The Great Wall of Trump
- Thread starter naturalmwa
- Start date
Sounds like a good startup idea. Let's open an employment verification company.
Which brings up the question I have, if Trump gets elected, where is he going to live? No way he can stand to live in a dump like the White House.I think that's the cost of Trump's total immigration solution. But that was before he promised to make it beautiful. The man puts gold leaf on everything. Honestly, his wife has to be a beard right? Look at this, he has to be related to Liberace.
All employers are experts in the industry in which they operate? I take it you haven't had a lot of work experience.
But here's the real answer to your question. You're supposed to do the minimum due diligence to ensure the applicant is eligible to work in the United States. As long as you diligently follow the Form I-9 process, and the documents you examined appear to have been legitimate, then you're not on the hook if an applicant fools you with faked documents.
But here's another gotcha.... when I say the "minimum" due diligence I mean it. If you go too crazy playing Jr. Detective with the documents, you run afoul of the provision of the law that prohibits employers from using the I-9 process as a pretext or excuse for discrimination based on national origin. You have to follow the process exactly as the government requires, no more and no less.
The big problem I have is that the government has imposed this time-consuming process on all employers with no compensation for the time lost that could be spent on more productive activities.
At the very least, give everyone authorized to work in the United States a single employment eligibility card that's hard to fake and which makes it easy for employers to comply with the requirement.
Well, one would hope they're at least trying to learn the industry in which they operate.
No one is in business to learn how to comply with the Form I-9 process, except HR consultants and regulators.
I don't usually expect you to take the "it's the law" position to dismiss a moral argument.
An effective e-verify program would make my scenario less likely to occur (I suppose, knowing nothing about that program). But if my employee give me info that passes e-verify, again, why am I the bad guy?
Note that people have been saying punish the employer for years - including before we were talking about e-verify.
The bad employer is the one who exploits the illegal - either to pay him less, or to drive down the wages of his other workers, or otherwise take advantage of legal or illegal workers. I'm fully on board with punishing those employers, But my scenario involved none of that.
It's interesting to me that many states allow illegals to have driver's licenses, go to school, and many other things - even though they are here illegally - but somehow trying to earn an honest living is breaking the law. How does that make sense?
And your thoughts regarding the safety issue? In particular the ability of ISIS people to enter with little chance of being detected?
You would not be considered the "bad guy" if E-Verify authorized employment (provided you didn't rig the case file in order to get the authorization).
I can tell that my companies have been in several industries and compliance with some importation laws is literally insane. I sold one company due to government variables I could not control. And my exposure was substantial.
The regs won't allow it. The actual documents have to be held in the examiner's hands. Copies can't be used for verification purposes. And you have to do it within 3 days of hire.
It makes sense in many ways. I had a drivers license when I lived in Korea for a summer. I didn't have the right to work in their economy just because I drove a car there.
I don't see your question as a moral one, but a procedural one. The scenario you described can't exist in the environment I gave that you replied to in numbers sufficient enough to make it the rule. Your scenario would always be an outlier best handled with exceptions and discretion, but not the normal law of the land.
Just because Korea wouldn't let you work doesn't make that the correct approach.
Just out of curiosity, my understanding is that S.Korea used to be highly homophobic. Don't know if that's still true. But I doubt you'd be holding up their laws on that as reasons why we should be the same way.
As for the morality part, it's hard to get much more into moral territory than issues of work vs starvation, or work vs crime, or even work vs being able to give your kids a decent place to live. How moral can it be to use starvation and jail threats to drive people away who often have no place to go and no way to get there and no way to survive there if they were there?
If the government did its job and kept the illegals out, there wouldn't be any illegals for employers to hire.
I always found it sickening that employers have to be punished to fix a problem that government created.
I always found it sickening that employers have to be punished to fix a problem that government created.
@naturalmwa - I may have recommended this to you previously but, just in case, here it is again. Good fiction.
Mortal Allies by Brian Haig
Mortal Allies by Brian Haig
I offered that as an example of why it makes sense to want drivers to know the traffic laws without regard to their work status. Being gay wasn't part of my Korean experience.
Your concerns on starvation are beyond the scope of objecting to employer verification. That gets to if we should even have borders and any employment laws.
How did the government creat the problem? I think your real villain is the market and like a good liberal you are now recognizing the need for the government to regulate that market more.
I with you on that one Trad. But I also understand that crooked employers create demand.
The human race is truly complex isn't it?
Securing the border is one of the few things the federal government should legitimately be doing and their failure is massive as evidenced by the millions of squatters we have in this country.
Much like the gun debate, you can punish legitimate employers all day long, and that's not going to stop the criminal employers who don't follow immigration laws, don't follow payroll tax and tax withholding laws, don't follow worker's comp laws, etc., etc. There will always be a black market for labor that will provide jobs to illegals. "Punishing the employer" has been going on since 1986, and it's been a massive failure.
Recognize you are asking for a "papers please" society and a government so large they will check them before you get to your employer. remember about half of illegals arrive here legally through our airports and simply never return home.
Why do you feel that policing all travel is a legitimate federal responsibility? Why should Iowans pay to police Miami airport?
Many employers hire illegals for the purpose of doing an end run around the minmum wage, overtime laws, and FICA. In doing so they not only abuse the illegals but beat their competitors that play by the rules.
Furthermore, without e-verify the millions we grant amnesty to (assuming we do this) will simple get undercut by the next wave of illegals and then no progress is made. E-verify is 100% necessary.
What makes you think a criminal employer is going to comply with E-Verify?
It's the equivalent of the gun control background check debate.
Yes, best way I've thought of. Do you have a better option? I'd love to hear it.
If you come here on vacation, we hold your firstborn at the airport to make sure you come back.
Seriously, we've been trying this since 1986. It's not working. Think of something else.
As I explained to WWJD, I wouldn't presume to make policy based on the exception, but the rule. Or are you telling us most employers are criminals? That's an interesting position to advance.
We have not been trying it. The penalties for employers were stripped out of the 86 bill to get R votes.
Of course most employers aren't criminals.
But all employers who (knowingly) employ illegal aliens are criminals.
And only law-abiding employers are being subjected to the confusing, time-consuming process required to prove you're not employing illegal aliens.
We're punishing the wrong employers.
If the law is enforced, most will comply. As for the others - their competitors will turn them in.
But your right, the drug dealers and gang bangers won't use e-verify. But this is no argument against managing 75% or 85% of the problem.
Most of the time, Homeland Security does not find illegal immigrants when they audit employer I-9 forms. Instead, employers get fined for lost or missing forms, or technical violations (recording the SSN in the wrong box, or failing to enter the hire date... stupid crap like that). They're not going to find the black market employers because they don't have offices and file cabinets to storm and search. They work out of truck.
That's not much of a punishment. But you forgot to tell us your alternative that is somehow less burdensome.
