Thank you for these interesting ideas re: remittances, which we do not say enough about in the national conversation - many people might not even know what they are and how many billions they're worth at this point. But we're not going to solve the immigration problem until we look at the whole picture - it's not "Democrats" who hire illegal workers to do a million difficult jobs for bargain-basement wages. It's capitalists. Let's pls. acknowledge that the libertarian/free market Right and the progressive Left are absolutely in bed together on the issue of low-paid undocumented labor. Until we face the complexity of the problem - especially the very powerful "job creators" who don't want these low-paid workers to go away at all - we will not have a meaningful discussion re: the solution. Thank you again!
“Concerns over inflation persists despite the fact that headline inflation has declined from 9% in summer 2022 to a bit under 3% over the last year.”
Even 3% is higher than when he took office. Under Biden, inflation went from 9% to 2.4%. Be honest and acknowledge that Trump’s actions (mostly tariffs) have actually caused inflation to increase.
“…and the chaos President Biden’s policy unleashed on the Southern border…”
Y’all keep saying “Biden’s policy” like he actually did something to magically increase the size of the tide *wanting* to cross the border, but never give specifics. Exactly what did Biden change and how did it convince millions of people, many of whom left home before the end of Trump’s term, to try to come to the US. An influx of people at the border is not instantaneous.
The response to those who claimed asylum is not a change—its current law. The TPS was in response to specific circumstances that were well documented and didn’t affect “millions” of people. The numbers I’ve seen are less than 1 million from all countries. That could be considered a new policy, but didn’t have the effect you claimed. What you haven’t asked, nor explained, is why the sudden increase in asylum claims? That wasn’t due to any change in policy. Not real change, it could have been due to a perceived or anticipated change. Immigration comes in tides; when our economy does well, it increases, when it doesn’t do well, immigration decreases.
It took over a year and a half. What they did is gave everyone who claimed asylum papers allowing them to travel to their destination city and often a phone and a small amount of cash. One to the place they were destined they were given parole which allows people to live and work until some immigration hearing years in the future. Those were the bulk of immigrants.
Another program was Temporary Protected Status for citizens of Haiti, Venezuela Honduras etc. They could be sponsored by employers to horrible work, given a visa, and flown to America, roughly a million people.
Altogether estimates are about 10 million. It crushed inflation, wages had been feeling a lot of pressure. Unskilled labor here dropped $2.
Self-deportation is a lot cheaper and less disruptive than law enforcement action. So Yes to e-verify and remittance taxes. You need to be more sensitive to compliance costs for small businesses though. The owners and employees are an important part of the MAGA base. You may have identified the answer in another part of the essay though. Could not the IRS run e-verify on the SS#s provided by business below some threshold and then disallow the business expense deduction. The bad guys would howl but the good guys would be spared the compliance expense. I would add another component too. Extensive audits of the recipients of Medicaid payments to check for illegals there. Those benefits are theoretically illegal already but the law is not enforced.
For a while my state required E-verify, it was very easy. Two minutes. We also had to submit SS#s to a file of delinquent child support payments, another minute.
Good to know. I don't have any experience with the system. Someone in HR did that. Nice to see you over here. I canceled TLP after the threat to ban me. Didn't seem like a good plan to pay for the privledge of censoring myself. And on further reflection, it seems like thinking Labour provides a model for restoring sanity to the Democratic Party is a non-starter so I am done. I would say the same thing to any Republican. UK has the distinction of having the worst center left, center right and populist parties of anywhere in the world.
the threat was "blocked" whatever that means. I think those guys struggle to come up with new material every day and are grateful to any writer who will offer up something cheap. Offer a thousand words for a 2 year subscription ;-)
I'm a big fan of Oren Cass, he's a great example of the New Right. I heard Vance in an interview asked which 3 Democrats policies he thought best or he'd like to see followed or something. He responded "Sanders, Warren, Gabbard in that order"
A quick look at who is working at the large housing developments all around my town seems to indicate 100% illegal workers. Most people who are here legally work at higher paying jobs like driving trucks etc. Unskilled labor starts at $20 and eventually goes up to $30, no vacation days no sick days, if it is snowing you don't work and don't get paid. Fast food is even less.
Henry needs to get a grip. Don, the leader of the “new” right establishment, has used the following terms regarding immigrants: vermin, poisoning the blood, eating the pets, animals, infestation, bloodthirsty criminals, shithole countries, rapists, most violent people on earth, stone cold killers, etc, etc… He has unleashed masked, unidentified federal agents on our streets to round up our neighbors instead of criminals, and has shipped many to horrific foreign prisons without due process. Golly, wouldn’t an honest, civil, thinking person perhaps surmise that Don is interested in immigration policy because he is a blatant racist? Would you be proud if your son called the brown girl seated next to him at school, vermin? And yet, establishment elites like Henry somehow manage to ignore reality and enable Don. Has he removed the mirrors in his home?
History is rife with authoritarians who likewise sought to dehumanize minority groups, it’s a key part of their playbook. It’s quaint at best that Henry ignores the obvious. It’s telling that Don only acts through executive action, not the legislative action necessary to build consensus and make change permanent. His instructions to Congressional R’s to kill the bipartisan Lankford bill to advance his personal political interests proves this point.
Shame on those who ignore the racism and enable the “new” right’s agenda.
The epithets are bait we should ignore, since the issue is the economic impact of illegal immigration. We have lots of black and brown US-born workers (having to support families by a US standard of living) who would also like a living wage. Let's quit thinking "white" (or male) every time we say "worker" or "Trump voter." That's not how this is shaking out and not what this is about..
If you really think Trump's immigration policy has anything to do with improving the living standards and job prospects of American workers (white, black, brown or whatever), let me ask you a single, simple question: Who has benefited more from the Trump administration's policies so far: Crypto investors or the working class guy? The answer is obvious.
Not saying Trump is doing anything for any working folks (not consistently anyway) - it’s what his voters think he’s going to do, and why these folks have been left with no other options, that has brought us to where we are. If Democrats are so great for working-class people, how come these folks don’t triple their salaries and halve their housing costs every time a Democrat gets into the White House? Nothing has changed for working people for decades, so here we are.
To suggest the working class people have no options other than to get behind an obvious con-man like Trump is to suggest they have no agency. They do. If they don't like what the democrats are selling, they could demand that the republicans offer up something better than a spray-tanned caudillo wannabe and his gang of D-lister mediocrities. They could have backed candidates that espoused the more thoughtful, pragmatic form of populism that people like Oren Cass and American Compass wish-cast on the Trump administration.
But they didn't, because there are no politicians in the republican party with enough spine today that have any position other than whatever Trump's view is at the current moment. And working class people turned out in droves to support this spineless, slavish, cult-like circus, and now here we are. When Trump leaves them high and dry - as he's already doing, less than 1 year into his term - they have nobody to blame but themselves.
Shady crypto billionaires like CZ, fresh off a pardon for crimes involving money laundering with some the U.S's most committed enemies (like Iran) are counting the billions they're making hawking Trump family shit-coins while those good ol' American heartland soybean farmers are getting a welfare check.
The democrats and the people vote for them have no culpability in this. This is what Trump always has been and always will be - its been there for anybody to see since Trump was a scammy, bankrupt real estate developer and casino operator in the late 1980's. Anybody who can't see this has just decided not to look.
I’m making the opposite point. It’s Don that obsesses over “white”, recall his comments on Norwegians... We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. I can’t stay silent on such vile words coming from our president, it’s beneath our nation. These are his actual words, repeated over and over. How can we not assume he’s telling us exactly what he believes, especially given his actions. There are plenty of humane ways to enforce immigration law, masked agents rappelling from helicopters are not among them. Sending a swat team to arrest the sandwich throwing guy, along with a film crew, isn’t among them.
The “new” right’s signature legislative achievement is Don’s BBB. In addition to record deficits and shifting large amounts of wealth from the working class to plutocrats, it makes ICE the largest law enforcement agency in our nation, larger than the Israeli military. Now that the border is closed, what exactly might these people be doing over the next three years? There are only so many people weed wacking at Home Depot to pick up…
Olsen's suggestions look great on the surface and are likely to be popular but he somewhat oversells them. The success of E-verify relies on high compliance and that shouldn't just be assumed. To really make it work, regular workplace raids would be required where everyone, including citizens and legal residents would have to show proof of their legality.
Also, there is no mention of "asylum" in the whole piece. If we really want to curb the influx, major reform of the asylum process is needed.
Excellent outline that the current situation (for last 40+ years) has been a choice. Just like crime in DC. Almost all of our society problems are solvable. The key is to expose those benefiting from the current problems. Trump is not perfect but he and his admin are moving in the correct direction. Hopefully the process accelerates.
This is unlikely to be a large problem since employers would not receive an income deduction for wages paid. In the case of any successful business, the employer is in a high tax bracket and the employees in low or zero brackets. Even when considering payroll tax, the employer would be paying the taxes for the employees at a rate 3 to 5 times what the employees would have paid. Not a good deal for employers.
Of course, this would not be a problem for cash businesses, where the employer is already a tax cheat, but those businesses that are not a giant part of the economy. We are talking restaurants and convenience stores versus meat packers, agriculture, landscaping etc. I doubt that many people pay their landscaping companies in cash. The same for roofers and builders. Who buys a roof or a house for cash?
Verifying the identities of workers, which is no big obstacle, would eliminate the problem of legitimate employers being undercut by criminal ones.
The desire for cheap labor and a permanent underclass has been a problem for America since before the founding. It benefits a small percentage of rich people at the expense of everyone else. This is why slavery and Jim Crow were so hard to overcome.
Many people pay landscapers, roofers, and builders cash. Believe me, I know. Many subcontractors have to be paid cash because they pay their employees cash.
That said, above a certain threshold all employers carry workers comp, which is cross checked with wage withholding on quarterly 941s. Comp is expensive, but lots of guy get hurt, and if they get hurt, and you don't have comp, you're screwed, you can lose your house. Judges frown on that shit. You can hire all the illegal amigos you want, but you better be paying comp, SS, and Medicare on their fake IDs.
Exactly - we have Americans working under the table now. Reminds me of an old economics joke from the 90’s. Where are all the unemployed Germans - vacationing in Spain, where are all the unemployed Spaniards - working in Germany.
Thank you for these interesting ideas re: remittances, which we do not say enough about in the national conversation - many people might not even know what they are and how many billions they're worth at this point. But we're not going to solve the immigration problem until we look at the whole picture - it's not "Democrats" who hire illegal workers to do a million difficult jobs for bargain-basement wages. It's capitalists. Let's pls. acknowledge that the libertarian/free market Right and the progressive Left are absolutely in bed together on the issue of low-paid undocumented labor. Until we face the complexity of the problem - especially the very powerful "job creators" who don't want these low-paid workers to go away at all - we will not have a meaningful discussion re: the solution. Thank you again!
Wasn’t there already a bi-partisan immigration bill about to be passed in Congress until President-elect Trump put a kibosh on it?
No, that bill was an effort to bring 50,000 a month in and legalise all the ones here quickly.
“Concerns over inflation persists despite the fact that headline inflation has declined from 9% in summer 2022 to a bit under 3% over the last year.”
Even 3% is higher than when he took office. Under Biden, inflation went from 9% to 2.4%. Be honest and acknowledge that Trump’s actions (mostly tariffs) have actually caused inflation to increase.
“…and the chaos President Biden’s policy unleashed on the Southern border…”
Y’all keep saying “Biden’s policy” like he actually did something to magically increase the size of the tide *wanting* to cross the border, but never give specifics. Exactly what did Biden change and how did it convince millions of people, many of whom left home before the end of Trump’s term, to try to come to the US. An influx of people at the border is not instantaneous.
The response to those who claimed asylum is not a change—its current law. The TPS was in response to specific circumstances that were well documented and didn’t affect “millions” of people. The numbers I’ve seen are less than 1 million from all countries. That could be considered a new policy, but didn’t have the effect you claimed. What you haven’t asked, nor explained, is why the sudden increase in asylum claims? That wasn’t due to any change in policy. Not real change, it could have been due to a perceived or anticipated change. Immigration comes in tides; when our economy does well, it increases, when it doesn’t do well, immigration decreases.
It took over a year and a half. What they did is gave everyone who claimed asylum papers allowing them to travel to their destination city and often a phone and a small amount of cash. One to the place they were destined they were given parole which allows people to live and work until some immigration hearing years in the future. Those were the bulk of immigrants.
Another program was Temporary Protected Status for citizens of Haiti, Venezuela Honduras etc. They could be sponsored by employers to horrible work, given a visa, and flown to America, roughly a million people.
Altogether estimates are about 10 million. It crushed inflation, wages had been feeling a lot of pressure. Unskilled labor here dropped $2.
Self-deportation is a lot cheaper and less disruptive than law enforcement action. So Yes to e-verify and remittance taxes. You need to be more sensitive to compliance costs for small businesses though. The owners and employees are an important part of the MAGA base. You may have identified the answer in another part of the essay though. Could not the IRS run e-verify on the SS#s provided by business below some threshold and then disallow the business expense deduction. The bad guys would howl but the good guys would be spared the compliance expense. I would add another component too. Extensive audits of the recipients of Medicaid payments to check for illegals there. Those benefits are theoretically illegal already but the law is not enforced.
For a while my state required E-verify, it was very easy. Two minutes. We also had to submit SS#s to a file of delinquent child support payments, another minute.
Good to know. I don't have any experience with the system. Someone in HR did that. Nice to see you over here. I canceled TLP after the threat to ban me. Didn't seem like a good plan to pay for the privledge of censoring myself. And on further reflection, it seems like thinking Labour provides a model for restoring sanity to the Democratic Party is a non-starter so I am done. I would say the same thing to any Republican. UK has the distinction of having the worst center left, center right and populist parties of anywhere in the world.
the threat was "blocked" whatever that means. I think those guys struggle to come up with new material every day and are grateful to any writer who will offer up something cheap. Offer a thousand words for a 2 year subscription ;-)
I'm a big fan of Oren Cass, he's a great example of the New Right. I heard Vance in an interview asked which 3 Democrats policies he thought best or he'd like to see followed or something. He responded "Sanders, Warren, Gabbard in that order"
Vance and Warren were my hope for populist fusion. Sadly, it seems to have degenerated into stupid partisanship.
A quick look at who is working at the large housing developments all around my town seems to indicate 100% illegal workers. Most people who are here legally work at higher paying jobs like driving trucks etc. Unskilled labor starts at $20 and eventually goes up to $30, no vacation days no sick days, if it is snowing you don't work and don't get paid. Fast food is even less.
Henry needs to get a grip. Don, the leader of the “new” right establishment, has used the following terms regarding immigrants: vermin, poisoning the blood, eating the pets, animals, infestation, bloodthirsty criminals, shithole countries, rapists, most violent people on earth, stone cold killers, etc, etc… He has unleashed masked, unidentified federal agents on our streets to round up our neighbors instead of criminals, and has shipped many to horrific foreign prisons without due process. Golly, wouldn’t an honest, civil, thinking person perhaps surmise that Don is interested in immigration policy because he is a blatant racist? Would you be proud if your son called the brown girl seated next to him at school, vermin? And yet, establishment elites like Henry somehow manage to ignore reality and enable Don. Has he removed the mirrors in his home?
History is rife with authoritarians who likewise sought to dehumanize minority groups, it’s a key part of their playbook. It’s quaint at best that Henry ignores the obvious. It’s telling that Don only acts through executive action, not the legislative action necessary to build consensus and make change permanent. His instructions to Congressional R’s to kill the bipartisan Lankford bill to advance his personal political interests proves this point.
Shame on those who ignore the racism and enable the “new” right’s agenda.
The epithets are bait we should ignore, since the issue is the economic impact of illegal immigration. We have lots of black and brown US-born workers (having to support families by a US standard of living) who would also like a living wage. Let's quit thinking "white" (or male) every time we say "worker" or "Trump voter." That's not how this is shaking out and not what this is about..
If you really think Trump's immigration policy has anything to do with improving the living standards and job prospects of American workers (white, black, brown or whatever), let me ask you a single, simple question: Who has benefited more from the Trump administration's policies so far: Crypto investors or the working class guy? The answer is obvious.
Not saying Trump is doing anything for any working folks (not consistently anyway) - it’s what his voters think he’s going to do, and why these folks have been left with no other options, that has brought us to where we are. If Democrats are so great for working-class people, how come these folks don’t triple their salaries and halve their housing costs every time a Democrat gets into the White House? Nothing has changed for working people for decades, so here we are.
To suggest the working class people have no options other than to get behind an obvious con-man like Trump is to suggest they have no agency. They do. If they don't like what the democrats are selling, they could demand that the republicans offer up something better than a spray-tanned caudillo wannabe and his gang of D-lister mediocrities. They could have backed candidates that espoused the more thoughtful, pragmatic form of populism that people like Oren Cass and American Compass wish-cast on the Trump administration.
But they didn't, because there are no politicians in the republican party with enough spine today that have any position other than whatever Trump's view is at the current moment. And working class people turned out in droves to support this spineless, slavish, cult-like circus, and now here we are. When Trump leaves them high and dry - as he's already doing, less than 1 year into his term - they have nobody to blame but themselves.
Shady crypto billionaires like CZ, fresh off a pardon for crimes involving money laundering with some the U.S's most committed enemies (like Iran) are counting the billions they're making hawking Trump family shit-coins while those good ol' American heartland soybean farmers are getting a welfare check.
The democrats and the people vote for them have no culpability in this. This is what Trump always has been and always will be - its been there for anybody to see since Trump was a scammy, bankrupt real estate developer and casino operator in the late 1980's. Anybody who can't see this has just decided not to look.
I’m making the opposite point. It’s Don that obsesses over “white”, recall his comments on Norwegians... We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. I can’t stay silent on such vile words coming from our president, it’s beneath our nation. These are his actual words, repeated over and over. How can we not assume he’s telling us exactly what he believes, especially given his actions. There are plenty of humane ways to enforce immigration law, masked agents rappelling from helicopters are not among them. Sending a swat team to arrest the sandwich throwing guy, along with a film crew, isn’t among them.
The “new” right’s signature legislative achievement is Don’s BBB. In addition to record deficits and shifting large amounts of wealth from the working class to plutocrats, it makes ICE the largest law enforcement agency in our nation, larger than the Israeli military. Now that the border is closed, what exactly might these people be doing over the next three years? There are only so many people weed wacking at Home Depot to pick up…
Employers do not tie Social Security, Income Tax, or Medicare payments to employee SSNs until W-2 season at the beginning of the new year.
Olsen's suggestions look great on the surface and are likely to be popular but he somewhat oversells them. The success of E-verify relies on high compliance and that shouldn't just be assumed. To really make it work, regular workplace raids would be required where everyone, including citizens and legal residents would have to show proof of their legality.
Also, there is no mention of "asylum" in the whole piece. If we really want to curb the influx, major reform of the asylum process is needed.
Excellent outline that the current situation (for last 40+ years) has been a choice. Just like crime in DC. Almost all of our society problems are solvable. The key is to expose those benefiting from the current problems. Trump is not perfect but he and his admin are moving in the correct direction. Hopefully the process accelerates.
To what extent would informal employment - a.k.a. under the table employment - rise in response to widespread verification systems?
This is unlikely to be a large problem since employers would not receive an income deduction for wages paid. In the case of any successful business, the employer is in a high tax bracket and the employees in low or zero brackets. Even when considering payroll tax, the employer would be paying the taxes for the employees at a rate 3 to 5 times what the employees would have paid. Not a good deal for employers.
Of course, this would not be a problem for cash businesses, where the employer is already a tax cheat, but those businesses that are not a giant part of the economy. We are talking restaurants and convenience stores versus meat packers, agriculture, landscaping etc. I doubt that many people pay their landscaping companies in cash. The same for roofers and builders. Who buys a roof or a house for cash?
Verifying the identities of workers, which is no big obstacle, would eliminate the problem of legitimate employers being undercut by criminal ones.
The desire for cheap labor and a permanent underclass has been a problem for America since before the founding. It benefits a small percentage of rich people at the expense of everyone else. This is why slavery and Jim Crow were so hard to overcome.
Many people pay landscapers, roofers, and builders cash. Believe me, I know. Many subcontractors have to be paid cash because they pay their employees cash.
That said, above a certain threshold all employers carry workers comp, which is cross checked with wage withholding on quarterly 941s. Comp is expensive, but lots of guy get hurt, and if they get hurt, and you don't have comp, you're screwed, you can lose your house. Judges frown on that shit. You can hire all the illegal amigos you want, but you better be paying comp, SS, and Medicare on their fake IDs.
Good point on worker comp. If the fake ID problem were solved, it would be much harder to run the underground economy, which hurts everybody.
Exactly - we have Americans working under the table now. Reminds me of an old economics joke from the 90’s. Where are all the unemployed Germans - vacationing in Spain, where are all the unemployed Spaniards - working in Germany.