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Congress Debating "No-Work" Database
grag writes "Cnet is reporting that the US Congress, in their quest for immigration reform, seeks to force employers to utilize a database to determine a person's eligibility for employment. The Department of Homeland Security would operate the database and would be given access to IRS records for this purpose. The article mentions similarities between this proposal and the no-fly list — and the expectation of similar difficulties the proposed database could pose to valid people seeking employment."
This won't affect illegal immigrants working. Employers know they aren't elligible to work, they choose to employ them not just because they are cheaper labor, but because they do better work than the unionized workers here in the states.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
You know, this may be being implemented with the best of intentions (stopping illegal workers, etc), but do we really want to give the government an easy way to "flip a switch" (or bit) and make it impossible for any one person to earn a living?
.... due process that the local police arresting someone would.
This isn't just a "don't fly" list, and I suspect that in its initial incarnation it wouldn't have the same
If not this government what about the one that is elected five years from now? Nine? What about the (admittedly hypothetical) government that is elected in 2020 that wants to prevent convicted felons from holding certain classes of jobs (more so than stigma already does?) Political dissidents?
OK, so I can go to jail for hiring someone that isn't a citizen, but right now I have no way to find-out if they are a citizen. The only thing I have is a copy John Smith's SS card that may or may not be real along with his W-4 that I have no way of verifying. I'm in NC and any illegal can get a drivers license here so every illegal I hire has a photo ID with a name that matches their usually bogus paperwork. I've probably found five dozen guys that couldn't spell the name on their NC driver's license. If they happen to reuse the same SSN as an existing employee then I'll know an existing employee is illegal so I can fire them and not hire the new guy, but that doesn't happen often. Again, I have no legal way to tell the difference. So if the Federal government finally gives me an additional tool then that helps protect myself and my wife when the feds eventually return to arrest me again for hiring illegals. Even if the tool doesn't help in reality, it at least gives me an additional defense to use in court. "But I did everything I possibly could to verify their status before hiring them. I even checked against the no-work database."
It just sucks being held criminally liable to verify something that I can't verify. I want to do the right thing.
PS: Before some racist person claims I shouldn't hire Mexicans, I'm not. I'm hiring mostly white or SE Asian guys that speak good English for retail jobs. Most of them are from eastern Europe or India. I live about equidistant from UNC, NC State, and Duke so there are a lot of foreigners here legally.
This didn't stop the Catholic part of my family from hiding Jews from the Nazis during WW II. And the stakes for that were much higher -- probably shot to death or sent to a camp along with your family if you got caught.
Stupid laws should be broken. Just try hard not to get caught.
-b.
Somehow I feel that "love of freedom" isn't quite the right term here.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
But white-collar and legal workers will be more likely to be checked through the database. And in the wrong hands, the database could be used to enforce a blacklist of people not allowed to work for various reasons.
-b.
Sounds like it.
The amount of abuse this database would be open to... urgh. Off the top of my head:
1. Government departments hire a lot of people who have write access to these databases.
2. It is SOP that a record added to the database is not automatically brought to the attention of someone else to check.
3. It is also common for the procedures to get off the database are substantially more complicated than the procedures to get on it.
4. The people mentioned in 1. above are humans. They're corruptible, they have emotions.
5. So, all I need to do to really screw you over is bribe such a person to add your name to the "do not work" list. It may not affect you now, but in 6 months/a year/5 years time...
At least when you're issued papers, they generally suffice and it's pretty hard for someone to take them off you.
I'm sure others can come up with more imaginative abuses of the system.
Imagine if one day the databases got corrupted, and suddenly you find yourself in the no-job list even though you've built your career legitimately for decades in the US as a foreigner. Not a scenario I'd like to live with, and something I'd rather not risk to happen. I just hope the Australian govt don't go along with this brain-dead scheme.
How much you wanna bet that soon the politicians will help themselves to no-tax and no-small-income list. Or maybe they did that already? I know for sure that they're already in the no-brain list.
Heh. Yeah. Definitely no-brain list.
To control political dissidents.
"Al those people at the protest for the war, add them to the no work list. That will teach them to disagree with our glorious leader.
Sorry, there is no other legitimate use for this list other than opression.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My ancestors came here via Ellis Island, legally.
I'm sure all Native Americans would agree that European settlement in the US was always done by the book, right?
I cannot condemn a person for breaking a law that I, in their position, would break myself. This country was founded by those who believed that unjust law was no law at all. "It's the law" is a empty position if you cannot justify the law itself.
If only they didn't, man, if only they didn't.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm sure all Native Americans would agree that European settlement in the US was always done by the book, right?
By the book of the day it was. But that's kinda not part of this debate is it?
I cannot condemn a person for breaking a law that I, in their position, would break myself.
I may not condemn them but I don't condone them either.
"It's the law" is a empty position if you cannot justify the law itself.
I think of all sorts of reasons to justify why illegal immigration is bad. It strains our social infrastructure, our health care infrastructure and our law enforcement agencies. It creates an entire class of people that depend on the services of the nation but don't contribute toward those services (taxes). It creates an entire class of people that can be exploited by businesses and criminals alike with no protection from either.
It's also blatantly unfair to those who decided to come here legally. A Canadian friend of mine has been waiting to come here for months. She has going through a paperwork nightmare from hell to get her green card. This is in spite of the fact that she has a masters degree and speaks three languages. We make her wait even though she is well educated, has family and a job waiting for her but we are willing to give amnesty to those that break our laws? What kind of message does that send?
This is the one issue that you would find agreement on across most sections of the political spectrum. Ask the common man on the street if this is a problem that needs to stop and he will say yes. It doesn't matter if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Unfortunately our political leaders have failed us miserably on this issue. The Republicans are owned by big business that likes cheap labor and the Democrats are owned by the PC crowd that feels bad for them and is afraid of being labeled racists. Both parties want the Hispanic vote.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
s/could be/would be/
Has there ever been a case of a government database which hasn't been misused? If this law passes, it's only a question of how many are going to get burned, not whether it's going to happen.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Americans won't do it because we have a standard of living that is a lot higher than many of the illegals immigrants are used to. For the American worker, if they refuse the job they may lose it, but we have social support for the unemployed and there will be other jobs. Illegal immigrant workers on the other hand have no such luxury; all they have is poverty and death waiting for them if they refuse to work so they are a lot more motivated. Labor laws in this country are what keep children out of factories and (usually) limit the workday and job requirements to something that is not going to wear out and compromise the health of the worker in as little as 5 or 6 years*. Wealth and benefit given to the employee has to come from somewhere though, and thus it translates to less profit for the company. *I did say "usually" which means "not always"
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
That's already happening with the no-fly list. A Princeton professor who gave a televised speech criticizing Bush's constitutional overreach found himself on the no-fly list afterwards. A guy who wrote a book called "Bush's Brain" about Karl Rove found himself on the no-fly list afterwards. 20 Wisconsin peace activists suddenly found themselves on the no-fly list .
The no-fly list is even being used to harass opposition political party members. Senator Ted Kennedy suddenly found himself on the no-fly list and had a lot of trouble getting himself off the list. The head of the TSA had to call him personally and promise to take him off the list before his troubles ended. In the same article, it talks about employees of the ACLU also ending up on the list.
Giving the government more secret and anonymous "lists" to deny people rights is not an invitation to abuse, it's a guarantee of it. The fact that systems like this from previous fascist governments are being implemented in modern-day America is one reason that people are arguing that America is on a well-planned transition to fascism.
"As currently structured, Basic Pilot does not detect duplicate active records in its database," John Shandley, the company's senior vice president of human resources, told politicians. "The same Social Security number could be in use at another employer, and potentially multiple employers, across the country."
In a recent statement about the bill, the White House maintained that the proposal will allow for "unprecedented" information sharing among federal and state agencies, and that Homeland Security will be able to receive "information on multiple uses of the same Social Security number by more than one individual."
I see a huge potential problem with this. In order to detect duplicate employment employers will have to report that an employee is working with them and also report when an employee quits or is fired. Imagine moving across the country to a new job only to find that they can't employ you because your previous employer forgot (either genuinely or maliciously) to report that you had stopped working for them, so the system sees you working on the other side of the country and determines that you must be using fraudulent credentials.
Also, what about those people who simply need to maintain two jobs?
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
So the argument here, if I may simplify it, is that millions of Mexicans are swamping the borders because they want free emergency healthcare.
Not free "I know what I need well in advance, I'm going to spend a few months planning a trip across the border" healthcare, but free "I've just been hit by a truck. Quick! Let's travel 500 miles to a hospital in Texas because that's much better than going to the nearest hospital in Mexico City".
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the argument is bullshit from start to finish. It may be that illegal immigrants are suffering more accidents than the national average, and end up in ERs as a result: this is plausible, as illegals suffering employment by an employer who has no more reason to obey basic OSHA laws than they do laws on immigration; but the idea they're here for the free healthcare (free as in "You can download music for free on Kazaa" incidentally) is so ludicrous, it needs to be forcibly taken out of the debate, and shot.
The solution isn't to limit immigration if this is the problem, the solution is to penalize the employers.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The thing about GW Bush, is that he isn't really liberal or conservative in the classic sense. He's basically taken the worst aspects from all ideologies and blended them together, or something like that. But you can't really blame him. His attitudes serve a generation of weirdness. Things that have come to be since the 1960s, combined with old-school attitudes, combined with mere confusion.
Call it post-industrial or something. But it's like PETA meets Archie Bunker. It's very Bleeding Heart in so many ways, but yet not. It rails against something, and then promotes policies that undermine it. So it results in a very strange culture of defeatist victimhood. Like a kid who wears lead boots to play basketball and then complains when he loses.
A couple of examples. If you listen to right-wing preachers, they complain endlessly about Hollywood, right? Well what's Hollywood really about? Simple, giving the consumers what they want. So they're lambasting consumerism from hollywood, but then on the otherside they are defending consumerism from say Wal-Mart. Hell, many of these preachers are nothing more than con artists, flying their church plane to their condo in florida, and then on sunday railing about narcissism and consumer excess.
or right-wingers promote their absitinence only education, and it turns out the kids who get that training are more likely to have sex. In fact, they're more likely to have what they'd probably call "deviant sex", because the kids are more confused than anything. I knew a girl like this back say 10 years ago. Was just adament she was not going to have sex before marriage. Didn't stop her from performing BJ's though.
It's not new. Consider Prohibition. Promoted by the Temperance movement to reduce alcohol consumption, but instead it increased alcohol consumption. or the war on drugs.
Or the war on terrorism.
Reserve personnel: 858,500 (List of countries by size of armed forces) Sounds like the civvies has a veritable shitload more guns, and likely ammo. That's what protects us from the oppressive gub'mint.
Now, as far as more powerful firepower... an overwhelming guerrilla-style force, such as the "militia" of the United States will not go quitely into the night. Instead, it would trounce the US military if needed be. A fact that's vital to living in a free country; and if you ask me we're getting closer and closer to that dreaded day when the people must rise up once again.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
It creates an entire class of people that depend on the services of the nation but don't contribute toward those services (taxes). It creates an entire class of people that can be exploited by businesses and criminals alike with no protection from either.
I live in a very "poor" community in central California and I am not Hispanic. The paternal side of my family came to this country a little over 100 years ago and the maternal side is documented back to the colonial times. Having lived about 30 years in this place has taught me that your argument is flawed on many levels. But it is not your fault because you are just regurgitating the BS fed to you by the usual suspects. Lets start with the huge misconception about how undocumented workers don't contribute to the tax pool. Just because someone does not pay payroll taxes doesn't mean that they do not contribute to the tax system. These people live in a very cash based society. They pay sales taxes, gas taxes, luxury taxes, just to name a few. And their business has an enormous impact on the well being of our local economy. And I love the whole "It's for their own good" argument like you use by complaining about how they are exploited. Jesus if you could spend a week where most of these people grew up and lived most of their lives you would know that almost any amount of exploitation they could possibly face here is almost completely insignificant. Show me a time in history when an ethnic group came to this country legally and didn't face those same issues.
It's also blatantly unfair to those who decided to come here legally. A Canadian friend of mine has been waiting to come here for months. She has going through a paperwork nightmare from hell to get her green card. This is in spite of the fact that she has a masters degree and speaks three languages. We make her wait even though she is well educated, has family and a job waiting for her but we are willing to give amnesty to those that break our laws? What kind of message does that send?
The message is sends is...Bring us your poor, your tired etc...Your friend with a Masters degree doesn't NEED to come to the U.S. from another first world country. The people who flee the the U.S. are literally fleeing some of the worst conditions imaginable to come live in ramshackle little buildings here in the U.S. The fact that they are willing to live in the kind of conditions that they live in once they are here is a testament to the horrible shit they are running from. Tell your well educated, probably well paid, probably fictitious Canadian friend to go hire herself a decent immigration lawyer and she could have a visa inside of 6 months.
This is the one issue that you would find agreement on across most sections of the political spectrum. Ask the common man on the street if this is a problem that needs to stop and he will say yes. It doesn't matter if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Unfortunately our political leaders have failed us miserably on this issue. The Republicans are owned by big business that likes cheap labor and the Democrats are owned by the PC crowd that feels bad for them and is afraid of being labeled racists. Both parties want the Hispanic vote.
This is the best part of your post, by best I mean most flawed. If illegal immigration was a real issue that was so bi-partisan in nature it would be dealt with by now. In my opinion this issue is just a bunch of hype to keep us distracted from real issues. Illegal immigration is just like the war on drugs. It is a huge money-pit, an awesome excuse for our government to restrict it's citizen's civil liberties, and a great way to distract a population so disillusioned by it's political system that it is considered a success when half the eligible population turns up to vote on something. This issue is like abortion, kind of emotional for a lot of people but in the end it is all kind of meaningless because people are going to do what they believe is right
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
Also, who says that people in the military would fight their friends, neighbors, etc. Soldiers aren't raised in a vacuum, and if they're called upon to kill Americans, they probably would rebel.
-b.