New Relief for Kids Announced June 15, 2012
- Thread starter BigJoe5
- Start date
we are saying the same thing here actually. i don't buy it either and that's what i'm saying. i never said how many years - or if it was months i referred to.
i just think we spend way too much time and money tossing billions on a misdemeanor crime. why aren't we spending as much enforcing j walking or spitting on sidewalks? these people come because there is a demand. americans won't do these jobs. we need more people to help us in many higher end jobs, but also in the lower end. that is where american employers just can't find enough americans to fill the spots. nobody has problems admitting it when it comes to engineers, astrophysicists, chemists, programmers, etc. but everybody wants to pretend there is this huge swell of americans chomping at the bit to pick oranges or weed pots in wholesale nurseries in 100 degree heat. i can tell you that ain't so. first from experience because i myself have worked those jobs and they always talk about how no americans will take the jobs. they just don't apply and there are migrants getting paid well over $20 and hour in some cases - i've been there and seen it. but don't take my word for it:
"Americans don't appear to want farm work
By Garance Burke, Associated Press Writer
VISALIA, Calif. — As the economy tanked during the past two years, a debate has raged over whether immigrants are taking jobs that Americans want. Here, in the sweltering vineyards of the largest farm state, the answer is no.
Most Americans simply don't apply for jobs harvesting fruits and vegetables in California, where one of every eight people is out of work, according to government data for a federal seasonal farmworker program analyzed by the Associated Press.
And the few unemployed Americans who apply through official channels usually don't stay on in the fields, a point comedian Stephen Colbert has alluded to in recent broadcasts on Comedy Central.
"It's just not something that most Americans are going to pack up their bags and move here to do," said farmer Steve Fortin, who pays $10.25 an hour to foreign workers to trim strawberry plants for six weeks each summer at his nursery near the Nevada border. He has spent $3,000 this year ensuring domestic workers have first dibs on his jobs in the sparsely populated stretch of the state, advertising in newspapers and on an electronic job registry.
But he hasn't had any takers, and only one farmer in the state hired anyone using a little-known, little-used program to hire foreign farmworkers the legal way — by applying for guest worker visas.
Since January, California farmers have posted ads for 1,160 farmworker positions open to U.S. citizens and legal residents seeking work.
Only 233 people applied after being linked with the jobs through unemployment offices in California, Texas, Nevada and Arizona. One grower brought on 36 U.S citizens or legal permanent residents. No one else hired any.
"It surprises me, too, but we do put the information out there for the public," said Lucy Ruelas, who manages the California Employment Development Department's agricultural services unit. "If an applicant sees the reality of the job, they might change their mind."
The California figures represent a small sample of efforts to recruit domestic workers under the H-2A Guest Worker Program, but they provide a snapshot of how hard it is to lure Americans to farm labor — and to get growers to use the program.
Fortin is one of just 23 of the estimated 40,900 full-time farmers and ranchers in California who petitioned this year to bring in foreign farmworkers through legal means, the government data showed. The Labor Department did not respond to a request for comment about the findings.
More than half of farmworkers in the United States are illegal immigrants, according to the Labor Department, and another fourth of them were born outside the country. Proponents of tougher immigration laws — as well as the United Farm Workers of America — say farmers are used to a cheap, largely undocumented work force, and say if growers raised wages and improved working conditions, the jobs would attract Americans.
So far, a tongue-in-cheek effort by Colbert and the UFW to get Americans to take farm jobs has been more effective in attracting applicants than the official channels.
The UFW in June launched the "Take Our Jobs Campaign," inviting people to go online and apply.
About 8,600 people filled out an application form, but only 7 have been placed in farm jobs, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said.
Colbert joked to a House congressional committee Friday that spending a day picking beans in upstate New York for an episode was "really, really hard."
Colbert's comedic activism makes a point Fortin is familiar with. Some Americans referred for jobs at his nursery couldn't to do the grueling work.
"A few years ago when domestic workers were referred here, we saw absentee problems, and we had people asking for time off after they had just started," he said. "Some were actually planting the plants upside down."
Economists have long argued over whether local workers would take jobs in the field if wages rose. Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, said because so few farmers participate in the H-2A program, the data's limitations make it hard to draw national conclusions. Under current conditions, the figures show the work force will remain almost entirely immigrant, he said.
"Recruitment of U.S. workers in this program doesn't work well primarily because employers have already identified who they want to bring in from abroad," Martin said. "I don't think a lot of U.S. workers are going out there looking for a seasonal job paying the minimum wage or a dollar more."
The Labor Department collects the same data about H-2A visa applications for all 50 states, but does not make it publicly available. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from AP, the agency said it would provide some records for nearly $11,000, but it was not clear whether the information would show how many Americans had applied for farm labor jobs nationwide.
Even California officials say the guest worker program needs fixing, despite a reform effort announced in February by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis meant to boost efforts to fill crop-picking jobs first with domestic workers.
Benjamin Reynosa, who was picking ruby-colored grapes in 90-degree heat near Fowler Friday morning, said he often is the only U.S. legal resident on seasonal crews. He said most people hear about the jobs through word of mouth or signs tacked outside rural stores, not the electronic registry.
"I've been working in agriculture for 22 years and I can tell you there are very few gringos out here," said Reynosa, 49, of Orange Cove, said. "If people know English, they go to work in packinghouses or sit in an office."
In Tulare County, where the unemployment rate is above 16%, job seekers on a recent morning crowded around computers at the job development agency. Staff appeared unaware the guest worker program required them to advertise the jobs.
"We just don't advertise those kinds of farmworker jobs," said Sandi Miller, program coordinator for the county's work force investment board.
Near U.S. Army flyers posted in the lobby, however, under the heading "HOT JOB LEADS" was an ad for a farmworker position, preferring someone with Spanish fluency and tractor maintenance skills.
Miller said later it was the first she had seen such a notice. She hadn't received any applications, she said.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-09-27-farm-work_N.htm
and look at what fox news' angelic darling former governor from arkansas said when he was in the mansion:
"...When people say illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans, Huckabee said he asks them to name someone "who cannot get a job because a Mexican illegally here has taken the job they want."
"If that's the case, if you can get me their name and phone number by five this afternoon, I can have them making a bed, plucking a chicken, tarring a roof or picking a tomato by the morning at 8 o' clock," he said.
No one has been able to give him a name, he said. Illegal immigrants have jobs Americans don't want, he said..."
http://24ahead.com/blog/archives/005609.html
wanna solve the problem of getting less undocumented workers? give them documentation. viola! they suddenly are not undocumented. make em pay a fee if they've been here already and expand the annual amount allowed in per year. problem solved.
yes, actually to be precise:
"A previous version of this post incorrectly described the administration's move as an executive order. It is a Department of Homeland Security directive. The text has been corrected."
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/obama-dream-act-executive-order
there are deeper issues here when considering the way the system is at present and those interested in reform vs more rigorous enforcement of laws already on the book. here is an example:
Private Prisons Profit From Immigration Crackdown, Federal And Local Law Enforcement Partnerships
Posted: 06/07/2012 3:06 pm Updated: 06/07/2012 6:54 pm
PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. -- On a flat and desolate stretch of Interstate 10 some 50 miles south of Phoenix, a sheriff's deputy pulls over a green Chevy Tahoe speeding westbound and carrying three young Hispanic men.
The man behind the wheel produces no driver's license or registration. The deputy notices $1,000 in cash stuffed in the doorframe -- payment, he presumes, for completed passage from Mexico. He radios the sheriff's immigration enforcement team, summoning agents from the U.S. Border Patrol. Soon, the three men are ushered into the back of a white van with a federal seal.
This routine traffic stop represents the front end of an increasingly lucrative commercial enterprise: the business of incarcerating immigrant detainees, the fastest-growing segment of the American prison population. The three men loaded into the van offer fresh profit opportunities for the nation's swiftly expanding private prison industry, which has in recent years captured the bulk of this commerce through federal contracts. By filling its cells with undocumented immigrants caught in the web of increased border security, the industry has seen its revenues swell at taxpayer expense.
The convergence of the people on the Interstate on this recent afternoon, as well as the profits that flow from imprisoning immigrants, are in part the result of concerted efforts by the private prison industry to tilt immigration detention policies in its favor, a Huffington Post investigation has shown.
In Washington, the industry's lobbyists have influenced policy to secure growing numbers of federal inmates in its facilities, while encouraging Congress to increase funding for detention bedspace. Here in this southern Arizona community, private prison companies share the spoils of their business with the local government, effectively giving area law enforcement an incentive to apprehend as many undocumented immigrants as they can.
This confluence of forces has contributed to a doubling of the ranks of immigrant detainees, to about 400,000 a year. Nearly half are now held in private prisons, up from one-fourth a decade ago, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The two largest for-profit prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, Inc., have more than doubled their revenues from the immigrant detention business since 2005, according to securities filings.
CCA spokesman Mike Machak acknowledges that immigrant detention "has been an important part of our business since our inception," but adds that the company does not attempt to influence detention policy through its lobbying. He says the company is proud of its work and has built its reputation through "providing quality services at cost savings to our government partner."
"CCA has always worked to educate decision makers on the merits and benefits of public-private partnerships to meet their expressed need for detention space and services," Machak says. "It is CCA's longstanding policy not to draft, lobby for or in any way promote crime, sentencing or detention legislation."
GEO Group declined to comment for this report.
Americans have grown accustomed to the crackdown on illegal immigration as part of the fabric of contemporary political debate, one in which Arizona's strict enforcement posture frequently captures attention. The private prison industry has exploited the crackdown as something else: a lucrative business model.
"The policy in this country has changed from catch and release to more detention," CCA's former board chairman, William Andrews, told investors in 2006, according to the transcript of an upbeat earnings call. "That means we'll be incarcerating more illegal aliens."
The success of the industry in growing revenues through undocumented immigrant detention has in part resulted from two distinct campaigns -- one in Washington, and the other in local communities such as this one, where prisoners are housed. Rural towns and counties have eagerly embraced the arrival of immigrant prisoners for the attendant economic benefits, including tax revenues and jobs.
"For small towns that are economically depressed, this is attractive," says Travis Pratt, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University who has studied the private prison industry. "It's an influx of public money immediately. There doesn't need to be a delay."
In Pinal County, a vast stretch of Arizona ranchlands and stunning desert scenery between Phoenix and Tucson, towns compete with one another to attract new prisons. Pinal has become the nerve center of immigrant detention in Arizona, with five separate facilities holding up to 3,000 detainees on a given day. CCA is the county's largest private employer.
White prison buses with caged windows appear on cactus-lined local highways more frequently than school buses. The growing concentration of prisoners has led some to rename this "Penal County."
The expanding prison populations have allowed small towns to carry budget surpluses in a state that has otherwise been pummeled by the recession. Prison communities have largely avoided the dire economic straits suffered by Arizona communities in every direction, where the housing bust and subsequent foreclosure crisis have ravaged local government coffers.
In the town of Florence -- which has a prison population of more than 17,000, plus 7,800 residents who are not behind bars -- more than 40 percent of the local government's general fund comes from state revenues directly related to housing inmates, according to Jess Knudson, the deputy town manager. That has allowed the local government to offer highly popular services for seniors and build skate parks, dog parks and little league fields throughout town.
"We're one of the few towns in Arizona that has been able to stay in the black with this recession," Knudson says.
The prison industry's expansion in southern Arizona has been propelled in part by a county sheriff, Paul Babeu, who has gained a national reputation for his aggressive stance on illegal immigration, making Pinal County one of the state's top jurisdictions for undocumented immigrant apprehensions and deportations.
CCA pays the county government based on the number of inmates in one of its prisons in Pinal, as part of an agreement to operate in the county. Last year that amounted to roughly $1.4 million, according to county budget documents. The payments increase as more beds are filled -- under the agreement, the county receives two dollars per day for each inmate held in the facility. The money in part funds the county sheriff's office, whose enforcement actions have influence over the size of the prisoner population: Under an agreement with the federal government, the office acts as an enforcement agent on immigration law, arresting violators and referring them to federal authorities, who make the ultimate decision on detention.
Babeu, who declined repeated requests for comment, heads that office. According to campaign finance records, he has received political contributions from CCA executives and lobbyists.
The sheriff's spokesman, Elias Johnson, says the department enforces immigration law on the merits, and has no financial incentive to fill CCA's facilities. He notes that CCA's contracts to operate local prisons are with the county, and not with the sheriff's office. He adds that immigrant detainees held within local facilities are brought in from several states, meaning that those apprehended locally make up only a small percentage of the total beds filled.
"You're talking about maybe a 2 percent impact on our overall inmate population," Johnson says.
Machak, the CCA spokesman, points out that final decisions on detention are made by the federal government, not local law enforcement.
But some experts see no less than an immigration-industrial complex gaining force: Companies dependent upon continued growth in the numbers of undocumented immigrants detained have exerted themselves in the nation's capital and in small, rural communities to create incentives that reinforce that growth.
"The companies seized this opportunity to fill up their empty prisons, and they've used lobbyists to ensure that it keeps getting pushed in that direction," says Tanya Golash-Boza, a professor of sociology at the University of Kansas who has followed the growth of U.S. immigration enforcement and detention. "You can certainly say that if we stopped the mandatory detention of immigrants, CCA and GEO Group and these other companies would have a major financial crisis."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/private-prisons-immigration-federal-law-enforcement_n_1569219.html
why are democrats so afraid to talk about this?
Private Prisons Profit From Immigration Crackdown, Federal And Local Law Enforcement Partnerships
Posted: 06/07/2012 3:06 pm Updated: 06/07/2012 6:54 pm
PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. -- On a flat and desolate stretch of Interstate 10 some 50 miles south of Phoenix, a sheriff's deputy pulls over a green Chevy Tahoe speeding westbound and carrying three young Hispanic men.
The man behind the wheel produces no driver's license or registration. The deputy notices $1,000 in cash stuffed in the doorframe -- payment, he presumes, for completed passage from Mexico. He radios the sheriff's immigration enforcement team, summoning agents from the U.S. Border Patrol. Soon, the three men are ushered into the back of a white van with a federal seal.
This routine traffic stop represents the front end of an increasingly lucrative commercial enterprise: the business of incarcerating immigrant detainees, the fastest-growing segment of the American prison population. The three men loaded into the van offer fresh profit opportunities for the nation's swiftly expanding private prison industry, which has in recent years captured the bulk of this commerce through federal contracts. By filling its cells with undocumented immigrants caught in the web of increased border security, the industry has seen its revenues swell at taxpayer expense.
The convergence of the people on the Interstate on this recent afternoon, as well as the profits that flow from imprisoning immigrants, are in part the result of concerted efforts by the private prison industry to tilt immigration detention policies in its favor, a Huffington Post investigation has shown.
In Washington, the industry's lobbyists have influenced policy to secure growing numbers of federal inmates in its facilities, while encouraging Congress to increase funding for detention bedspace. Here in this southern Arizona community, private prison companies share the spoils of their business with the local government, effectively giving area law enforcement an incentive to apprehend as many undocumented immigrants as they can.
This confluence of forces has contributed to a doubling of the ranks of immigrant detainees, to about 400,000 a year. Nearly half are now held in private prisons, up from one-fourth a decade ago, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The two largest for-profit prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, Inc., have more than doubled their revenues from the immigrant detention business since 2005, according to securities filings.
CCA spokesman Mike Machak acknowledges that immigrant detention "has been an important part of our business since our inception," but adds that the company does not attempt to influence detention policy through its lobbying. He says the company is proud of its work and has built its reputation through "providing quality services at cost savings to our government partner."
"CCA has always worked to educate decision makers on the merits and benefits of public-private partnerships to meet their expressed need for detention space and services," Machak says. "It is CCA's longstanding policy not to draft, lobby for or in any way promote crime, sentencing or detention legislation."
GEO Group declined to comment for this report.
Americans have grown accustomed to the crackdown on illegal immigration as part of the fabric of contemporary political debate, one in which Arizona's strict enforcement posture frequently captures attention. The private prison industry has exploited the crackdown as something else: a lucrative business model.
"The policy in this country has changed from catch and release to more detention," CCA's former board chairman, William Andrews, told investors in 2006, according to the transcript of an upbeat earnings call. "That means we'll be incarcerating more illegal aliens."
The success of the industry in growing revenues through undocumented immigrant detention has in part resulted from two distinct campaigns -- one in Washington, and the other in local communities such as this one, where prisoners are housed. Rural towns and counties have eagerly embraced the arrival of immigrant prisoners for the attendant economic benefits, including tax revenues and jobs.
"For small towns that are economically depressed, this is attractive," says Travis Pratt, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University who has studied the private prison industry. "It's an influx of public money immediately. There doesn't need to be a delay."
In Pinal County, a vast stretch of Arizona ranchlands and stunning desert scenery between Phoenix and Tucson, towns compete with one another to attract new prisons. Pinal has become the nerve center of immigrant detention in Arizona, with five separate facilities holding up to 3,000 detainees on a given day. CCA is the county's largest private employer.
White prison buses with caged windows appear on cactus-lined local highways more frequently than school buses. The growing concentration of prisoners has led some to rename this "Penal County."
The expanding prison populations have allowed small towns to carry budget surpluses in a state that has otherwise been pummeled by the recession. Prison communities have largely avoided the dire economic straits suffered by Arizona communities in every direction, where the housing bust and subsequent foreclosure crisis have ravaged local government coffers.
In the town of Florence -- which has a prison population of more than 17,000, plus 7,800 residents who are not behind bars -- more than 40 percent of the local government's general fund comes from state revenues directly related to housing inmates, according to Jess Knudson, the deputy town manager. That has allowed the local government to offer highly popular services for seniors and build skate parks, dog parks and little league fields throughout town.
"We're one of the few towns in Arizona that has been able to stay in the black with this recession," Knudson says.
The prison industry's expansion in southern Arizona has been propelled in part by a county sheriff, Paul Babeu, who has gained a national reputation for his aggressive stance on illegal immigration, making Pinal County one of the state's top jurisdictions for undocumented immigrant apprehensions and deportations.
CCA pays the county government based on the number of inmates in one of its prisons in Pinal, as part of an agreement to operate in the county. Last year that amounted to roughly $1.4 million, according to county budget documents. The payments increase as more beds are filled -- under the agreement, the county receives two dollars per day for each inmate held in the facility. The money in part funds the county sheriff's office, whose enforcement actions have influence over the size of the prisoner population: Under an agreement with the federal government, the office acts as an enforcement agent on immigration law, arresting violators and referring them to federal authorities, who make the ultimate decision on detention.
Babeu, who declined repeated requests for comment, heads that office. According to campaign finance records, he has received political contributions from CCA executives and lobbyists.
The sheriff's spokesman, Elias Johnson, says the department enforces immigration law on the merits, and has no financial incentive to fill CCA's facilities. He notes that CCA's contracts to operate local prisons are with the county, and not with the sheriff's office. He adds that immigrant detainees held within local facilities are brought in from several states, meaning that those apprehended locally make up only a small percentage of the total beds filled.
"You're talking about maybe a 2 percent impact on our overall inmate population," Johnson says.
Machak, the CCA spokesman, points out that final decisions on detention are made by the federal government, not local law enforcement.
But some experts see no less than an immigration-industrial complex gaining force: Companies dependent upon continued growth in the numbers of undocumented immigrants detained have exerted themselves in the nation's capital and in small, rural communities to create incentives that reinforce that growth.
"The companies seized this opportunity to fill up their empty prisons, and they've used lobbyists to ensure that it keeps getting pushed in that direction," says Tanya Golash-Boza, a professor of sociology at the University of Kansas who has followed the growth of U.S. immigration enforcement and detention. "You can certainly say that if we stopped the mandatory detention of immigrants, CCA and GEO Group and these other companies would have a major financial crisis."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/private-prisons-immigration-federal-law-enforcement_n_1569219.html
why are democrats so afraid to talk about this?