Friday, August 9, 2019

HOMELESS IN AMERICA WHERE THERE ARE 40 MILLION ILLEGALS AND THOUSANDS INVADING EVERY DAY

What Do the Latest ICE Raids Augur?

·                    

This week’s ICE raids of chicken plants in Mississippi, which apprehended 680 illegal workers, has generated the usual howls of outrage from the pro-illegal-immigration crowd. There was a tsunami of “but look at the crying children!” variety of coverage, but the award for the most unhinged response goes to the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), founded 90 years ago as a pro-assimilation patriotic organization, which denounced the raids as “state terrorism“.
Actually, it’s long overdue. Enforcement the ban on hiring illegal aliens has been laughably flaccid, under both Republicans and Democrats, as Pulitzer Prize winner Jerry Kammer laid out here. Tom Homan pledged two years ago that ICE would step up worksite enforcement and there has, in fact, been an increase. One of the obstacles, though, has been bureaucratic — the bureau within ICE responsible for such work, Homeland Security Investigations, is largely led by former Customs Service guys who couldn’t care less about immigration. That’s one reason under Obama the ICE press releases were mainly about counterfeit Gucci handbags and illegal imports of ancient artifacts and the like.
Fine, but without illegal aliens, who will debone the chicken? As happened after the 2006 Swift & Co. meatpacking raids, the targeted plants will raise wages and cast their recruitment net wider. And there are plenty of potential workers. My colleague Steven Camarota coincidentally published a report this week showing that Mississippi has the lowest labor-force participation rate of any state; in the first quarter of this year, only 62 percent of non-college native-born adults in Mississippi were working or actively looking for work. That’s fully 20 points lower than first-place Iowa, and a 12-point drop even from Mississippi’s rate during the same period in 2000. The idea that we’re running out of potential workers, even in today’s good economy, is comical. It may well be that those American workers who don’t already have a job are harder to employ – ex-cons, maybe, or recovering addicts or what have you. But importing foreign workers to fill entry-level jobs not only does nothing to address their employability problems; instead, it’s a crutch that enables us to ignore the problems of our own workers. To be blunt, too many employers are satisfied with leaving marginal American workers to their welfare checks and opioids, and importing foreigners to take their place.
Another critique of such raids is that they’re just body-count exercises – a few illegals are deported, the rest get jobs elsewhere, and the employers get a slap on the wrist, if that. This is a real danger. But a clue that this operation might be different comes in the ICE press release, which referred to “seizing business records pertaining to the ongoing federal criminal investigation”. While it can be easy to deport the illegal workers, especially if they’re among the 1 million illegals who’ve ignored deportation orders and become fugitives, the law makes it much more difficult to make a criminal case stick against the employers. But even here, raids like this are essential, as we saw with the 2008 raid against a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. That plant had been suspected of all kinds of labor violations for years – wage and hour, occupational safety, child labor, you name it – but neither state nor federal investigators could ever get the evidence they needed. But when the plant was raided, many of the illegal workers were charged with their own crimes – ID theft, tax fraud, perjury, etc. – and that gave prosecutors leverage to get them to rat out the management in exchange for leniency. Let’s hope that’s what the feds have in mind in Mississippi.
Also this week, the Washington Post published the latest in its series of stories on illegal workers at various Trump properties. There’s nothing particularly new in this story, which focuses on illegal aliens who worked at a Trump-owned construction company – the paper has been documenting for months now that illegals have worked at Trump golf clubs and resorts, and the president’s sons, who run the operations, have said they’re signing up all their properties with E-Verify (a few had already been using it, but most weren’t). They should have enrolled in E-Verify in 2015, at the latest, in preparation for the campaign, but better late than never. Reporting like this is important to make sure they follow through.
But one nugget from the story was interesting, if unsurprising: “Another immigrant who worked for the Trump construction crew, Edmundo Morocho, said he was told by a Trump supervisor to buy fake identity documents on a New York street corner.” This is probably true, though it happened 19 years ago, and the supervisor is both retired and blind, so it’s too late to make any charges stick. Nonetheless, the Post should turn over to ICE the names of any current supervisors they’re told about who engaged in illegal activity. ICE may follow through, or not – either way it’s news and people should know. 
But something the president had said last month points to assignment for ICE: “Probably every club in the United States has that [illegal workers], because it seems to me, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”So let’s see some arrests at golf courses, too.


Pushback

In some blue cities, a divide is opening between an activist political elite and liberal—but more pragmatic—voters.
Summer 2019
Politics and law
Economy, finance, and budgets
Cities

The political ground may be starting to shift in America’s bluest cities. While San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver remain reliable Democratic strongholds, a divide is opening between the cities’ activist political elite and a liberal, but more pragmatic, majority of voters.
In Denver, voters recently rejected Initiative 300, the “right-to-survive” ballot measure that would have legalized homeless encampments in public spaces. The city’s activist class—progressive politicians, social-justice organizations, and nonprofit service providers—claimed that the city’s camping ban, in place since 2012, is unconstitutional and inhumane. They argued that, since society forces the homeless onto the streets, it must afford them the “right to exist,” which would include living on public property, without interference from law enforcement. Citizens, businesses, and neighborhood groups—led by the Downtown Denver Partnership, National Association of Realtors, and Colorado Concern—rose up in opposition to the initiative, raising more than $2.3 million to fight it. Voters rejected Initiative 300 by an 81 percent to 19 percent margin.
The public sentiment behind the Denver vote has been growing in cities up and down the West Coast, where rampant homelessness has led to deterioration in the quality of life for many residents. In Washington State, progressive lawmakers and activists tried to pass a similar “survival crimes” bill through the state legislature, but it died in committee after a barrage of public opposition. Even in hyper-progressive Seattle, 68 percent of voters don’t trust the mayor and city council to make progress on homelessness, and 53 percent support a “zero-tolerance” policy on encampments.
In San Diego, Mayor Kevin Faulconer—a Republican in a city with a Democratic majority—plans to reinstate a ban on sleeping in cars and RVs in residential neighborhoods and parking lots. He argued that the city must balance compassion with the enforcement of public-safety laws. “If you are living out of your vehicle because you have nowhere else to go, we want to help you,” Faulconer told reporters. “At the same time, residents and businesses have a right to clean and safe neighborhoods. We will not allow conduct that takes advantage of San Diego’s generosity and destroys the quality of life in our communities.”
The rift between progressive elites and the broader electorate might signal the beginning of a political realignment focused on quality-of-life issues. It’s not a traditional left–right division but more of a top–bottom cleavage, between an elite activist class and a popular majority with wide-ranging political views that has run out of patience with social-justice policymaking. Citizens in these left-leaning enclaves understand that homelessness deserves greater public attention, but they oppose decriminalization of public camping, open-air drug consumption, and low-level property crimes, which has led to a breakdown in public order. Whether they can build the political infrastructure to shape a new governing reality is the question.



oe Biden: No More ICE Workplace Enforcement, Deportations

Democratic presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks about White Nationalism during a campaign press conference on August 7, 2019 in Burlington, Iowa. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
Tom Brenner/Getty Images
5:22

The Democrats’ leading 2020 candidate, Joe Biden, posted a tweet suggesting he would bar the arrests and deportation of illegal migrants who are hired by companies in place of Americans.

“This is who Donald Trump is: a president determined to terrorize immigrant communities and rip apart families — at the border and across our country,” Biden tweeted images of migrants’ upset children in Morton, Mississippi. The photos were taken as enforcement agencies arrested hundreds of foreign migrants who were working in local slaughterhouses.
“We are a nation that will end these cruel policies,” Biden wrote.
The migrants had replaced American job-seekers in Mississippi, helping to ensure the state has the lowest rate of working adults in the United States.


In contrast, Phil Bryant, the GOP governor of Mississippi, tweeted his support for the enforcement of the nation’s immigration and workplace laws on his own state’s chicken industry.


Enforcement officials have not announced how many of the arrestees are illegal workers. Some are likely recent central American migrants who received temporary work permits after bringing some of their children to the border and then asking for asylum.
State officials touted an August 12 job fair for people considering jobs at the slaughterhouses. The company advertisement did not announce promised wage levels.

KOCH FOODS is hosting a job fair on Monday, August 12, 2019, from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the Forest WIN Job Center.

Applicants will need to provide two forms of valid ID when applying. @Koch_Foods

View image on Twitter

458 people are talking about this

For many years, the poultry companies have rejected many lower-skilled workers and have instead hired migrants, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Who are the American workers they are ignoring? Black workers” said Krikorian. “Let’s face it- the employers did not want to hire black workers. They see them as more trouble than they are worth if they can hire illegal immigrants from Latin America instead. In effect, these anti-border groups on the left are conspiring with employers to elbow out black Americans from these jobs.”
The inflow of illegals also has the greatest impact on the least capable workers who cannot get or hold jobs, even when the economy is doing well, he said.
“The migrants are probably better workers than the Americans who don’t have jobs in this economy — that’s probably true because the Americans who don’t have jobs in this economy are more likely to be recovering addicts or recovering convicts,’ said Krikorian. “Business is going to have to deal with that.”

ICE is enforcing migration & employment laws on corrupt Mississippi meatpackers who have long used political power to hire illegals & suppress wages for thousands of people. But media & elites ignore the $$$ and prefer to follow a group of crying children. http://bit.ly/31oTQNS 

26 people are talking about this

Democrats argue that worksite enforcement actions are traumatic, and should be replaced by prosecutions of company managers after quiet inspections of company hiring records. However, under President Barack Obama, worksite inspections or enforcement slipped back to the levels seen during the tenure of President George W. Bush. Also, in 2012, Obama announced he would give work permits to hundreds of thousands of younger illegals under the so-called “DACA” amnesty.
Biden has already staked out a pro-migrant, pro-employer position in the Democrats’ 2020 debate.
“We should … [and] I proposed, significantly increasing the number of legal immigrants who are able to come,” he said in the Democrats’ second debate. He continued:
This country can tolerate a heck of a lot more people. And the reason we’re the country we are is we’ve been able to cherry-pick from the best of every culture. Immigrants built this country … We are a country of immigrants. All of us. All of us. Some here came against their will; others came because they in fact thought they could fundamentally change their lives … That’s what made us great.

Genial Joe Biden hides his elitist cheap-labor agenda with the usual illegal-migration-bad/legal-migration-good schtick. Econ 101 = inc. labor supply pushes down wages (usually, esp. in short term, etc.). That's been the US economy since the 1990s. http://bit.ly/2yt4yqa 

22 people are talking about this

Nationwide, at least 8 million illegals hold blue-collar jobs that would otherwise go to marginalized Americans, including people who are disabled, old, former drug addicts, ex-convicts, or psychologically troubled people.
Also, a growing share of illegal migrants and guest workers hold white-collar jobs that would otherwise have gone to U.S. graduates. Many U.S. graduates are being locked out of jobs because foreign-born recruiters have hidden incentives to hire foreign graduates instead of young American graduates.

India's ambassador explains why Indian gov't & biz are pushing HR.1044 & S.386 green-card/country-caps bill. Bonus: He thanks Dem/GOP Representatives for helping India's economic strategy with vote to outsource more US graduates' jobs to Indian H-1B/OPTs. http://bit.ly/32RaerZ 

44 people are talking about this

Immigration Numbers:
Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university. This total includes roughly 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business, health care, engineering, science, software, or statistics.
But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately 1 million H-1B workers and spouses — plus around 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.
The government also prints out more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.
This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth and returnsfor investors because it transfers wages to investors and ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.
This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.
The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal citiesexplodes rents and housing costsshrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.

No comments: