Should Virginia make deporting illegal immigrants from the state or educating 4 year olds a higher priority? Does that sound like a ridiculous question? Well, believe it or not, it's the type of choice that Virginia legislators may have to make:
A proposal designed to increase the deportation of illegal immigrants in Virginia is going to require considerable new spending, key General Assembly members said Tuesday.[...]
Virginia, however, is facing a $641 million revenue shortfall this year, which could imperil any proposals that need new revenue. The deportation plan would require additional funds to hire personnel to supervise the detained aliens, for example.
[...]
"It's going to cost money, there's no way to avoid that," said Del. David Albo, R-Springfield, the commission's co-chairman.
Yeah, that's right Republican flat earthers, if you want your government to do something, it IS going to cost money. I know, what a concept! Also, what a concept that sometimes you have to make tradeoffs. Like, spending money to deport immigrants from Virginia rather than:
*Educating 4 year olds
*Providing a great education to all kids in Virginia
*Cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay
*Providing health care to all Virginians
*Coming up with the $100 billion to fund bridges, highways, railways, and other transportation needs over the next 20-30 years
*Funding stem cell research to cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Juvenile Diabetes, and many other terrible diseases
Of course, deporting illegal immigrants from Virginia is far, far more important than any of those things. Isn't it? Hmmmm.
What is it that you, Lowell, have against citizenship and the rights and privileges that go along with it? Republicans WANT illegal immigrants labor because it's cheap and the cost for it is paid by the state, not the employer. Democrats want, or think they want, a voting block to add to unions and blacks. Either way, it's taxpayers that lose.
Law of unintended consequences:
The state is making it tougher for businesses to hire illegal immigrants, so a lot of immigrants are unable to get work. This is a dangerous situation as the number of illegals loitering around with nothing to do is going to lead to other problems. Any one want to bet on what they find to occupy their time?
Abuser fees? Hey, "what part of illegal don't you understand?!?" Ever smoked pot? Hey, "what part of illegal don't you understand?!?" Ever had any kind of sex in Virginia besides missionary position with a woman who's your wife for procreation? Hey, "what part of illegal don't you understand?!?" Ever fail to use your signal while making a turn? Hey, "what part of illegal don't you understand?!?" Ever supported a president who lied to take the country to war?! Hey, "what part of illegal doesn't Bush understand?!?" We could go on and on all day with this. Isn't this fun? Hahahahahahahahahaha. Yeah, fun. And very enlightening too!
Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Times are great for the rich, but not so great for the working man:
http://www.seekingal... Median household income increased for the second year, by 0.7% to $48,200, but is still a distance from 1999's $49,244 peak. Furthermore, full-time workers saw their inflation-adjusted incomes drop for the third straight year, down 1.1% to $42,261 for males, and down 1.2% to $32,515 for females. Americans without a health plan also increased, the report said, by 5% to 15.8% of the population, or 47 million people (full story). "Too many lower- and middle-income Americans are not sharing in the gains," said Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank
The government has been consistently underestimating inflation and now with the credit crunch, we're heading into serious deflation (last seen in 1930s) : http://seekingalpha....
And, more importantly, the housing "deflation" that has recently arrived on the nation's doorstep would drive core CPI to nearly zero. This is much closer to outright deflation than the level of overall inflation that terrified the Fed back in 2002 - this is pretty close to Japan-style inflation.
Years ago we didn't see the illegal alien surge, they mostly worked for corporate farms. Last few years has seen the housing boom fueled by cheap Mexican labor and cheap Canadian lumber. The labor supply curve is sloped and when you increase labor, you decrease wages (although the person paying the wages wouldn't consider that a bad thing). People competing with illegal labor (typically the poor and voiceless) were neglected or dismissed : "lazy whites", "crack addicts", etc. Polite society calls the native victims "xenophobes".
Yes, it'd certainly be nice to look a the big picture; but the backlash was predictable. They were supposed to be a temporary fix, the workers would go home after making a few bucks. Guest worker program were supposed to sunset. But they didn't.
While we should have a modest immigration program that doesn't pick winners and losers in the native labor pool,
it's clear we bit off more than we can chew.
With American labor stagnating (and it's getting to be a long time now), it's understandable that there's dis-satisfaction with non-enforcement polcies.
Articulate Liberal Arts grads typically are not the victims of the non-enforcement or targeting for guest worker programs. The anguish of the joiner or carpenter whose real wages have been decimated are not always kindly expressed but should not be ignored.
We owe it to everybody to play by the rules.
Oh, those tech jobs us Americans won't do. Gotcha.
If you go after the illegal employers you attack the root cause of illegal immigration. And you avoid the nasty business of ripping children from their mother's arms for everyone to see on national television.
Now you dont need to spend all of that money on larger prisons and guards to babysit non-violent illegal aliens.
Also, and this is outside of the immigration debate but since we are talking about saving money - release all non-violent drug offenders (users not dealers) and get them into counseling if they need it. Also, focus the "war on drugs" which we aren't winning on the drug dealers, not drug users. Prison doesn't solve drug addiction and isn't designed to.
On the flipside Virginia's "right to work" tilt probably makes it a more welcoming environment for an undocumented, below the radar labor force.
TITLE 8 > CHAPTER 12 > SUBCHAPTER II > Part I > ยง 1153
1) We have a shortage of high-skilled labor in America.
There is no desperate labor shortage: civil rights leader Professor Norm Matloff dispels these myths here : Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage . "Software employers, large or small, across the nation, concede that they receive huge numbers of resumes but reject most of them without even an interview. One does not have to be a ``techie'' to see the contradiction here. A 2% hiring rate might be unremarkable in other fields, but not in one in which there is supposed to be a ``desperate'' labor shortage. If employers were that desperate, they would certainly not be hiring just a minuscule fraction of their job applicants."
2) Until we improve our educational system, we will continue to have a shortage of high skilled labor.
Education system is fine, people need incentives to go into certain fields. 10 of 15 biggest employers of H visas guest workers are Indian outsourcing firms, The rest are highly profitable companies like Microsoft and Oracle. There are companies which can afford to train Americans.
3) Immigrants who take the high-skilled jobs can only do so if no Americans are qualified for the job...Its in the law
It may be the law, but it's not the practice. Guest workers program is designed to lower wages and does. "The no qualified" American provisions are cynically and easily outflanked. There is a growth sector in the legal industry dedicated to working around this provision.
Education levels in the U.S. are probably higher than they've ever been. Yet we've only seen an increase of about 20% in the median wage since 1974 during a time when the size of the economy has grown by over 60%. In the period from 1949 to 1974 there was a doubling of the U.S. economy and a corresponding near doubling of the median wage.
Something is going on here and it's not just about immigration or worker training.
A great paper on the topic by some MIT Econ Profs . . .
An excerpt from the abstract . . .
http://www.voxeu.org...
In the "Golden Age" of 1947-73, labour productivity and median family income each roughly doubled. The median compensation of full-time workers (the numerator of the BPI) and labour productivity (the denominator) grew at the same rate from 1950 to the late 1970s. Simultaneously, income equality increased as very high incomes (illustrated by the 99.5th percentile) grew more slowly than labour productivity.In the 1970s stagflation, median compensation of full-time workers began to lag behind productivity growth, a trend that accelerated after 1980. In Figure 1, the lag is illustrated by the BPI declining from 0.6 in 1980 to 0.53 in 1990 and to 0.43 in 2005. This declining bargaining power of the average full-time worker is a useful way to describe why significant productivity growth since 1980 has translated into weak growth in earnings and compensation.
Many economists attribute the average worker's declining bargaining power to skill-biased technical change - technology, augmented by globalisation, which heavily favours better-educated workers. In this explanation, the broad distribution of productivity-gains during the Golden Age is often assumed to be a free-market outcome that can be restored by creating a more educated workforce.
We argue instead that the Golden Age relied on market outcomes strongly moderated by institutional factors. Following the literature on economic growth that emphasises the role of institutions in economic outcomes, we argue that institutions and norms affect the distribution of economic rewards as well as their aggregate size. Our argument leads to an explanation of earnings levels and inequality in which skill-biased technical change, globalisation and related factors function within an institutional framework. In our interpretation, the recent impacts of technology and trade have been amplified by the collapse of these institutions, a collapse which arose because economic forces led to a shift in the political environment over the 1970s and 1980s. If our interpretation is correct, no rebalancing of the labour force can restore a more equal distribution of productivity gains without government intervention and changes in private sector behavior.
It's called competition. Just as companies must compete and sell the best products and/or services, they must also compete for people in the labor market.
Subsidizing companies with cheap and exploitable labor is market manipulation, plain and simple. It has the opposite effect - and drives people away from the occupation.
In software engineering, salaries have not been on par with inflation. How can that be if there is a shortage? This field is expensive to enter. You must constantly train for the newest technologies. It is a constant learning endeavor. Once you learn the ropes in many of the other occupations, there is very little else to learn. Not so in technology.
In short, the demands of the occupation justify higher salaries. If salaries go up, more people will be up to the challenge of meeting that demand.
When tech companies say "we have a shortage" what they really mean is that they can't find people to work for the salary they are willing to pay.
Where did you see that wages are not on pace with inflation? I could be wrong but I cant see tech wages not on pace with inflation over the last 10 years. Maybe they werent this last year but over the last 10? Been wrong before just seems a little strange to me.
a) They can substitute capital.
b) They can train new workers.
their productivity would suffer
a) Productivity gains can come from more efficiency.
less productive means less capital
a) assuming they can't raise prices. Greater demand
for output could raise productivty without
additional capital and labor investment. I'm assuming
you mean "return" when you say "capital".
profit only occurs if you have a efficient use of resources
a) Profit occurs when your income exceeds your expenses
I cant see tech wages not on pace with inflation over the last 10 years
a) If wages determine guest worker quotas, shouldn't we be demanding special programs for lawyers and doctors?
b) Go to http://www.bls.gov/w...
punch in finance and information and health/education.
hourly wages for "info" is up 5.7% annually
hourly wages for "finances" is up 7% annually
hourly wages for "health/ed" is up 6.14 annually
-- So, tech gains are trailing other professional services.
-- all these wages are probably dragging the real (i.e. housing adjusted) inflation rate.
___________
Bottom line is there is no labor shortages: just raise the pay and the workers will come.
They do have a program for this as well.
b) Go to http://www.bls.gov/w...
punch in finance and information and health/education.
hourly wages for "info" is up 5.7% annually
hourly wages for "finances" is up 7% annually
hourly wages for "health/ed" is up 6.14 annually
-- So, tech gains are trailing other professional services.
-- all these wages are probably dragging the real (i.e. housing adjusted) inflation rate.
The total private earnings are only up 4.3 percent tech outpaces the aggregate total year in and out. The CPI-W was 2.3%. It also outpaces PCEPI.
All I meant was that if a companies productivity was down it would have less money to pay its employees companies dont have to generate profit to pay thier employees after all.
Im just worried that companies will start outsourcing thier labor if they dont or cant find it here. That will cost more people thier jobs than the high tech segment we have been discussing.
Professional services have done fair to middling the last 7 year. Who's really hurting is the working poor and lower middle classes.
The government does not including housing prices in inflation stats; they use rent. They've seriously underestimated inflation. Against this productivity surge, the middle class is just barely keeping pace. The big boys are cleaning up.
If there's truly more demand for labor, then we'd see big pay increases.
As far as outsourcing goes, as long as government refuses to place tariffs on imported services on foreign countries that subsidize their export sectors, we will see outsourcing. Arguing that we need to import workers so that we can keep American jobs just doesn't seem quite right.
That said I don't have a problem with a modest, non-employer sponsored, citizenship immigration program for professional workers. Keywords here are modest and citizenship.
American business needs to rely on American workers and they can afford American workers.
I would recommend reading Vivian Paige's excellent post on the topic:
A few key factors:
1. The decline in the housing market has hurt both corporate and recordation taxes for new home sales.
2. Energy prices have limited sales tax revenue.
3. An increase in refunds this past year to the tune of about $220 million above forcasts has taken place to to a variety of factors (including various exemptions that the so called fiscal conservatives have put into the tax code).
Looming on the horizon of course is the Leona Helmsley/Paris Hilton rich person's estate tax cut which is going to pull hundred of millions of dollars out of the state treasury in the near term.
This boils down to a question of priorities.
As far as Albo's program goes, this is about as cynical as ploys come (and yes, he does think voters are that stupid apparently). Do you think it's any coincidence that Mr. Abuser Fees would be throwing out an expensive program which is likely to be popular with the base -- which will distract these voters from the dismal record of the GOP caucus at the state level.
The last thing we need is another major spending program to appease idiots.
relawson touches on some aspects -- enforcement costs won't be cheap. There will be no corresponding benefit in terms of the state's revenue growth. It's possible that some folks may see an increase in their wages as the labor pool is reduced -- however, this assumes that employers won't simply walk. Low taxes are great for corporations, but it doesn't help if the infrastructure is falling apart.