Ah but you are assuming that everything is an honest and free market.
No, I’m not. I’m saying that such illicit conduct is
exclusive to an honest and free market. Nowhere did I claim that markets bereft of a black-market illegal labor pool are automatically honest and free, but two wrongs won’t make a right either.
For some business they know the fine for getting caught ($3000 max per alien) x the probility of getting caught (low) outweighs doing all the work in verifying employement. Yes you can continue to raise the fines but you are never going to get everyone to comply.
Heck with the fines. Around here we’ll pull your license to do business for repeat offenses and even put you in jail if intent to be complicit with identity theft is proven. It takes a
lot of upside potential in raw dollars to try and off-set the risk of losing your entire business and your personal freedom.
If you raise the cost of hiring too high then business will start discrimnating against people that they perceive can’t past the e-verify.
That’s not “discrimination” in the sense of illicit prejudice. That’s compliance with state law.
So now you have a business breaking a different law (anit-discrimination) in order to protect itself from fines for having illegals
There is no law that prohibits discrimination between people who can pass E-Verify and people who can’t. Similarly there is no law prohibiting discrimination between people who come up clean on a Criminal Background Check and those who come up with felony records.
One thing you failed to mention is are you willing to pay the extra cost associated with paying a better wage for these jobs?
Yes. I’ll either pay the difference or seek alternate services, forcing the industry to adapt cost-saving measures elsewhere.
Paying people a better wage will force the business to raise its cost.
Reducing taxes by reducing the immense expense of unpaid medical bills and education costs caused by illegal aliens will allow the business to reduce its cost. I’m not promising equilibrium, but there are upwards
and downwards forces at work.
If as an industry you raise the standard of pay then people get use to the cost but as long as the cost aren’t equal then those who pay less will get more of the market. IS it fair? No but what are you going to do?
Of course it is fair - or at least it is more fair than the alternatives like totalitarian practices like price fixing and wage fixing.
You obviously can’t “race to the bottom” if there are “jobs Americans won’t do [at that wage].” The two ideas are completely exclusive. What’s more, the lowest price does not automatically generate market share. Product differentiation (including quality, services, convenience, and many other factors) can dominate a marketplace.
Think about that the if you ever decide to buy American Cheese instead of “cheese product slices” made from oil.
Raise the min wage? It fixes the problem for a time but then the same issue comes up again.
Raising the minimum wage seldom fixes anything. It raises the rate that part-time teenagers need to get paid under the law for entry-level and intern-quality jobs. It isn’t, and never will be a living wage for adult professionals.
Businesses aren’t for the most part importing these aliens. They came to America on their own because of the economic difference between the wage they can earn here vs at home. They are not our slaves.They have the option of going home on their own. And a lot do as the economy goes down.
Tell that to the franchise owners in Phoenix who spent tons of money to combat basic E-Verify enforcement legislation because they
knew that their profit-margins were linked to their ability to exploit black-market labor from the desperate.
I will agree and disagree with you on this point. You say that “NO” job is beneath Americans but that is not what i have seen. I have seen food service and entry level jobs staying open because people don’t want to take these jobs. To me a job is a job. If i lose my job then i will go down to Quizno’s or starbucks and get a job.
Speaking as someone who has been in work, out of work, and returned to work after several months I’ll address some of the problems with the above construction.
I didn’t avoid working at Starbucks because the job was beneath me. I avoided the job because its hours would interfere with my hunt for a job that paid a wage adequate to support my family. I did take work on the side while unemployed when it didn’t get in the way of my hunt for the next posting in my career. I worked on weekends on some pick-up work - usually food service / catering. It paid a fraction of my old salaried and hourly rates, but I could take it or leave it as necessary.
Entry-level jobs at chain retailers and fast-food standards meet the needs of teenagers without work experience. They constantly have openings because, thankfully, our socio-economic structure hasn’t degraded so far that people can’t advance out of those jobs as the gain experience and move onto more challenging positions. They sustain themselves because a new wave of entry-level part-timers come into the market every year. That turn-over is a
good thing.
Even with 10% unemployment and nearly 20% underemployment I haven’t yet seen a fast-food joint in the neighborhood go out of business for lack of workers - even with E-Verify chasing off a lot of illegal workers.
