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The problem that this article doesn't point out and nobody wants to talk about: California is burdened with the largest reservoir of undocumented/illegal worker

The problem that this article doesn't point out and nobody wants to talk about: California is burdened with the largest reservoir of undocumented/illegal workers in the country. Until these people are brought into the system, until we see some true immigration reform (either by naturalizing every worker or, conversely, by getting serious about border policy) the state is in an untenable position. Things will get worse before they get better. California and US immigration policy are a mammoth case of "walk on left side, okay; walk on right side, okay; walk in middle - squish! just like grape" which you Karate Kid fans might remember...

kingkongrevenge 17y ago
What about deporting all the illegals? That would be far the most fiscally effective solution.
- foulmouthboy 17y ago
  Because the cost of doing that is free?
  - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
    It's a cent or two on the dollar to task the existing police and federal apparatus vs pay out the social benefits the typical illegal alien consumes.
    - potatolicious 17y ago
      [citation needed]
    - jhancock 17y ago
      Our gov isn't too great at estimating costs. The ongoing Iraq war was initially estimated at around $60 Billion or so. Current estimates have it at $3 trillion.
- cunninglinguist 17y ago
  Is it that simple? I can't tell if your comment is tongue in cheek. But if you consider the hundreds of billions of dollars it would take to locate, process, and deport every illegal, if you consider increased labor costs for local businesses many of whom would go under without a plentiful supply of cheap labor, and if you consider that America has never really been about "deporting people" (quite the opposite) it seems like simply deporting every illegal is a horrible solution. Equally horrible is to have to provide ever-increasing social and welfare benefits to millions upon millions of undocumented, non-tax-paying workers who are now also unemployed. There is no quick fix here. But if you were to naturalize those workers, give them SSNs and DLs, encourage them to partake of the "American dream" or what's left of it...maybe in ten or twenty years you'd find things had started to improve. I don't really know. If this were a game of chess, I'd simply resign.
  - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
    It is totally feasible. Ike did it in the 50s, right before he fired the whole border patrol and immigration control apparatus and reformed it. It would be very cheap right now because there is a lot of idle shipping. You load the illegals on boats and drop them off at a home port. In the case of Mexico you take them to the far south, not just over the border. This can be done and it would have massive popular support. Naturalization is a horrible idea. We need to get the illegals out and seal the borders. America needs zero immigrants with less than a high school diploma, especially right now. Nobody making less than $90K should be let in this country to work, period.
    - jhancock 17y ago
      > "You load the illegals on boats and drop them off at a home port" And the receiving country is just supposed to take our word for it? "Hell, he sure looks Guatemalan!!!"...."Dear China, We are sending you 50,000 'orientals' on the next 3 OOCL container ships, they have no passports but they sure as hell don't speak American." Yeah, this will go over well with all our trading partners. > "In the case of Mexico you take them to the far south, not just over the border." I'm pretty sure Mexico won't go for this. > "get the illegals out and seal the borders" Have nanotech magic-growth fences been invented and I didn't notice? Precisely how do you plan to do this? Oh I know, hire cheap Mexican labor? Or maybe bring over some Chinese to build the fences like we used them to build our railroads? > "Nobody making less than $90K should be let in this country to work" Aren't immigrants making over $90k taking $90k jobs away from people already here? Or do you mean we figure out what our real skill shortage is and manage it much better than we ever have been able to?
- jhancock 17y ago
  I don't have an answer, but I doubt you can prove its the most fiscally effective solution. I'm sure there's been studies on the costs of doing this. These are just off the top of my head. 1 - finding and sending them home. This will be huge. There're not all from Mexico, not always an easy/cheap trip. Cost of finding them will put cost pressures on local law enforcement. Cost to detainment while you send them home. Some you won't be able to prove to the receiving country that actually is their home which increases detainment time, sometimes indefinitely. 2 - lost low cost labor would increase business costs resulting in inflation and business failures. This may also be huge. Its an unknown economic shift.
- alexgartrell 17y ago
  And send every single California farm into bankruptcy? "Those damn illegals" are pretty critical, in real life.
  - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
    > send every single California farm into bankruptcy? Bollocks. You're repeating industry propaganda. Some farms on the margin may go, but so what. How about silicon valley takes a hiatus from frivolous social apps and make some good fruit picking robots so nobody has to do it? It wouldn't make business sense now, but post deportation it might.
    - science4sail 17y ago
      > How about silicon valley takes a hiatus from frivolous social apps and make some good fruit picking robots so nobody has to do it? It wouldn't make business sense now, but post deportation it might. Frivolous social apps exist because a market for them exists. Furthermore, the manufacture of web apps is significantly easier than the manufacture of machines with image processing and manipulation skills capable of matching an immigrant. The initial cost of purchasing robots capable of harvesting fruit would be astronomical, probably enough to send more than a few farms on the margin into deep debt or bankruptcy. I can't imagine what the support costs for such an operation would be.
  - anamax 17y ago
    Not at all. They'd merely have to pay a "living wage". Moreover, we have a lot of legal residents and citizens on "aid". Lots of them can do farm work. (Yes, I know how hard farm labor is. I've done it. Have you?) As to child care, the ones who can't do farm labor can provide it. After all, we trust them with their kids, so surely we can tell some of them that their aid depends on them taking care of other people's kids. (Of course, we'd have to break the social workers hold on such activities. Welfare programs are pretty much designed for the providers.) Farm labor costs are a very small fraction of total food costs.
- KirinDave 17y ago
  Yeah, I'm sure that's an action that would basically pay for itself.</sarcasm> I can think of no greater economic nightmare than a nice racially motivated witch-hunt against the states most-exploited worker class.
  - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
    Japan did a big immigration enforcement round up last year as the economy slowed and shipped a lot of people out. They seem ok.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    How is enforcing existing laws against a group which is predominantly white a "racially motivated witch-hunt"? You are also horribly misusing the term "witch hunt". The problem with a witch-hunt is that witches don't exist. Anyone you catch in a witch-hunt is innocent. By contrast, rounding up illegals is highly likely to catch a bunch of existing criminals and will probably have a low false positive rate.
michaelkeenan 17y ago
How do illegal workers contribute to the problem? I understand that they don't pay income tax, but at their typically low incomes, I'd expect that they wouldn't be paying much tax anyway, and would more likely qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (i.e. negative income tax) if they were legal. I'm reminded of the difference between the view of economists on the economic non-problem of immigrants as described by Bryan Caplan: "Economists are vastly more optimistic about its economic effects than the general public. The Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy asks respondents to say whether “too many immigrants” is a major, minor, or non-reason why the economy is not doing better than it is. 47% of non-economists think it is a major reason; 80% of economists think it is not a reason at all." http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter/ http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth...
- TheElder 17y ago
  One idea: Illegal immigrants contribute to the problem by creating social conditions that are unfavorable for optimal living conditions, causing the people with money (big taxpayers), to move, leaving behind cities with an unskilled workforce and a high reproduction rate. Anybody capable of moving away from areas and cities with huge illegal immigration populations will move. Once they are gone and the businesses move with them, what you have left is an area that consumes taxes at a high rate and contributes very little back. Is it racism that causes people to move? It could be, but there are valid reasons to flee such areas. There are huge gang problems and schools start to under perform. Hispanic students are some of the worst performing students in the country, often not even finishing high school. Now you have unskilled people competing for unskilled jobs, which few exist anymore.
jacquesm 17y ago
Without those illegal immigrants / undocumented workers the economy would collapse completely.

kingkongrevenge 17y ago

What about deporting all the illegals? That would be far the most fiscally effective solution.

foulmouthboy 17y ago
Because the cost of doing that is free?
- kingkongrevenge 17y ago
  It's a cent or two on the dollar to task the existing police and federal apparatus vs pay out the social benefits the typical illegal alien consumes.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    [citation needed]
  - jhancock 17y ago
    Our gov isn't too great at estimating costs. The ongoing Iraq war was initially estimated at around $60 Billion or so. Current estimates have it at $3 trillion.
cunninglinguist 17y ago
Is it that simple? I can't tell if your comment is tongue in cheek. But if you consider the hundreds of billions of dollars it would take to locate, process, and deport every illegal, if you consider increased labor costs for local businesses many of whom would go under without a plentiful supply of cheap labor, and if you consider that America has never really been about "deporting people" (quite the opposite) it seems like simply deporting every illegal is a horrible solution. Equally horrible is to have to provide ever-increasing social and welfare benefits to millions upon millions of undocumented, non-tax-paying workers who are now also unemployed. There is no quick fix here. But if you were to naturalize those workers, give them SSNs and DLs, encourage them to partake of the "American dream" or what's left of it...maybe in ten or twenty years you'd find things had started to improve. I don't really know. If this were a game of chess, I'd simply resign.
- kingkongrevenge 17y ago
  It is totally feasible. Ike did it in the 50s, right before he fired the whole border patrol and immigration control apparatus and reformed it. It would be very cheap right now because there is a lot of idle shipping. You load the illegals on boats and drop them off at a home port. In the case of Mexico you take them to the far south, not just over the border. This can be done and it would have massive popular support. Naturalization is a horrible idea. We need to get the illegals out and seal the borders. America needs zero immigrants with less than a high school diploma, especially right now. Nobody making less than $90K should be let in this country to work, period.
  - jhancock 17y ago
    > "You load the illegals on boats and drop them off at a home port" And the receiving country is just supposed to take our word for it? "Hell, he sure looks Guatemalan!!!"...."Dear China, We are sending you 50,000 'orientals' on the next 3 OOCL container ships, they have no passports but they sure as hell don't speak American." Yeah, this will go over well with all our trading partners. > "In the case of Mexico you take them to the far south, not just over the border." I'm pretty sure Mexico won't go for this. > "get the illegals out and seal the borders" Have nanotech magic-growth fences been invented and I didn't notice? Precisely how do you plan to do this? Oh I know, hire cheap Mexican labor? Or maybe bring over some Chinese to build the fences like we used them to build our railroads? > "Nobody making less than $90K should be let in this country to work" Aren't immigrants making over $90k taking $90k jobs away from people already here? Or do you mean we figure out what our real skill shortage is and manage it much better than we ever have been able to?
jhancock 17y ago
I don't have an answer, but I doubt you can prove its the most fiscally effective solution. I'm sure there's been studies on the costs of doing this. These are just off the top of my head. 1 - finding and sending them home. This will be huge. There're not all from Mexico, not always an easy/cheap trip. Cost of finding them will put cost pressures on local law enforcement. Cost to detainment while you send them home. Some you won't be able to prove to the receiving country that actually is their home which increases detainment time, sometimes indefinitely. 2 - lost low cost labor would increase business costs resulting in inflation and business failures. This may also be huge. Its an unknown economic shift.
alexgartrell 17y ago
And send every single California farm into bankruptcy? "Those damn illegals" are pretty critical, in real life.
- kingkongrevenge 17y ago
  > send every single California farm into bankruptcy? Bollocks. You're repeating industry propaganda. Some farms on the margin may go, but so what. How about silicon valley takes a hiatus from frivolous social apps and make some good fruit picking robots so nobody has to do it? It wouldn't make business sense now, but post deportation it might.
  - science4sail 17y ago
    > How about silicon valley takes a hiatus from frivolous social apps and make some good fruit picking robots so nobody has to do it? It wouldn't make business sense now, but post deportation it might. Frivolous social apps exist because a market for them exists. Furthermore, the manufacture of web apps is significantly easier than the manufacture of machines with image processing and manipulation skills capable of matching an immigrant. The initial cost of purchasing robots capable of harvesting fruit would be astronomical, probably enough to send more than a few farms on the margin into deep debt or bankruptcy. I can't imagine what the support costs for such an operation would be.
- anamax 17y ago
  Not at all. They'd merely have to pay a "living wage". Moreover, we have a lot of legal residents and citizens on "aid". Lots of them can do farm work. (Yes, I know how hard farm labor is. I've done it. Have you?) As to child care, the ones who can't do farm labor can provide it. After all, we trust them with their kids, so surely we can tell some of them that their aid depends on them taking care of other people's kids. (Of course, we'd have to break the social workers hold on such activities. Welfare programs are pretty much designed for the providers.) Farm labor costs are a very small fraction of total food costs.
KirinDave 17y ago
Yeah, I'm sure that's an action that would basically pay for itself.</sarcasm> I can think of no greater economic nightmare than a nice racially motivated witch-hunt against the states most-exploited worker class.
- kingkongrevenge 17y ago
  Japan did a big immigration enforcement round up last year as the economy slowed and shipped a lot of people out. They seem ok.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  How is enforcing existing laws against a group which is predominantly white a "racially motivated witch-hunt"? You are also horribly misusing the term "witch hunt". The problem with a witch-hunt is that witches don't exist. Anyone you catch in a witch-hunt is innocent. By contrast, rounding up illegals is highly likely to catch a bunch of existing criminals and will probably have a low false positive rate.

michaelkeenan 17y ago

How do illegal workers contribute to the problem? I understand that they don't pay income tax, but at their typically low incomes, I'd expect that they wouldn't be paying much tax anyway, and would more likely qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (i.e. negative income tax) if they were legal. I'm reminded of the difference between the view of economists on the economic non-problem of immigrants as described by Bryan Caplan: "Economists are vastly more optimistic about its economic effects than the general public. The Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy asks respondents to say whether “too many immigrants” is a major, minor, or non-reason why the economy is not doing better than it is. 47% of non-economists think it is a major reason; 80% of economists think it is not a reason at all." http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter/ http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth...

TheElder 17y ago
One idea: Illegal immigrants contribute to the problem by creating social conditions that are unfavorable for optimal living conditions, causing the people with money (big taxpayers), to move, leaving behind cities with an unskilled workforce and a high reproduction rate. Anybody capable of moving away from areas and cities with huge illegal immigration populations will move. Once they are gone and the businesses move with them, what you have left is an area that consumes taxes at a high rate and contributes very little back. Is it racism that causes people to move? It could be, but there are valid reasons to flee such areas. There are huge gang problems and schools start to under perform. Hispanic students are some of the worst performing students in the country, often not even finishing high school. Now you have unskilled people competing for unskilled jobs, which few exist anymore.

jacquesm 17y ago

Without those illegal immigrants / undocumented workers the economy would collapse completely.