Lazy Americans And Their Jobs

I saw this on Glenn Beck today... thought it was amusing.

I guess the New York Sun or some newspaper like that reported on one of their pages that they are having problems finding people to pick cherries because the governor won't let them import workers from Mexico and Jamaica...

On the same page, right next to the complaints about the lack of workers to help them pick fruit, there is an article saying that teenagers are having trouble finding work this summer.

Hmmm... what's wrong with this picture?

Why can't the teenagers pick fruit? Are they too good for that job?

I was talking to my grandma on the phone yesterday for Mother's day, and she was talking about how there are tons of immigrants (whether illegal or not I don't know, probably a lot of them are illegal) that have moved up to Washington State to pick brush and shuck oysters. My dad did that job when he was younger, as did my great-grandpa and grandma back in the days.

So where is the disconnect here? Are teenagers to lazy... or to good... to pick fruit in New York? Or brush in Washington state?

I'm not sure what is the answer. Perhaps the teenagers do find themselves too good to pick fruit and brush, or perhaps the job seekers are not looking in the same place that the employers are advertising.

Take brush picking. I lived in Washington state for many years, but I'm not sure where I would go to find a job like that... if they would even hire me nowadays because I speak English and have a US birth certificate. Do they advertise in the newspaper or on places like Monster.com? How do the teenagers find out that there are jobs to be had?

Where are the cherry farmers advertising their jobs?

I know in Arizona there used to be a lot of employers that would hire illegal immigrants. They can't any more because if they get caught they will lose their business license. But back in the days, many of these jobs would send trucks out to specific street corners where the illegal immigrants would hang out and wait to be hired for the day. I'm not sure if white, English speaking teenagers would have been welcomed there.

In Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina, many construction workers flocked to the state to work on rebuilding the city. Until they were all fired so the construction companies could hire illegal immigrants instead. I know someone that this happened to.

So I'm not sure whether the cherry picker shortage is the fault of the teenagers who don't know that there are jobs to be had out on the farms, or if the fault is of the farmers who don't want to hire them.

But I will say this: people should learn how to work hard. It's what made this country great. I remember reading an article a year or so ago where businesses felt like they had to cater to the new twenty-somethings, who would not even bat an eyelash at quitting their jobs if they didn't like the working conditions, hours, or other aspects about the job. Not sure if that still holds true today, with fewer jobs to go around.

I graduated from the University of Southern California. I've had some cool jobs, like working as a movie extra one year. I've had some less than prestigious jobs as well. One summer in college I worked at McDonald's. I've had high-paying, "important" jobs, like being the anti-terrorism officer at the Navy base in Naples.

A couple of years ago, I took a job as a teacher at Kindercare, making less than 1/5th of the pay that I had received at my job in the Navy. It was the right job at the time, because it allowed me to keep tabs on my young daughter. I blended in fairly well, but my life was not the typical day care worker's. Most people would not like to take an 80% pay cut to care for other people's children with a college degree.

My dh took a 50% pay cut for a while to go stock shelves at Wal-Mart at night. He's a college student, and he needed a night job so he could go to school during the day. You do what you have to do, even if it involves doing hard work, or working at night. He has since found a better paying evening job.

Many successful Americans learned to work hard doing jobs that many would consider "beneath them". 60 Minutes did an interview with Clarence Thomas where he talked about having to work hard as a kid. Wasn't it Abraham Lincoln that split rails? George Washington was an everyday guy in an earlier American war before he became a great war hero in the American Revolution. Chris Gardener, from the Pursuit of Happyness, spent a year taking care of his son while homeless in order to graduate.

There may be easier ways to do things, but sometimes you have to work very hard for a while to get what you need to get done. And if the fruit pickers need workers and the teenagers need jobs, perhaps some people need to work hard for a while.

The Mexicans Don't Want Their Illegals Back... Boo Hoo

Our state recently passed a law stating that companies who knowingly hire illegal immigrants will have their business licenses revoked. Despite the fact that it is currently being challenged in the courts, the law has had the effect of driving some illegal immigrants out of the state.

Now some Sonoran officials from Mexico are complaining that the new law will hurt the state because of the jobless Mexicans returning to their hometowns.

Could somebody call the Waaaaambulance?

There are several issues here. First, the people that are leaving Arizona and returning to Mexico were not supposed to be here in the first place. Secondly, the people returning are citizens of Mexico, not of the US. They belong in Mexico. Thirdly, this law passed last summer, so people have had at least six months to prepare. In addition, not all of the illegal immigrants are returning to Mexico. Some of them are going to other states; others weren't Mexican illegal immigrants, and are returning to other countries (sometimes it's easy to forget that there are illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico, but they come from all countries).

Arizona has contributed to the education, health care, social services, and police services of illegal immigrants for far too long. I've waited in the emergency room for 4 hours before waiting to be seen by a doctor... and I can guarantee that many of the people ahead of me were not legally here. I'm sorry if Mexico feels that it can not provide for their own citizens, but what makes them think that we want to?

If the Mexican citizens returning to their own country are hard-working, then in due time they will once again be contributing to the Mexican economy. Mexico is a country with natural resources, and if it's not a place where someone can be an entrepreneur of sorts, then perhaps Mexico should take care of some of the corruption in their government, take a look at how things are run, and allow enterprising people to find ways to make their own money. Other than selling trinkets in tourist areas. Not that selling trinkets can't be an honorable way to make a living, just that there are a lot of them and there should be other options.

I realize that there will be some adjustments to be made. On the part of both Mexico and the state of Arizona. But it can not go on as it has been.

I remember watching a program in the last day or two where they were talking about how we have had recession avoided and put off for years because of low interest rates. It's just like someone who can't pay off their credit cards, so they take out a home equity loan to pay off the credit cards, then end up ringing up their credit card bills again. At some point there is a breaking point. We can't continue to give incentives for illegal immigrants to come live in our state. Our economy can't support it. Especially with the way that the economic future is looking. We either face the music now or face worse music later.

I'm not trying to be heartless, but there are always consequences to pay for your actions. If not now, later. Mexico is partially culpable in the whole illegal immigration mess. They have turned a blind eye to it for quite some time. Unfortunately, if an influx of Mexicans returning home is going to cause a problem, that is just the price that Mexico must pay for not attempting to stop, and even winking at and promoting, the exit of their citizens into our country for so long.

Illegal Immigrants Are Leaving Arizona

An article in this previous Sunday's Arizona Republic talks about how the illegal immigrants in this state are beginning to leave Arizona, in anticipation of the crackdown on businesses that hire illegals that goes into effect on January 1st.

Although the law doesn't go into effect until January 1st, many small items of business have to be taken care of between now and then, which is why people are leaving now rather than waiting. Businesses are not supposed to knowingly employ illegal immigrants after this date, which means that if they know someone is here illegally, they have to let them go prior to that date. The immigrants themselves know that their jobs may be in jeopardy, so they are getting ready to leave now. Especially if they happen to own housing... the time to get the house on the market is now. It's not the best time to be selling because of the current housing slump, but the alternative of foreclosure is probably worse.

The article seems to have a somewhat pessimistic, the sky is falling attitude. Did anybody say that the short term consequences of this law were going to be easy? No. Sure some things are going to be tough. It's likely that there will be vacancies in the job market. All the immigrants leaving will also make the current housing slump a little worse. This is short term loss for a long outlook of gain.

The article almost makes me wonder why don't we let them stay? But then I started to ponder why they should go... and how if they were here legally things would be much different.

• If all these people were here legally, we would know who was here. Seems like a no-brainer. We want to know who is here because of the big terrorism question. While the majority of our illegal immigrants are from Mexico and they're not a big terrorism threat, if Mexicans can sneak in the border, that means someone of any nationality that can get into Mexico, including terrorists from the Middle East, can get here.
  
• If these people were here legally, they wouldn't be suppressing the wages of ordinary Americans. People always make the excuse that illegal immigrants are here "doing the jobs that Americans won't do" but that's not true. They do many jobs that Americans don't want to do under the working conditions that are imposed upon them. Many of these jobs are unsafe, unsanitary, or don't pay a decent wage. The employers know that they can get away with subjecting these employees to those working conditions, because illegals have nowhere to turn to complain. If they were here legally, that would change out of necessity.
  
• They would pay the correct taxes if they were here legally. My husband used to work in a human resource company that did the payroll for many small companies, including many that hired illegals. While it is true that anybody that was employed and didn't work under the table had taxes taken out of their paychecks, the illegal immigrants would often claim a very high number of dependents so that very little money would be taken out.
  

If we need more workers here in this country, we need to increase the quotas and get more people here legally. If our country increases its quota of immigrants, then we can more evenly dole out the work visas to the people applying for them. Right now, if you are from Russia or Italy or Greece or Zimbabwe and want to come to this country, you get in line with all the other people applying to be given permission to live and work in this country, and you wait. If there were fewer people coming into this country illegally, we could allow more of these people that are waiting to come. Our country could choose the best candidates for work Visas, rather than have people barging in that may not be the best match for the job skills that we need.

Since Arizona is going to see some depopulation in the next few months, at least among the immigrant community, there will be some adjustments that need to be made, and some difficulties. But as the law of supply and demand work, eventually the market will work itself out.

Some advantages that we will see include less crowded schools, less crowded emergency rooms, and to some degree, less of a burden on social services. I do realize that illegal immigrants are not allowed to receive social services (as many realized this fall when they tried to return to the University system and realized that they were not eligible for in-state tuition), but many have children that are American citizens and can receive these services. While the government never likes to reduce taxes, with fewer people attending the schools, it might mean that it takes longer for the schools to ask for a new bond to build new buildings.

So while there might be some rough times in store for Arizonans, in the end it will be okay. Probably better even, IMO.

What Should We Do With Anchor Babies?

The subject of anchor babies has been in the news lately, as Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant known for taking sanctuary inside a Chicago church, has been recently deported. She has already been deported once, and has an 8 year old son, Saul. Saul is an American citizen, and his mother chose to leave him in the United States rather than take him back to Mexico with her.

Some people think that Ms. Arellano should have been allowed to stay in the United States, since she has a son that is a United States citizen. However, doing so would only encourage more people to come to the United States to have children, because doing so would give them a free path to living in the United States.

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868, and was originally intended to give citizenship to all former slaves and children of slaves after the civil war. It was never intended that people desiring their children to have US Citizenship could just show up here and have children. A further unintended consequence of this law is that parents of these so-called "anchor babies" are more likely to be allowed to stay here.

I realize that Mexico isn't the greatest place to live, but then again, it certainly isn't the worst place in the world to live in. Iraq, anyone? How about Darfur? Maybe Ms. Arellano truly believes that having her son living away from her in Chicago while she lives in Mexico is the best life for him. It is also possible, that she is just having a snit in front of the cameras and trying to tell the world "poor me, I can't be with my son!" The truth is, she can be with her son, she just has to have him come to Mexico to be with her. As a US citizen, Saul would be free to return to the United States when he got older.

The whole concept of automatic citizenship for anybody born within a country's borders is not a universal principal. My daughter was born in Italy but she is a United States citizen, and does not have dual citizenship. She has both an Italian and an American birth certificate. That is probably a good thing, because there are some countries where children holding dual citizenship have problems if they ever decide to return to their country of birth. I can't remember what country it was, but one country required military service or something from all its citizens, and if a dual citizen ever came to visit, they would have to fulfill their obligations.

So what should we do with anchor babies? I think that we should amend the constitution to override the provision in the fourteenth amendment providing citizenship to anchor babies, for one. That would be a start. If we pass that law, we still have to deal with the anchor babies that we do have.

However mean it may sound, if the parents are supposed to be deported, they should be deported. Having a child should not usually be a consideration. I suppose there may be some extraordinary circumstances. Let's say a child was very ill or disabled and needed life-saving care that could not be provided in the country of origin. I'm not talking "oh there are no doctors that can treat my son's ADD in the country I come from" because a child is not going to die or anything near that because they don't get their ADD treated. But some children have heart conditions or other organ problems that can not be treated in certain countries. I might make an exception in that particular case. But in most cases, a child can live if they go with their parent to the parent's home of origin.

Military families are sometimes forced to leave their children with grandparents, friends, or other family members while they go off to serve in other parts of the world. These people are not being punished because they broke a law, rather they are making a sacrifice so that we can be safer. Ms. Arellano, like the military, left her child in another country after she was deported. Unlike the military, she had a choice to take her child with her. Also unlike the military, she is not leaving her child in another country because she is a law abiding citizen making a noble sacrifice... rather, she broke a law (more than one actually, she was working at the airport using fraudulent documents) and is suffering the consequences of it.

ID Theft Expected To Increase Because of New Law

Arizona passed a new law recently that should make most of us jump for joy. In order to get hired for a new job, employers have to search for your social security number in a federal database, and it has to match up with your name. This will probably have the effect of having fewer illegal immigrants get jobs, because right now it's quite easy to come up with fraudulent documents. This law goes into effect on January 1st.

That's the good news. However, the unintended consequence of this new law is that there may be more incidences of identity theft as a result of this law. People that want to work either have to do one of several things: work in another state, work under the table, or steal someone's identity. Working under the table will probably happen less often, because the penalty for hiring someone this way is quite stiff. They could lose their business license on the second offense.

So if you live in Arizona, make sure that you check your credit regularly. The AZ Republic, which had an article about identity theft in Sunday's newspaper, had a really good suggestion that I had never though of: instead of getting all three free credit reports at once, get your credit reports at different times of the year, and stagger them. That way you have less time between the times you check it. Don't forget to check your children's credit reports as well. My children have fairly unusual names so it's not as likely that people will want to use them, but you never can be too careful. Since this whole ID theft thing became common, I decided to check theirs at the same time I check mine and dh's.

One last thing I feel I should add: if you do have your identity stolen, you can clear it up. You don't need to hire anybody to do it for you, you can do it yourself. Some companies offer identity theft insurance... it isn't necessary, but whether you get it or not depends on you. Could you be organized enough to send out letters and follow through on them? Would you be willing to spend the time to write letters to creditors to clear up your identity? A few years ago, I did some work to repair my credit. There were some items that didn't belong on my credit report, some addresses on there where I had never lived, etc. I was able to get all the questionable items off my credit report, and so could you. I did have to send off a few Certified, Return Receipt Requested envelopes, which cost a little money, but not as much as it would cost me to pay for identity theft insurance for any meaningful time period. It took a little organization: I kept a portfolio with all my credit correspondence in it, I kept photocopies of all the letters I sent and all of my return receipt stubs. I followed up on people that did not respond. It wasn't that hard. If you need more information about clearing up credit for any reason, I recommend that you visit Creditmania.com. It is a very helpful resource, with sample letters and people that are willing to help answer your questions.

Thank You Janet

Normally, I'm not a very big fan of Janet Napolitano. I have to say, however, that this week I'm pretty happy with her. So I take back a couple things that I've said ;-).

Janet Napolitano signed a very tough law that will deal very harshly with businesses that hire illegal aliens. Those who knowingly or intentionally hire illegal aliens will have their business license suspended for the first offense, and will be put on probation for a period of time. If they knowingly or intentionally hire illegal immigrants during their probationary period, they will have their business license revoked for good.

To that I say, bravo!

We have a system that will check social security numbers with a federal database, but many companies, up until now, do not use it. In a prior job, my husband worked with the payrolls of several companies, many of which hired illegal immigrants. He would often run into cases where people had invalid social security numbers or with people who had stolen SSNs from other people.

A law like this is going to have very broad implications:

- It will probably be a good idea to check SSNs for everyone in the family, including children, on a yearly basis. You can get free credit reports at Annual Credit Report.com. It's about time for me and my husband to check our credit reports, and I plan on getting one for my 5 year old and 7 1/2 month old as well. You never know these days. I suppose that with this new law coming online, it will be even more important.

- It will discourage illegal immigrants from coming to this state, and perhaps get some of them to leave. This will of course, create another ripple effect in our state, affecting schools, health care, labor, and law enforcement.

- It will also affect the economy in different ways. A few years ago, I was looking for an evening job so I could stay at home with my daughter and work while my husband was at home to care for her. I went to apply at several places, but Taco Bell, Wal Mart, Burger King, McDonald's, the movie theater, etc. was just not interested in hiring me. Could that have been related to illegal immigration? Perhaps. But if you dry up the supply of illegal immigrants, you also deplete, to some degree, people that are going to work in these places. Which may mean raising wages, which in turn may raise prices to some degree. However, we will end up saving money in the areas of education, health care, and law enforcement. I think that it may take some time to balance all of this out, but I think that it eventually will balance out. And if the wages of construction workers goes up... at least that may become a viable career again. I think that construction wages have been artificially depressed because of the supply of cheap illegal labor.

- Some businesses may leave the state. If they do, then they probably were involved in hiring illegal immigrants in the first place, and I'd have to question how much overall good they were doing to our state in the first place.

I know that many illegal immigrants are over here just trying to make money. However, for every person who came over here illegally, there is someone in Nigeria, India, or even Mexico waiting to be let into this country legally. Some businesses argue that without illegal immigration, we would not have enough workers in this country. Perhaps that is true. But if we don't have enough legal immigrants coming into this country, wouldn't the best solution to be to increase the quotas for legal immigrants coming into this country, rather than turn our heads and look away when people sneakily (or sometimes boldly) disobey the laws of our country by coming over here uninvited?

Hopefully this law will go into effect. I do realize that there are some problems that need to be fixed, such as not allowing vital services like hospitals to be closed down and whole chains being closed down due to one franchise's transgression, but at least we have something to work with. I think I'll send the governor a thank-you note.

The law goes into effect January 1st.

Immigration Bill Defeated

Yesterday the immigration bill was defeated. Good! Nobody seemed to like it anyway.

But we still have the problem of illegal immigration. And we still have approximately 12 million immigrants here in this country. What to do? I was watching the O'Reilly Factor earlier this week, and somebody remarked that rounding up 12 million people and deporting them would clog up the legal system. I think that's a rather shortsighted view. If we were to deport all the illegal immigrants, who says that it would have to be done overnight?

There are two parts to this problem. The people getting in, and the people that are already here. These problems would probably be best tackled separately... if I was in Congress, I would tackle the problem of the people still coming in first. If you start dealing with the people that are here first, it's like trying to put your finger in the dam to keep it from leaking. The dam must be taken care of first.

So how do we take care of that? I suggest that you take care of both the means that people come in, and the motivation. Take care of the means by securing the border. Use a fence. The Minutemen are practically willing to build one for the country, I don't see why we couldn't take advantage of that resource. Ask for donations. Why does everything have to go through taxes? I'm sure many people would volunteer to donate. I would consider donating to that, even though I won't even donate $1 of my tax money for political campaigns.

We shouldn't stop at a fence and border patrols though. People will still dig under the fence, come in by boat or through Canada, etc., if they have the motivation. Don't offer services to illegal immigrants, except life-saving medical care. Punish companies who willingly hire illegal immigrants. I know that illegal immigrants sometimes take the social security numbers of dead people and children, and companies can unknowingly hire them... I'm not talking about that. But there are some companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants... sometimes even PREFER illegal immigrants. Fine them. Also fine private individuals who hire illegal immigrants as maids, carpenters, pool guys, and landscapers. I realize that finding private individuals is more difficult... don't send too many resources that way to start, but if you find a private individual knowingly hiring an illegal, fine them.

Once we can take care of the flood of people coming into this country, focus on the people already here. Do we send the Gestapo out to knock on everybody's doors and have everybody show their papers? No, that would be silly. But we can start somewhere. Why not start in the prisons? Once we release an illegal immigrant from jail, it's deportation time. That is a good start. As the jobs for illegal immigrants start drying up, it will cause some natural attrition... that continues the reduction of illegal persons in this country.

When the prison population of illegal immigrants starts drying up, we can start finding and deporting individuals from other places. Schools. Hospitals (we'll fix you up and save your life, but then we'll send you packing back to your home country). Those guys waiting on the side of the road for people to pick them up and give them jobs. If we can even reduce the illegal immigrant population from 12 million to 5 or even 10 million this way, we've succeeded.

I know that this sounds mean. I don't know if a bill like this would succeed because it would require people to not be pansies. We'd have to get tough, and say ENOUGH! A lot of people in government nowadays don't have that kind of courage.

But how kind is it to allow people to exist here as a permanent underclass? To allow people here to take advantage of the illegal immigrants by hiring them for a pittance, giving them jobs that are not safe, etc.? I know that many employers aren't like this, but there are many that do, and the illegal immigrants can't complain because then the government will find out their legal status. There have been even worse cases... illegal immigrants have been taken as slaves, many died several months ago in a fire because many of them lived crammed in a little apartment in unsafe conditions. If we force them to return home, these people... who may just be the some of the most courageous, adventurous, etc. from their home countries... they can perhaps create change in their countries at home, whatever it may take.

Unfortunately, I feel that our inability to control immigration in this country is a problem with us... the United States citizens. We have forgotten who God is. We don't follow him. I think that a passage from Leviticus is relevant:

Lev 26:14 But if you will not listen to Me, and will not do all these commandments,
15 and if you shall despise My statutes, or if your soul hates My judgments, so that you will not do all My commandments, so that you break My covenant;
16 I will also do this to you:
I will even appoint terror over you, consumption, and burning fever, consuming the eyes and causing sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.

Most of us aren't farmers... but when people come into this country and take advantage of resources that we have worked for, I see that as the 21st century equivalent.