Charles Barkley makes for an interesting interview

[grysar]

There's a TNR interview with him (probably subscriber only).

I tend to agree with him on immigration:

"Illegal immigration to me is the easiest thing in the world to fix.. All they have to do is penalize the people they work for. You should get penalized. It's all poor people who argue over illegal immigration.They want poor people to--I call it divide and conquer... A lot of these politicians say things like"We've got to stop all these illegal immigrants." I am like, "That is so easy to stop." They are not working for other immigrants."

I'll have to check out his sports show at some point when it's covering something of interest to me.

Comments

[insheepsclothng.livejournal.com]

I think immigration is the one and only thing I agree with Bush about - do a guest worker thing to make it easier for people to work here legally and create a path to citizenship for the ones that are already here.

And after that, yeah, crack down on the businesses - if our agriculture and construction industries can't exist without illegal workers, either the law or the industry has got to change, and it won't without pain being applied.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I also tend to agree with Bush.

I'm just not sure that sequencing is going to work. I think the opponents want an increase in enforcement before any increase in legal guest workers. Although if it really is mostly anger about the "illegal" part there may be other ways to work a compromise.

No Amnesty

[(Anonymous)]

Reene,
A Guest Worker Program? Puh-lease!
Who's going to manage it? The U.S. Government? The same government who right now doesn't have any idea that there are 10 to 20 million illegals currently in this country?
Yeah, that's a great idea..........Reene.
Do you really think that a "guest worker" is just going to get up and leave the country when his "guest worker pass" expires?
You must be young. Only the young and inexperienced in these matters would believe such a thing.

Reene, if you're so concerned about keeping all the illegals here and providing jobs for them, how about if we give one them your job?
Oh, wait, that's a different story, right? You meant just menial jobs, right?
Well, guess what? There are many, many Americans that would just love to jump on one of those construction or landscaping jobs, IF THEY JUST PAID A LIVING WAGE!
The wages in these industries used to be right up there with some white collar jobs just ten to twenty years ago. Did you know that? Do you care?
Low wages in these industries are the DIRECT RESULT of illegal immigration.
Would you really rather see an illegal immigrant from Mexico get a good paying construction job over a black Vietnam Veteran who fought for your country?
Think about it, Reene. That's who you are hurting with your "Guest Worker" (really amnesty) way of thinking. Not everyone in America has a college degree, Reene.

Wake up! Illegals take American jobs away from Americans! Illegal means illegal! No Amnesty for illegals!

Rice

Re: No Amnesty

[insheepsclothng.livejournal.com]

Congrats, Greg! Looks like political spammers are taking notice of your LJ!

Re: No Amnesty

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'm so proud. ^_^

Anyways, generally speaking it's easier to manage a program than it is to manage a vast illegal population. But there is definitely some downward wage pressure. The hope would be, at least in construction, that new jobs are created as a result of the increase in infrastructure. That's not particularly true for landscaping. On the other hand, some landscaping jobs would probably go away. Demand is elastic to a degree, if you aren't a golf course or something.

The other element to this is the possibility of aid to Mexico. I think it is safe to say that the fairly moribund Mexican economy is a key driver here. Illegal immigration wouldn't magically disappear if there were more Mexican jobs, but it would probably make a big difference.

I do tend to believe a wall would actually work. Israel's had dramatic success after all, and I tend to think that migrants, while hard-core, are a bit less determined than suicide bombers. However, image aside, it would be really effing expensive.

We aren't that great at doing development aid, but it could probably be cheaper than building a wall across the southern border.

[lampbane.livejournal.com]

Lou Dobbs says pretty much the same thing - the people who employ them are the ones creating the problem.

I really hate the immigration debate because I feel it's too polarized - that it's been set up that if you're against illegal immigration, you're against immigrants in general. Which isn't true - it's the "illegal" part that many people have a problem with.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure there's too much support for in anti-illegal immigration circles for increasing the amount of legal U.S. immigration though. Although that's somewhat of a gut call. I'm not sure if it's been polled.

[lampbane.livejournal.com]

Is the legal immigration rate really low, though? I don't get the feeling that it is, even with the post 9/11 atmosphere.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I think 9/11 mostly affected more highly skilled workers and student (due to countries of origin). So yeah, it's not really the issue here.

My use of the word "low" was relative to apparent demand. The amount of illegal immigration does vary some based on the state of economy. It drops off some during recessions.

By many other standards it's probably not particularly low.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I also tend to think that Lou Dobbs lays more at the feet of both illegal/legal immigrants than is really economically supportable. From what I've read, high illegal immigrant areas don't correlate that strongly with areas where wages are greatly depressed.

[lampbane.livejournal.com]

You mean the jobs they're taking? I saw him on CNN the other week and he said that food service, construction work, and landscaping were the major areas where you'll find illegals, and that if there was a shortage of workers like so many claim, then the wages should be going up.

It made sense in theory. But I don't have any accounts of the current wages in any of those. I do know that a large portion of the people doing construction in New Orleans are Latino, though the things I've read on that kept away from the illegal immigration angle.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

The report was actually geographically based. I think it was linked to as part of free roaming NY Times article with the arguments on both side. I can hunt it down if you want more detail.

And, actually, come to think of it I may have botched the conclusions. I think they were actually more on unemployment rates than pay rates.