The Senate has been more open to the president’s immigration proposal, yet now has added an amendment to the minimum wage bill that is a) poorly thought out; and b) likely to make House-Senate negotiations on the bill more difficult. I suppose it was a way to get a few extra Senate votes.
The amendment punishes any company that hires illegal immigrants by banning them from federal contracts for 10 years. Sounds straightforward—who would quibble with enforcing the law? The problem is that this is putting the cart before the horse. Right now, the federal government does not keep adequate track of people entering the country. This amendment puts the onus on companies to enforce federal immigration law. The government needs to start by developing a database that keeps track of immigrants. This will be both extremely complex and expensive, which is likely why no one is yet bothering to try.
I think there is increasing convergence on all sides of the immigration issue on one point: the federal government is really not making any serious effort to take responsibility, and instead is leaving it to businesses and local governments to enforce laws about which they have no input.
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"What Money Can't Buy" (Harvard University Press), 1997 was a study by sociologist Susan Mayer of the University of Chicago. It confirmed much of Edward Banfield’s “Culture of Poverty” Theory. She wrote:
"The parental characteristics that employers value and are willing to pay for, such as skills, diligence, honesty, good health, and reliability, also improve children's life chances, independent of their effect on parents' incomes. Children of parents with these attributes do well even if their parents do not have much income."
Mexicans have a much greater chance of making America poor then America has of making Mexicans rich. Mexico’s poverty is a product of Mexico’s culture, not its resources, location or climate; all of which indicate that Mexico should have been a wealthy country long ago.
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