3 ms·
Enforcing that employers pay all employees proper (internationally competing, livable) wages regardless of nationality or immigration status, and fast tracking
by fao_ 8y ago
Enforcing that employers pay all employees proper (internationally competing, livable) wages regardless of nationality or immigration status, and fast tracking immigration tickets, would solve this pretty effectively.
The first part solves the fact that companies prefer immigrants due to the fact that they can pay them a lower wage, setting a minimum wage in law that is internationally competing would drive some businesses out of america, but those businesses are harmful anyway because they are exploitative towards their employees, and therefore they aim to exploit Americans.
The second aspect, fast-tracking immigration status so that immigrants can become legal citizens easier, solves the fact that some employers might abuse the status of immigrants to pay them less. It'd be trivial (and actually it is quite common already) for employers to tell their immigrant employees "Accept this shitty pay or I will report you to ICE". This completely removes that method of extortion from being viable.
- michaelt 8y agoIf an illegally underpaying employer only hires illegal immigrants, will the crime be seen by anyone who won't lose out from reporting it? Seems to me, if a gangmaster is supplying seasonal workers to a farm, the farmer won't report them, the gangmaster won't report themselves, and the workers won't report their employer. Who's left?
- fao_ 8y ago> If an illegally underpaying employer only hires illegal immigrants, who is going to see the crime and report it to the enforcement agency? As I already addressed with point two, fast-tracking of immigration status to legal citizen status, is vitally important to remove this method of extortion.
- michaelt 8y agoSo if you cross the border and join an illegally-underpaying work crew, you're guaranteed legal citizen status?
- matt4077 8y agoSure, why not. Maybe couple it with whistleblower incentives. If your family has been in the US for 100+ years, I assure you that’s exactly how they got started.
- ben_w 8y agoI’d be in favour of that. I can see the point in border controls for goods (laws on what can be sold vary from place to place), and an army to stop someone else taking over, but not for individual people, be they workers, tourists, students, children, pensioners, or refugees.
- Spooky23 8y agoIt’s pretty easy. Auditing 101. You gather data on the manpower requirements for farmer Joe, look at the payroll taxes paid by farmers with similar operations, and audit the bottom standard deviations for tax compliance. One of the reasons that conservatives traditionally have such a hard on for the IRS is that it’s the primary agency able to detect these types of frauds. In the years they control the House, they defund IRS enforcement ability.