wage at all, even if it's significantly lower than the one US citizens get, might still be higher than what they are forced to work for, especially when you include all the other ways they are cheated out of their money via housing, and whatever else they have to pay to the people that may have helped get them here. I suspect that when all legal safeguards are taken into account, they'd still end up making as much as or more than before the new laws went into effect, the money would just be passed around through different hands and in different amounts.
But safe worker laws must be in place. Safety standards have to be enforced, I don't care where the worker is from or what his or her status is.
I think doing it that way would end up still being fair to the worker, in that he gets to live on probably about the same wage as he made before, if not higher, has enough to send home, if that is in fact what he's doing and to survive locally, and at the same time provides a lot of safeguards that he might not have had before. For business, it gives them access to a cheaper workforce, but without the ability to exploit them to a disadvantageous (to them) degree. And for us, it keeps necessary jobs filled and prices down. It also keeps more money in the US I think, compared to how it would be if every guest worker made $7 an hour, but I'm less concerned about that.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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