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Buried in this morning's story on panic amongst the nations farmers over the Smith E-Verify bill was this important news:
In a May letter to the members of the Judiciary Committee, Bob Stallman, the president of the American Farm Bureau, cited a Labor Department survey placing the percentage of illegal workers in the fields at more than 50 percent. Other groups say the figure is closer to 70 percent. Denying farmers that labor supply, Mr. Stallman wrote, would cost them $5 billion to $9 billion annually.
Mr. Smith's bill has attracted more solid support from nonagricultural business leaders, opening a divide between them and agricultural interests. Many nonfarm businesses have concluded that some form of employee verification is inevitable.
National organizations of restaurant owners and home builders gave their backing. The San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which unites Latino businesses in Mr. Smith's district that have often been at odds with him, is leaning toward endorsing the bill, said Ramiro A. Cavazos, the president of the chamber.
Still, Mr. Smith, whose district includes parts of suburban San Antonio and Austin as well as a large part of the nearby Hill Country, recently acknowledged the surge of worry in rural areas. He said he would soon introduce a separate bill to "address the needs of the agriculture industry," either proposing changes to the current federal temporary farm worker program, known as H-2A, or offering a new guest worker program.
Linking enforcement with guest worker reforms is critical. Just calling for more enforcement against employers is irresponsible if it threatens vital industries. Employers who can demonstrate a genuine need for immigrant workers should have a system that allows them to do so. Hopefully, Lamar Smith has gotten this message. And he ought to remember there are many industries that can readily demonstrate that not enough US workers are available.
By the way, opponents of any type of "amnesty" who are genuine when they say that they're not against immigration - just illegal immigration - should be cheering guest worker reforms. By creating an orderly, workable system to sponsor guest workers, the incentives to immigrate illegally would decrease dramatically. Unfortunately, I suspect that when push comes to shove, most of the antis out there just want to stop immigration all together regardless of how the immigrant gets here. I hope I am surprised.
No, it is called economic reality. Either the visa can accomodate reality, or it will be useless, much like it is now.
"If 500K-1 mil legal unskilled workers are allowed, you can bet your *** that recruiters will set up shop in Asia and Africa."
With the Spanish peaking infrastructure already set up in agriculture, I am going to say it is not very likely to happen. That of course in your dream scenario of virtually unlimited guest worker program, which also is very unlikely to happen. By the way, illegal immigration from Asia is also pretty high... but largely limited to nail salons ;-) Ok, bad joke, but you get the picture - every culture tends to have their own profession.
"If Republicans hold on to the House, E-Verify will become the law of the land."
So what? Adultery is a crime in South Carolina. Just an example that making something the law of the land changes nothing.
"You can forget about amnesty. It'll be an all out war on illegal immigration. If they manage to stop it, I'm going to vote for them in 2016."
I agree with George that it would be war on immgrants, and you would probably be first in line to be harrased (I am white, what do I care - just kidding). However, I don't think there will be war on immgrants at all. Economic interests always win, and Republicans are in the pocket of corporations who will demand amnesty. You may hear about a couple of big raids, but that will be the extent of it. The only way to make 10 million people leave is to blow up the economy, and I don't think Republicans are that dumb or that bigoted.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/progress-on-immigration-education-key-to-reviving-jobs-tech-leaders-say-20110802
By Juliana Gruenwald
Updated: August 2, 2011 | 5:39 p.m.
August 2, 2011 | 5:19 p.m.
Education and immigration reform dominated Tuesday's meeting of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness on ways to boost the nation's struggling economy.
The council met at cloud-services provider VM Ware's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., to solicit ideas on how to jump-start the economy and create more jobs. Those ideas will help form a list of recommendations that the council will make to President Obama in September, council member and AOL cofounder Steve Case said.
Case was joined by council members John Doerr, a partner with the high-profile Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer. Also present were two nonmembers--Aneesh Chopra, the federal chief technology officer, and Reed Hastings, Netflix's CEO.
Case, who is leading an effort focused on high-growth companies, said more needs to be done to promote entrepreneurs. "If we want to get the economy going and jobs going, we need to get more attention on entrepreneurship," he said. "If every part of America worked liked Silicon Valley, we would have a booming economy."
Sandberg and others underscored the need for immigration reforms that would make it easier for companies to keep talented foreigners in the United States, pointing to the difficulty that Facebook and other firms have had obtaining visas for skilled workers from abroad.
Sandberg said if Facebook had been unable to get an H-1B visa for a Facebook engineer from Spain who was leading a key project after graduating from Stanford, the company would have moved him and his project offshore. She added that other companies such as Google have been forced to do just that because of the problems they have faced in getting work visas and green cards for high-skilled foreigners.
Sandberg praised moves the Obama administration announced on Tuesday to make it easier for high-skilled immigrant entrepreneurs to come and stay in the United States. The Homeland Security Department announced that it was clarifying its frequently asked questions to make it more clear that immigrant entrepreneurs can sponsor themselves for an H-1B visa, which are reserved for high-skilled foreign workers, and also took steps to speed up the processing time for foreign entrepreneurs seeking a visa reserved for those who pledge to invest money and create jobs in the United States.
Case urged those in attendance to push lawmakers to unbundle reforms related to visas and green cards for high-skilled foreigners from the broader debate over comprehensive immigration reform. That "is the only way to get [to the] issue of high-skilled workers in the next 12 months," he said.
Echoing concerns raised by tech firms for years, Sandberg said that the U.S. needs better graduation rates and must get more students interested in pursuing science, technology, engineering, and math degrees. "We are not investing for the future," she said. "We are falling behind in every way possible."
I do agree that our GOP is more in the hands of industry than the racists. However, the reverse is now true in the UK!