Your scribe notes calls for the removal of illegal aliens from America by using eVerify (google it) an electronic means that allows employers to detect illegals and, so says the law, deny them jobs. The illegals will then, it is thought, return voluntarily to their home countries.
Will it work? Maybe so. It certainly has better optics than that of swatted out police shoving illegals into paddy wagons. Yet there are many, to include idealistic liberals and practical conservative businessmen, who will want eVerify to fail and will set about securing this end.
Consider hypothetically a meat-packing company with three slaughter houses, each employing fifty illegals. ICE agents show up with portable eVerify terminals. The illegals vanish into the woods. The slaughterhouses shut down. What now?
The cattlemen are angry because they have cattle and nothing to do with them. The meat-packing company is angry because it is taking huge losses. The supermarket chains are angry because they do not have hamburger to sell. The public is angry because it does not have hamburger to buy. The first three groups have lots of money with which to buy congressmen. The hamburger-deprived public votes.
I am no authority on meat packing and the foregoing doubtless can be argued. I believe the reader will take my point that disemploying illegals may have ramifications not considered by angry get-them-out enthusiasts who probably do not own slaughter houses.
The pattern will be replicated across many industries. There are said to be between ten and twenty million illegals. Call it fifteen. Probably at least ten million have jobs. That may seem a small number in a large country, but they are concentrated in a few industries, increasing their importance in these. They are perhaps crucial in agriculture, service industries, construction, warehousing, and the like. For example, a citrus grower in Florida needs his oranges picked, now, when they are ripe, or he will miss his mortgage payment and his offspring will have to drop out of Princeton. Blacks are not going to do it as they are poor employees, unreliable, with bad attitudes. These days, whites are a soft lot, unlikely to spend twelve hours a day doing hard physical work under a broiling sun for five dollars an hour. That leaves….
The grower is probably conservative, a Republican, in principle against open borders. But he needs his oranges picked. What do you suppose he will do? What would you do?
Maybe fifteen years ago an American couple who owned a small construction company visited my wife and me in Guadalajara. They told us that without (illegal) Mexican labor they would go out of business. Blacks, they said, did poor work, quit unexpectedly, did not take orders well, and complained of discrimination. Whites didn’t want the work, especially at wages the couple were able to pay. The Mexicans appreciated having the jobs, did not have disagreeable attitudes, and did good work. eVerify did not exist at the time, I think, but the pair exemplified a common truth: Neither illegals nor employers want eVerify.
A common notion voiced by those who favor eVeriffy is that illegal Latinos take American jobs. Actually, it is probably true that no Latino has ever taken an American’s job. How would he do it? Would he find an American digging a ditch, put a pistol to his head, and say, “Geeve me zee shoffel or I keel you”? The illegals have jobs because shiny white, conservative, Republicans, likely noisily patriotic, give them the jobs because the businessmen make more money. These know perfectly well that they are hiring illegals. They have more interest in having open borders than do those on the woke Left.
Note that strong laws against hiring illegals already exist. They are not enforced. The feds know where the illegals are. I suspect that the meat packing company above invented would be subject to RICO prosecution since those slaughter houses constitute an ongoing criminal enterprise. The sight of a few CEOs being led away in handcuffs would reduce enthusiasm for hiring illegals. It doesn’t happen. Why not? It can’t be because of corruption, which doesn’t exist in America. As suggested above, there are heavy-hitters in America who think cheap illegal labor is really swell, like peaches with cream on them.
An oft-expressed idea is that, without work, the illegals will “go back where they came from.” This may be true. Since they came to America because there were no jobs where they were, it isn’t clear what they would regain by returning. The job-prevention approach would be most likely to work for illegal Mexicans since Mexico is just across the border. According to at least some of the supporters of eVerify, others would be flown back to their countries of origin. Flying a million illegals to somewhere else would, at 250 per flight, take 4000 flights.
Here I speculate, and may be badly wrong. Still, I will guess that Congress, faced by much opposition to the effects of eVerify, , both publicly expressed and of the sort accompanied by lots of money under the table, will pun. The legislature to date has shown little interest in mass deportation. Should Kamala win, it will show less. It will say, “Certainly we need to return the undocumented people to their home countries to protect the American worker. but we must do it in a manner not to harm the American consumer and in a humane manner. The best way to achieve these goals is a guest-worker program and we will study that.” Then they will appoint a committee. Nothing will change, that being the purpose of a committee.
All in good fun. Note for the future: The best time to stop mass immigration is before it begins.
“Still, I will guess that Congress, faced by much opposition to the effects of eVerify, , both publicly expressed and of the sort accompanied by lots of money under the table, will PUN.”
[I’m sure you meant, PUNT.]
Btw, remember the 50s when Ike conducted ‘Operation Wetback’ (and early 60s until LBJ screwed everything up)?
I’m sure you know that back then, a LOT of work was done by White teenagers. I was one of them.
I teach in a rural non tourist brochure inland Florida town. My students are majority Hispanic with almost all of them born here and American citizens. They are as a group quiet, polite, modest and patriarchal. Being Catholic they almost all come from intact two parent homes. They are reminiscent of typical American kids from the 1950’s. Their parents run little grocery stores, restaurants and buy houses to lease to new Hispanic immigrants. Typical American story of ” moving on up”. As a teacher I will take my Hispanics any day and all day over rich snotty white American students or very poorly behaved Af-Am students. It’s not even a close call. I am a conservative school teacher somewhere to the right of the Republican Party. I concur with all you wrote. I see it everyday.
My, my. The meat packers can’t pack meat (or pluck chickens) because “Blacks are Lazy.”
Well, so what? Labor shortages are a good thing for those at the bottom. The history of American Blacks since the Civil War is that every time they start to enjoy about the same standard of living as most whites, the nation imports boat loads of desperately poor folks.
The same thing is happening today.
Well, I have no problem with labor shortages. It makes the capitalists work for their profits by investing in productivity.
Yeah, buddy! You know it! Poor, poor negro just can’t GET a break in this cracker-ass racist bigoted country. Nosireee! If only whitey would back off, come up with affirmative racism, uh, I mean, action. Or better, something like diversity, or equity, or inclusion, then we could finally overcome!
Just give the reparations and they wont have any more problems.
Use the model suggested in SFO and pop each one with 5 million dollars. There the problem is gone!
I’m sure your sentiments are shared by many. But a lack of empathy or understanding leading to indifference towards the plight of the American small businessman is ignorant and short-sighted.
I agree with Fred; that prevention of further illegal immigration, moving forward, would be more logical and effective, moving forward.
I wish the 15 million of them weren’t already here. But as my Grandma used to say, “If wishes were fishes we’d all have a fry.”
Hey Fred, Back in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, when young pups like us were given free transportation to Southeast Asia, there was in California and the southwest states at least, a semi-legal way to get cheap seasonal labor for the farmers to get the necessary work done in a timely matter. As I recall, they were called the Braceros. These folks would come up from Mexico during the various time of crop harvests and work throughout the season and then take their earnings and return to Mexico. It worked pretty well where I saw it, living in Cali’s central valley at the time. I knew several growers back then who would not otherwise be in business without this arrangement. It seemed to work well for all concerned. Then politicians got involved and, as usual, it took a trip in the handbasket to hell. I was out of the country from ’69 to ’73 and when I returned it was a mess. Years later, in a trip through Mexico I met with some families whose fathers and brothers had worked the farms in those years. All of them said it was a key to the success of their children and grandkids because they otherwise would never been able to raise themselves above poverty without the income from those men and women who came north to work. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Moral of the tale: Politics is poison. Leave people to their own business and it works pretty well. Get government evolved and, sooner or later, it all goes to shit.
There weren’t enough Braceros and kids, like me, went to the fields as well. I picked strawberries, raspberries, and beans while I lived in Oregon in the early 60s..
The solution is obvious. Wages rise, and either margins go down and/or prices go up. CEO wages can go down on the big companies. You act like this is an unsolvable problem Fred. It’s not. Possibilities involve forcing CEO wages down by law, including stock options. Subsidizing certain industries for a few years to offset inflation of prices due to wages. Taking the savings from not having the Illegals on Medicaid and food stamps and plowing it into these industries.
I’m sure others can think of more.
The point being, if there’s a problem – there can be solutions. Stop being defeatist.
I love the idea of wages going up and CEO salaries dropping to reasonable levels, but what suggestions do you have for making it happen? I agree that Fred is perhaps a tad defeatist, but there are no easy answers, except when with a group of buddies in a bar after a few beers.
BTW, it’s not just a ‘Murrican problem. It’s the same in Europe. As for the UK,. the Brexit removed a lot of cheap labor from eastern Europe. Result? Some farmers have just given up and sold their land to developers. Last time I was in the UK, I saw a lot of new housing outside the towns. On the other hand, there is less in the way of local produce. A big opportunity for the Spanish, I suppose. Those nice people who employ lots of North Africans to work in the greenhouses of the “Sea of plastic” in southern Spain at nugatory rates. But hey, the consumer gotta eat.
You’d have to legislate it – We already have set legislative caps on CEO pay in terms of dollars. We just didn’t do anything about stock options, which is why companies are ran into the ground right now. We need to change that, and tie the pay gap into a % of the worker’s pay, including stock options, and all other benefits, so that companies don’t find another way to get around the legislation.
And, as I stated – if you took the money saved from medicaid/medicare, and food stamps, that is currently going to illegals, and instead plowed it into the industries for a few years to support them having to hire local wage earners, to offset the cost of hiring whites, on a per worker basis, you could control the inflationary pressure. Say the food industry – you cover 100% first year, then 80, 60, 40, 20, 0 – on a per worker basis. You take away their ability to whine about inflation, you give more money to the blue collar to cover the cost of goods, and time for the money to get saved up in the economy. And, you get to collect more taxes to boot, while less gets sent back to Mexico!
How does this not work? When people say “They take jobs American’s won’t do” what they’re really saying is, “They take working and living conditions that are bullshit, for business owners to get rich on, and American’s refuse to put up with it.” So, you have to change that.
Would a Mexico 60% full of Han Chinese still be Mexico? Will an America 60% full of non- Whites still be America? But hey, at least the oranges get picked. Perhaps we should consider paying more for our oranges. We won’t of course. We will simply allow the country to become a giant favela. What a shame.
You certainly can stop illigal aliens from working, by digital means.
In Denmark if you don’t have a CPR number, you can’t work, because you can’t pay tax, so the company can not deduct your salary. Which means no job for you.
It works. But it does not come free, because salaries are higher and that means importing certain products which can’t be made economically domestically.
I recall an immigration raid in an industrial park nearby a decade or more ago. The feds picked up a busload of “improperly documented” workers.
If I recall correctly, the media reported that each worker had given the employer a Social Security number at the time they were hired. The employer forwarded withheld taxes for each worker to the IRS.
What made the IRS suspicious, was that none of these workers filed to get refunds of over-collected taxes like other Americans normally would. I guess the workers thought that the withholding was part of “the cost of doing business.”
I think of this case every time some commenter suggests none of the undocumented pay any taxes. Clearly, some did. They gamed the system, but not quite enough.
That seems a solution but those who can’t work will then turn to crime in order to eat etc. causing the crime rate in Denmark to soar and sleeping on the streets. Does this not happen?
No, crime is low in Denmark and with few sleeping in the streets. Those who do sleep in the streets are mostly Romanian, and they are legal as EU citizens.
For the illigals who would like to like to work knowing that they will NOT be hired is enough to keep them away.
The border is wide open because the Chamber of Commerce-type Republicans want cheap labor, and Democrats want new voters.
you don’t need a wall or more laws,take away the incentives that are bringing most of them here.if they come here to work,so be it,but don’t give any of them a handout.
See the Academy Award-winning documentary AMERICAN DREAM. About middle-class, dedicated meatpackers who were fired to de-unionize. After doing that, the new corporate owners hired nothing but Mexicans (this in the Midwest) and paid as cheaply as possible.
That was forty years ago. Forty years of chasing the lowest wage in a country that expects to maintain First World status. And the fact is the USA is NOT considered First World by quite a few people both in the country and elsewhere.
Get your clock fixed, Fred. It’s not 1976 anymore. Socialism or communism or maybe even fascism would work better than what we have now.
EXACTLY. After graduating high school in 1974, I worked at a John Morrel pork plant
making a great upper middle class wage. $10.00 per hour, plus medical and retirement benefits. After that, in 1976 I worked in concrete and brick-laying. I earned enough to buy a decent home and a new car and had 2 weeks of take home pay left each month, after home and car payments. EVERY MAN in both professions WAS AN AMERICAN. NOT ONE ILLEGAL. Americans did those jobs until the border floodgates opened in the ’80’s. Then, wages gradually went down when measured against then cost of living. Americans gradually quit working those jobs because they could not earn enough to buy that average home or the average new car. Illegals gradually took almost all of those jobs because they weren’t only used to making much less in their home country, here they received free medical care by utilizing the Emergency Room entrance at any U.S. Hospital, free public schooling for their children, paid no income taxes, don’t buy car insurance because they know they will not be arrested (this according to my local deputy sheriff), receive “Earned Income Tax Credit” of several thousands $$ for their U.S. born children under 18 years old, pay ZERO to near-ZERO in income taxes and other subsidies and benefits that we do not receive and do not even know about. At this point, American men OF ANY COLOR have been winnowed out of those formerly good-paying jobs where hard work, sweat and sometimes dangerous working conditions were the norm. Because they cannot earn enough to survive and attain the American Dream, unless they can actually own the business and hire the cheap, illegal labor required to compete. And now, even if an American owns a business in the drywall, concrete, landscaping, painting, insulation, or any other non-licensed profession, he will be under-bid by an ILLEGAL ALIEN BUSINESS OWNER who now is competing against him and using 100% illegal labor. So, unless and until the scales are evened, American working class workers will not be able to compete with the highly subsidized illegal or immigrant labor.
Good post Nez!
Paying $5 per hour should be illegal. Is it in the US? In the UK £10 odd per hour is the minimum and would be used at least in large concerns. No large concern has folded and their buyers are still buying.
What happens to those immigrants accepting the $5 when more come and accept $3? Will the grower accept them or not?
If the orange farm paid the 10 or 12 dollars per hour they may even get whites? If the product is then too expensive for consumers to buy then the smaller grower won’t get so rich? It’s a tough problem I admit. I will read all the other comments.
I’m reminded of the recipe for getting rid of hordes of stray cats who have arrived at your back door for the free food. Stop feeding them.
This would work equally well for illegal aliens and people who find it far too easy to live well without working. If illegals couldn’t get welfare or a job, they would stop coming in such numbers. If the lazy had to actually work to qualify for subsistence level welfare, they would either find better paying jobs, or turn to crime, in which case they could be locked up. Of course, eliminating the free ride for most will never happen. UniParty politicians have found it far too profitable to provide a free ride in exchange for votes and contributions.
Spending money to attract them and then spending even more to build a wall to stop them is how we do things here in Amurca. The idea is to impoverish the taxpayers so they are too busy trying to make ends meet to have any time for armed rebellion.
We have a counterfeiting racket to pay for everything, but it’s still neat to think up more reasons to tax them. Keepin’ ’em down is how we servants serve.
– The Ruling Elite
“Note for the future: The best time to stop mass immigration is before it begins.”
The most effective policy to prevent mass immigration was Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which Biden cancelled on day one.
Why? It had nothing to do with compassion for the poor immigrants. It had nothing to do with cheap labor. It was only to create a large Democrat voting base to make national elections favor Democrats.
Meat packing executives have candidly admitted that they would have to shut down, without illegal aliens. If the INS wanted to round them up by the thousands, they could easily do so. Both political parties are remiss.
Some sort of guest worker program might work. At least things would be better than now.
Clinton did a lot to get rid of illegal alien workers, he replaced them with illegal American citizen workers.
Clinton changed divorce court from a civil court to a criminal court. After OJ was acquitted in criminal court, he was convicted in civil court, so he left California and lived very well on his $millions saved/invested outside California (the civil court seized all his assets in California as partial payment on the civil award, but it could not seize any of his assets outside of California). Before, many divorce courts ordered the man to pay more than 100% of his income in support to his ex. If the divorced man remained in his home state, he would be arrested for non-payment, thrown in gaol for a few days, then his non-payment would be partly forgiven, partly rescheduled, and he would be released. If he did not want to spend more time in gaol, he left his state and never went back.
But now divorce is a criminal court, and any divorced man who earns less than the amount of support awarded is a felon and goes to gaol (if he earns more, the IRS seizes the support at source and gives it to his ex). No judge can forgive or reschedule 1¢ of what the divorced man owes his ex. Every morning, he must be taken someplace where he can work and get paid, and in Texas, they had to build many very large, new prisons for all the divorced men who were unable to pay the full support awarded by the divorce courts.
Farmers drive to the prisons in their pick-em-up trucks, fill the trucks with felons from the divorced men’s prison, drive back to the farm and have the prisoners work all day, then take them all back to the prison at night. Every month, they give the prison cashier the full wages due the felons, wages that are sent to the ex-wives.
The farmers told me they all formerly employed illegal aliens, with hefty fines if they were caught, but with divorced men felons, it’s 100% legal, and the cost is the same or maybe less than what they had to pay the illegal aliens who could always leave if they found a better job, something the divorced felons cannot do.
Given the jobs the prisons find for the divorced felons, the ones who get the farm work figure they’re luckier than most.
And that’s why most Americans figure Clinton was one of the best presidents the US has ever had.
And the USA castigates the PRC for using prison labor? Jeez, this looks like a judicial clusterfuck, legally bringing back slavery.
Simple solution. First make it mandatory policy that ANY illegal arrested in America is FOREVER barred from future citizenship. Then end ALL the freebies and benefits that they are given. Once the gravy train ends most will self deport. The rest can generally be rounded up. Ending the scourge of the illegal invaders is simple. All it requires is the will to do so. The problem is not complicated and neither is the solution. But powerful evil people don’t want the problem solved. Get rid of those powerful evil people and most of America’s problems would be solved. It has been said that if you rounded up the correct 1000 people and summarily shot them things in America would turn around almost overnight.
I am certainly unhappy with the infusion of illegals thanks to Lonesome Joe. Many businesses have closed their doors in my western town of 10K population because lower income workers have either fled or rather stay home subsidized by government largess. We are in an unfortunate situation where we need these workers. I doubt a higher minimum wage would take care of the issue.
We can debate this one until the cows come home. The fix seems simple. Given: America needs a large number of illegals to function effectively. Most are good workers. Too many American citizens are lazy and live off the Uncle Sam tit.
Here is the plan to fix the problem:
1. Close all borders to illegals.
2. Stop all Freebies to illegals.
3. Round up and deport all illegals suspected of being subversive spies for enemy countries.
4. Deport all illegals with multiple arrest records as well as illegals convicted of violent crimes. A fast way for a ticket home is to become a criminal with a record.
That leaves a very large number of illegals who will help America run for years.
1. Give them an ID number (Not Social Security Number) so they can pay taxes.
2. Never allow them to vote (Fed, City or State) unless they have completed the current prescribed path to citizenship.
3. Don’t give citizenship to children born from illegals unless one spouse is married to an American citizen.
Perhaps my plan is an over simplification but I think effective, cost efficient and a damn good start at solving the problem. We seem to have talked it to death…..
–JB
What will all the immigrants do when the U.S. collapses and all the jobs and government freebies dry up? I can see heritage Americans (whites) self-segregating for mutual protection and economic survival in much the same way that blacks, Indians and Muslims etc do, already.
[…] Guest Post by Fred Reed […]
I can’t believe the racism here, both in the essay itself and the comments. Most of the people reacting don’t even seem to care that they portray themselves as racists. The sad part is that a huge majority probably call themselves Christians. Jesus wept.
What you see as racism, we see as rational judgements: i.e. a cist/benefit analysis: The cost of admitting the world’s poor migrants into the U.S. far exceeds the benefits. That’s rational. To us, those who think all thought about border control should be shut down, because it is racist — i.e. if it hurts someones’ feeling is emotional thinking. That’s too effeminate or childish for us.
The cry ‘Racist’ is a trump card used by people who do not have a rational argument.
With 1 vote out of a population of 300+ million, our votes and thoughts don’t count nor matter. Even though a majority of voters want stricter borders, they still vote, emotionally, for people with the opposite stance. No sense in dwelling on something which we have no control over. We’d have to root or become disruptive. But, that’s no going to happen.
The Republic took the fork in the road that led to Empire long ago. It takes some people longer to learn that fact than others. The immigrant policy is just a part of that path.
“God laughs at those who deplore the effects of which they cherish the causes”. – Bossuet
I suppose that your point is that the easiest and safest way to identify illegal immigrants for expulsion is to focus on the more respectable ones i.e. those who have jobs with respectable employers. Alas, these are the ones who are likeliest to be making a useful contribution to your economy.
Whereas the ones that should best be expelled first are the violent ones who would put the lives of the enforcement agents at risk and would also, perhaps, be the hardest to track down.
We all know, surely, that this is general characteristic of government organisations: take the easy way out; for instance punish the people least likely to fight back.
Give a month or two to self-deport. Afterwards, deportation begins with fines and civil asset forfeiture – good enough for citizens natural and otherwise, Bournemouth for illegal aliens.
So much needs doing …
Welfare, dual citizenship especially among elected politicians, natural born definition, legal chain immigration, …
I am giving myself a headache.
Bournemouth = good enough
This half well thought out article informs us of the sadness that will follow making illegal aliens … illegal. But it is only a half thought out article. 70% of illegals are on welfare, so eliminating them would decrease welfare expense. The half part not thought out in this essay is the 15 million illegals just came over in the last 5 years. We had plenty of beef and vegetables before they showed up and without them we will still have plenty. Indeed with the 10 million not working illegals gone we will have more food for those legally here. Our excess we can export back to the people who left us but this time they will pay for it.
‘The illegals vanish into the woods.’
And return once the ICE agents leave…
You are twenty years behind the times. Mexican migration is now net NEGATIVE in the USA. The people coming here illegally are not Mexican, and most don’t speak Spanish. Mexico is no longer third-world, there are good jobs for Mexicans in Mexico. The people coming here illegally are Central and South Americans, including a fair percentage of gang members, Africans, Asians, Muslim terrorists, etc..