James Pinkerton, Houston Chronicle, March 27, 2008
Houston industry and labor leaders say new federal rules that threaten businesses with prosecution if they don’t fire suspected illegal immigrants could cripple the regional economy.
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security issued a revised version of its “no-match” regulations, which punish employers whose employees’ names don’t match their Social Security numbers.
The regulations are provoking such urgency among local business leaders that the powerful Greater Houston Partnership has created a nonprofit lobbying group—Americans for Immigration Reform—to battle the new rules.
Jeff Moseley, president and CEO of the partnership, said the lobbying group is also working to revive comprehensive immigration reform in Congress later this year. They plan to hire at least 10 staff members and raise $15 million to $20 million from the business community.
{snip}
The partnership, a not-for-profit, private booster group with 1,800 member companies, lobbies governments on business issues important to Houston and works to bring new business to the area.
It estimates that the Houston Metropolitan Statistical Area has 250,000 undocumented workers who add $27 billion yearly to the regional economy.
The partnership says five industries account for the bulk of illegal workers in Houston: construction, manufacturing, professional and business services, accommodation and food services, and other services.
Dale Wortham, president of the AFL-CIO Council in Harris County, said the no-match rules could lead to a construction worker shortage.
{snip}
But there are some who downplay the potential harm to Houston’s economy, noting no-match letters are sent only to companies where more than 10 workers with discrepancies are identified.
{snip}
[Barton Smith, an economics professor at the University of Houston who directs the Institute for Regional Forecasting] said the no-match rule wouldn’t affect businesses with few employees, and workers from other parts of the nation could migrate here for jobs vacated by illegal immigrants.
Texas 2nd nationally
DHS estimates more than 7 million people, or 5 percent of the civilian labor force, is here illegally.
{snip}
The Social Security Administration sent out 138,447 no-match letters nationally in 2006. Texas was second with 12,713 businesses getting letters. Because each letter contains more than 10 discrepancies, it’s estimated that in 2006 at least 139,843 workers in Texas had names that didn’t match Social Security numbers.
Businesses previously were not required to take action on receiving the letters. But under the new rules, employers that don’t reconcile discrepancies in 90 days must fire workers or face fines and criminal charges.
{snip}
Original article
Email
James Pinkerton
at james.pinkerton@chron.com.
(Posted on March 28, 2008)
Comments
The “business community” can spend that much money to fight immigration enforcement, but they can’t seem to spend any money to pay white people living middle-class wages.
Posted by Question Diversity at 8:03 PM on March 28
Capitalism in action once again. Good thing we have a capitalist system that demands illegal non-white immigration. God forbid anyone would ever want to interfere with the almighty free market.
Posted by Joe at 8:31 PM on March 28
You definitely would not want to spend 15 million to pay a living wage for AMERICANS.
Posted by Lee at 8:35 PM on March 28
“Houston industry and labor leaders say new federal rules that threaten businesses with prosecution if they don’t fire suspected illegal immigrants could cripple the regional economy.”
That’s false. Doing so will cause wages to rise and the 7 million Americans now unemployed would be able to not only find work they would be paid a decent wage for the work that they do.
The Houston Chronicle is a left wing rag that is losing circulation and, according to Bill O’Reilly, is in danger of falling by the wayside. O’Reilly points out that the paper is so radically agenda-driven it continues it’s circulation busting policies even as it sinks beneath the surface.
Every single policy that is first put into action to remedy the illegal problem some left wing radical begins screaming that the sky is falling, yet it never does, and, of course, it never will.
Nothing but good can come from a reduction of illegal third world crime and poverty.
Posted by Ranger at 9:37 PM on March 28
And when it looked like the institution of slavery was being threatened, the slave-owning states banded together and tried to coerce the government by vowing to secede.
Illegal immigration is the new slavery, only more profitable. And the new slave owners are banding together again.
The African-American slaves were cared for even when they could not labor; when they were very young, very old and very ill.
The “new slavery” pays third-world wages and lets the American taxpayer take care of the young, the old, the sick and the criminal. The taxpayer gets screwed and loses his culture and quality of life at the same time.
Posted by Lucas M at 9:52 PM on March 28
If we really wanted to make them stop, we would start boycotting businesses that do this. Maybe start an organization that inspects businesses and gives a seal of approval only if they have zero foreign workers. People could choose to only patronize places with the seal. We used to do something like this with the “Made in America” movement. We need to bring that sort of thing back.
Posted by at 10:39 PM on March 28
Shouldn’t that read $15 to $20 million dollars in bribes to U.S. Congressman?
Posted by RaceandCountry at 1:17 AM on March 29
We have plenty of working class whites struggling to put food on the table, losing their homes, and going without medical insurance. They are not overpaid. I will be delighted to see businessmen go out of business if they are not willing to give jobs to citizens.
Come to think of it, it was greedy businessmen unwilling to pay a decent days wage to Irish or Scottish immigrants who imported all those black slaves from Africa. Look at all the problems that’s caused since. Reparations should be paid — to the white working and middle class.
Posted by WR the elder at 2:08 AM on March 29
Hello there. I want to request that you quit calling papers that shill for illegals leftwing papers. My perception, as a Leftist, is that the notion of any leftwing paper in the US is risible. That you all (mostly very smart folks) actually believe this nonsense is sad and frustrating. Get it through your head. A leftwing paper is pro-labor, pro-worker and pro-poor and low income and against the rich and the business classes. All papers are capitalist enterprises run by the upper 1% income group of the US, hence their editorial policies reflect their class interests. Marxist analysis is great for stuff like this. These guys don’t care anything about diversity or race or any of that stuff. Illegals are good for business and the rich, every paper in the US is run by rich businessmen, hence papers promote their class interests, Gramsci-like, via the media. That’s all there is to it, no liberal agenda or anything. It’s just sheer class war, that’s all.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 5:54 AM on March 29
This Is the reason they are fighting so hard against any type of enforcent…. click this link. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-carwash23mar23,0,3592975.story They ALL want a massive amnesty to keep their cheap labor supply flowing.
Posted by James at 9:26 AM on March 29
Taking on new staff with false documentation is amoral anyway as they are already criminals who do not complete the application forms truthfully (if they are prepared well). As an employer when I was working (now retired) I would offer up the details of potential new employees who could be suspect to the local police who had the system where they could easily do a thorough background check, and if illegal, they were arrested and if they had a bad criminal record, they could be denied employment if they had not declared it during the interview, all with no chances of any comebacks to my company. It worked well and I also avoided having to interview those who were illegal or criminals with bad records, a big problem in our business then, as they were told of this system at the point of application and given the chance to walk away. No human rights breached at all.
Posted by Brian Deller at 2:18 PM on March 29
“A leftwing paper is pro-labor, pro-worker and pro-poor and low income and against the rich and the business classes. All papers are capitalist enterprises run by the upper 1% income group of the US, hence their editorial policies reflect their class interests.”
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 5:54 AM on March 29
That’s such a distorted view of leftist radicalism I don’t know where to start. With all due respect, do you even understand fully what they print?
Whether they’re covering up black on white crime or refusing to call a black on white racial attack a hate crime, they constantly, without fail, slant the news with a radical leftist bias.
And Gramsci? Try Marcuse, Fromm, Lukacs, Horkheimer, Reich, Adorno, in addition to Gramsci, who were given sanctuary in this country after fleeing from the Nazis and to show their appreciation they poisoned our system with the leftist ideology that passes for political correctness throughout the college campuses, but, most especially, the journalism schools, which negatively influenced leftists in this country by teaching them to hate their whiteness.
Many of those on the left today aren’t even aware of where their love and tolerance, and their Orwellian agendas, came from and adhere to it strictly as a result of conditioned thinking pounded into their heads for years. Some are VERY aware of it and its “critical theory,” and pursue it particularly because it seeks to undermine Western civilization and culture.
“These guys don’t care anything about diversity or race or any of that stuff. Illegals are good for business and the rich, every paper in the US is run by rich businessmen, hence papers promote their class interests,…”
These guys care about race to the nth degree, because in their mind-conditioned views they’ve been duped into believing, through repetition and twisted logic (critical theory), that they’re guilty of so many wrongs it is incumbent on them to bend over backwards for non-whites every way possible. They have effectively been conditioned to hate themselves and fight for everything that is bad for their people and their way of life. Ring their politically correct bells and they will respond by salivating politically correct nonsense that a person utilizing freedom of thought finds absolutely repugnant.
They advocate open borders, amnesty for illegals, nonsensical programs for blacks that can’t possible help them since it won’t increase their intelligence, affirmative action, though it harms their children, and a whole litany of hare-brained liberal concepts based in abject stupidity.
And “NO” it isn’t class warfare. It is too keyed into a racial component and an open borders agenda to qualify as that.
Many of us on the other side despise classism, but know that it has to be tolerated in order to have an open society where we can advance according to our abilities.
Leftist radicals are best known for their naivete, gullibility, and lack of any REAL intellect, right after their insane promotion of everything that harms their people and favors those who want to harm us or push us out somehow.
Before we purge our ranks of any other mal-contents it is vitally important we begin with leftist radicals. They are most responsible for the failure and danger of multiculturalism/multiracialism.
Posted by Ranger at 2:45 PM on March 29
I feel so sorry for these businesses! Maybe if they look a little harder they will find Americans who will work for just a little more than they pay illegals.
Why not send letters to any employer who has even one number that does not match?
Posted by Frank at 4:37 PM on March 29
Hey guys. Don’t you see what’s going on?
This is another “unfunded mandate”, but better (for the Feds, but not for us).
The Feds can’t keep out the illegals (or they don’t want to), so they require businesses to do it for them.
It’s better for the Feds because if the businesses fail to keep them out, the Feds fine them.
So for the ruling elite, it’s a win-win situation.
BTW, speaking of mandates, when I was running a small business, I found that I had to collect and pay 12 different taxes (mostly payroll taxes). So, while trying to make a buck (I made very few), I was an unpaid tax collector for the Feds, the State, and the Local governments.
Posted by We're screwed at 8:07 PM on March 29
In the first place, these traitors aren’t “battling new laws” they’re trying to find ways to circumvent the new ways being developed to enforce laws we’ve had all along.
One thing Houstonites could do is impair this sort of funding by determining which houston industry and labor leaders are involved in this attempt at dodging the law, and REFUSE TO USE YOUR DOLLARS IN THEIR PLACES OF BUSINESS.
Lets see what hurts more, no cheap labor, or no customers!
Posted by Tidey-Whitey at 8:27 PM on March 29
The article ran on and on about the fields that are threatened without saying that the business leaders main complaint was an uptick in labor cost at the very end of the article.
I don’t think that the RACE CARD is working very well for the MSM in this issue maybe because they play it at every opportunity and it’s just white noise to me and the public now?
Posted by pat at 9:45 PM on March 29
“undocumented workers who add $27 billion yearly to the regional economy.”
While the legal working middle class pays for the social benefits for these illegals. What a joke.
Posted by at 2:27 AM on March 30
Illegal immigration is the new slavery, only more profitable. And the new slave owners are banding together again.
The “new slavery” pays third-world wages and lets the American taxpayer take care of the young, the old, the sick and the criminal. The taxpayer gets screwed and loses his culture and quality of life at the same time.
Posted by Lucas M at 9:52 PM on March 28
This is the deal….sorry to see it happen but its a sign of the times…and the world view of the Utopians among us!
Posted by Lisette at 2:21 PM on March 30
Get it through your head. A leftwing paper is pro-labor, pro-worker and pro-poor and low income and against the rich and the business classes. All papers are capitalist enterprises run by the upper 1% income group of the US, hence their editorial policies reflect their class interests.
The idea that leftism is always at daggers drawn with the interests of the wealthy is nonsense. Who do you think defines leftism, but the elites? While many Republicans in Congress support open borders, the reality is that virtually all Democrats do. Are you therefore suggesting that Democrats are further to the right than Republicans?
The fact is that the interests of the working classes no longer figure much in the considerations of either party. Throw out your nonsnesial ideology, Mr. Lindsay, and join us. As long as artifical divisions are created by people on the right who support the working class citizens of THIS country and people on the left who feel likewise, we will always be divided and always be defeated.
Try Marcuse, Fromm, Lukacs, Horkheimer, Reich, Adorno, in addition to Gramsci, who were given sanctuary in this country after fleeing from the Nazis and to show their appreciation they poisoned our system with the leftist ideology that passes for political correctness throughout the college campuses.
It reminds me of a story I read a decade or so ago about one of the richest men in the country. He was a Jewish medical doctor who had fled the Holocaust for the safe arms of America. He invested in real estate and made a fortune. How, exactly? By leasing office buildings to the government for very low rents on the initial lease. When the initial lease was up he jacked up the rent, successfully concluding that the federal government would determine the cost of moving more expensive than the cost of paying the upped rent. (This, btw, is called rack renting).
For being rescued by Americans he rewarded us by sticking us with a big bill. That’s gratitude for you.
Posted by Alan at 2:49 PM on March 30
If the business community really wanted to change things for the better, instead of insuring continuing short term profits, they would seek to eliminate the IRS—it would be relatively easy to provide native whites with a living wage if the government did not take half of the money before it makes it to the employee’s pay check. The problem is not a shortage of available labor. The problem is a government which steals more than half of everything we earn in order to make more laws, creating more criminals, and a greater need for prison construction. Dramatically shrink the government, which does not enforce its own laws anyway, and we will all be much better off—and actually free for a change.
Posted by at 5:52 PM on March 30
Capitalism is worse for white interests than communism. Compare the demographics of Eastern Europe, Western Europe and North America for the proof.
Show me the “leftist radicals” in one city that have given $15 million in a few months to supporting non-white immigration.
Posted by Joe at 3:57 AM on March 31
Ummm….did someone forget to do the math?
250,000 illegals contribute 27 billion (!) to Houston’s economy?
This would mean they each spend $108,000 per year. How many illegals even make that much in a year, let alone spend that much? Perhaps they’re including home & auto purchases done with other people’s identities.
Also, not even a mention of the amount of money they send back to that third world slum. They always seem to forget that in these articles touting how much illegals contribute to the economy. Interesting.
I’m so glad they’re finally cracking down and arresting them as the criminals they are.
Posted by Jay at 11:41 AM on March 31
Isn’t most of the money being earned by these illegals being sent out of the country?
Posted by Skip at 3:00 PM on April 2
Joe: “Capitalism in action once again. Good thing we have a capitalist system that demands illegal non-white immigration. God forbid anyone would ever want to interfere with the almighty free market.”
“Free market” is the bane of “free enterprise”, as are monopolies, price fixing cartels and the use of slave labor. Capitalism is simply supply and demand at work in the marketplace, but constrained by laws that prevent abominations such as Globalism to flourish. Since our government no longer recognizes the rule of law, the “free enterprise” is no longer regulated and American jobs and manufacturing are no longer protected…
Posted by at 4:29 PM on April 3
