Immigration

In the assorted news stories covering the guy quarantined for traveling with tuberculosis, I came across this gem:

A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday.[...]

The unidentified inspector explained that he was no doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely “discretionary,” officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press.

You know…why are we so concerned with locking down our borders when…?

Election Law Blog noticed an “interesting” addition to the proposed immigration “compromise”:

Notwithstanding the requirements of section 303(b), each State shall require individuals casting ballots in an election for Federal office in person to present a current valid photo identification issued by a governmental entity before voting.

True, there’s also language in the bill to help states get IDs into the hands of folks who need them, but that doesn’t address the fact that folks without ID’s are more likely to lean a certain way politically, that some of the elderly and disable have issues with acquiring identification, and that there are a few religious groups that have issues with being required to carry photo identification.

Might as well just barcode everybody and be done with it, I guess.

Seen on Tom Delay’s blog:

There is a time and a place for bipartisan compromise – and this is not it. What has resulted is an amnesty bill hampered by ridiculous and unenforceable ‘path to citizenship’ requirements that no sane illegal immigrant would consign themselves to. As for me, I’d prefer a little more principled partisanship and clearer more effective legislation as a result.

Hey, Tom — while I agree that there are issues with the bill, aggravated by sloppiness presented under the guise of bipartisanship, and I’d also like to see “clearer more effective legislation”…I’m not so sure that “principled partisanship” is what’s needed here.

How about a heaping helping dose of realism?

If I wanted “principled partisanship” rather than realism, I would be spending a lot of time here talking up Ron Paul in the 2008 primary race, rather than dismissing him as too idealistic and someone who will be perceived by many (most?) voters as a nut…and instead focusing my handicapping on folks who are viable realists.

TalkLeft has promised a dissection of the proposed immigration reform “compromise”, now that actual language is out.

The first little nugget that has been uncovered:

The Secretary shall construct or acquire, in addition to existing facilities for the detention of aliens, at least 20 detention facilities in the United States that have the capacity to detain a combined total of not less than 20,000 individuals at any time for aliens detained pending removal or a decision on removal of such aliens from the United States subject to available appropriations.

I still think that the hoops being erected to normalize the status of the undocumented immigrants makes this a bad idea.

Seen in the Washington Post:

A bipartisan group of senators reached a delicate compromise today on what could be the biggest overhaul of immigration law in more than 40 years. The measure, which has the backing of the Bush administration, offers the nation’s 12 million undocumented workers a route to legal status but would also bolster border patrols and enhanced enforcement of rules for hiring aliens.[...]

Under the deal, undocumented workers who crossed into the country before Jan. 1 would be offered a temporary-residency permit while they await a new “Z Visa” that would allow them to live and work lawfully here. The head of an illegal-immigrant household would have eight years to return to his or her home country to apply for permanent legal residence for members of the household, but each Z Visa itself would be renewable indefinitely, as long as the holder passes a criminal background check, remains fully employed and pays a $5,000 fine, plus a paperwork-processing fee.

A separate, temporary-worker program would be established for 400,000 migrants a year. Each temporary work visa would be good for two years and could be renewed up to three times, as long as the worker leaves the country for a year between renewals.

The temporary-worker program would come into force only after new border controls come into force and a crackdown against employers hiring undocumented workers is undertaken.

While I can imagine that some undocumented immigrants would take the chance to become normalized…I can’t help but wonder if the disincentive of a $5,000 fine and the requirement to return to their home country to apply will permit more than a dent to be made in the number of undocumented workers in the country.

Also, the year gap requirement in the temporary-worker program? Doesn’t that create an incentive to simply not leave the country?

I realize that such measures are required to get the support of xenophobic congresscritters, but I can’t help but wonder if a bigger mess isn’t being made here.

As I have been catching up on the highlights of the assorted immigration rallies today, a thought has occurred to me.

A flashpoint among counter-protesters has been the abundance of Mexican flags being flown by the pro-immigrant protesters.

I can’t help but wonder - how many of the folks who are upset at the Mexican flag being flown are also supporters of the display of the Confederate Battle Flag?

The Wall Street Journal has an article describing a market some auto insurers have been exploring — undocumented immigrants.

In tapping this new market, auto insurers are addressing a big concern for residents in many states: the potentially costly prospect of getting into an accident with an uninsured driver. Undocumented immigrants without insurance have been known to flee the scene of an accident, even abandoning their vehicles. They also sometimes plead with the other driver to let them pay for any damages in cash, to avoid being exposed as uninsured. In New Mexico, which passed legislation allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses in 2003, police say that the state’s roads are now safer.[...]

Jeff Dailey, chief executive of publicly held insurer Bristol West Holdings Inc., which specializes in nonstandard, high-risk insurance, says that the “foreign driver” segment has proved to be “good business for us,” and has attracted multiple competitors. Mr. Dailey says sales agents for his company, which agreed last month to be acquired by Farmers Group Inc., accept a Mexican matricula consular card — an I.D. issued by the Mexican Consulate — from immigrants who don’t have a foreign driver’s license.

The article mentions that some folks are upset with the idea of extending coverage to folks who aren’t legally in the country, on the grounds that such recognition legitimizes them.

Personally, I can’t help but give some respect to folks who care enough to take the appropriate precautions to indemnify those who may be accidentally injured through their actions. At the very least, they’re showing more responsibility than the millions of citizens who are driving around without liability insurance, and without the resources to clean up any accidental messes they may make.

As reported at 27B/6:

Just two days after it began accepting applications for H1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today started turning people away.

OK, so as a society we appear to complain about how immigrants seem to tend to fill only the low-end of the employment totem pole, how high tech industries are outsourcing work to Asia, and how elevated demand for tech workers is leading salaries in certain lines of work to be skewed ridiculously high as compared to other fields.

And the immigration quota for highly skilled workers from abroad is filled in just two days.

Does anyone else see an inconsistency here?

You may have heard by now that Nashville ruffled some feathers and fueled the national immigration debate by passing an English-Only ordinance, which the city’s mayor has recently vetoed. The Tennessean is carrying the mayor’s veto message, which shows one of the problems with such legislation:

The Legal Department is clear in its opinion today that advised me that this ordinance is unconstitutional. The ordinance states that “all communications . . . shall be in English.” The exceptions are so broad that there is no way to know what is and is not allowed.

What do we do when a Kurdish or other refugee wants to take an English class at the Cohn Adult Learning Center?

What do we do when a Japanese company wants to find out about economic development opportunities?

What do we do when a foreign tourist wants to find out how to get to the Parthenon?

What do we do when someone who only speaks Spanish wants to report suspicious activity in a neighborhood, or a codes violation, or a pothole?

I cam empathize with those who may feel that our “Americanness” is threatened by recent immigration trends. I agree that people who intend to live in the country permanently or for an extended period of time ought to be able to function in English.

However, it would be foolish to believe that all official communication can or should take place in English. The mayor’s comments highlight a few examples of that.

Civilization as we know it won’t be destroyed because folks whose mother-tongue is Spanish are moving to the country. We’ve been through this before, and presumably are better because of it:

The New York Times has an interesting article today discussing expectations that New Orleans population may stabilize at half its pre-Katrina level.

Much of the article focuses on how New Orleans’ economy wasn’t strong enough to support its full population anyway…but folks were just too poor to move away.

The statistics, which compare the number of people actually working with the total working-age population, suggest “there are a lot of people out there not working,” said Mr. Oakland, referring to the period before Hurricane Katrina. Or, he said, they were working in an underground economy, not measured by statistics. If not actually illegal, he said, it was not very profitable.[...]

In the city’s poorest areas, the numbers were even more discouraging. In places like the Lower Ninth Ward or Central City, half of all working-age people were not looking for work, Mr. Oakland wrote. The real unemployment rate in these impoverished, high-crime areas, which would include those not looking for work, would have been a “whopping” 32 percent, he wrote.

There’s a suggestion in the article that the diaspora of Katrina refugees may have a hidden benefit for some of the poorest of the poor — they were provided the means to relocate to places where they could have better opportunities…or that could provide better services for them, at least.

Whether there was a hidden benefit for the poorest New Orleanians, as opposed to their simply being absorbed and hidden by the ranks of the poor in other areas, I suspect we may never conclusively know.

However, I am reminded here of the seemingly conflicting problems of chronic unemployment in certain segments of the population of certain cities…and the chronic labor shortages in certain segments of the market which seem to fuel the demand for illegal immigrants.

You’d think that the powers that be, who might perceive illegal immigration as a problem, might think about finding ways to connect the chronically unemployed with the chronically understaffed portions of the market, even if relocation might be involved.

I’m sure that there are a few stories of success hidden amidst the tragedy of Katrina to provide a little political fuel for such a program.