Bennett Hypothesis: Financial Aid Increases Tuition

[sanantone]

There are ethical issues, which is why the government should crack down on greedy companies. They'd rather go after people looking for better lives, and it's an inefficient way of enforcing immigration laws. They wouldn't come here if businesses didn't hire them. That's why illegal entry into the country decreased during the Great Recession. Some undocumented immigrants already in the country went home. The dotard wants to increase the number of skilled immigrants so that they can compete with Americans for good-paying jobs.

They should crack down on employers more, I agree. The problem with the current laws are that employers are required to take identification documents they are presented with at face value. As long as the illegal immigrants has documents that could plausibly be legitimate, they can work. E-verify should be made mandatory and higher fines, as well as jail time, should be on the table for employers who use illegal labor. We should continue to go after the illegal immigrants themselves though. They certainly should feel just as comfortable living here as any other fugitive.

H1-B visas are being abused as well. The only answer there is to decrease the number of H1-B visas.

Oil rig jobs are popular among ex-felons for a reason. Whenever an industry hires a lot of felons, it's usually because they wouldn't have enough employees without them. Oil rig jobs pay very well, but the work is dirty, dangerous, and strenuous. Injury rates are high. Methamphetamine use is common among oil field workers. It's so bad that the substance abuse clients I had said they wouldn't go back because seeing people around them using would lead to relapse.

They hire ex-felons because there is an abundance of them and they cost less than people without felonies. The same job could be filled by non-felons if they raised wages. The solution to any labor shortage is to raise wages until they're high enough to incentivize more people to participate in the labor market. It's economics 101.

The reason the fruit was rotting on the vine when illegals left is because the value of that fruit was less than the wage employers would have paid to citizens to harvest the fruit. It's clearly unethical to cultivate a crop that is only feasible if illegal workers are available to harvest it. The economic and ethical argument you are making is the exact argument southern plantation owners used for slavery.

Ex-felons need to work just like anyone else, and these companies don't have a reason to not hire felons. It's not illegal. Ex-felons are a legal part of the applicant pool. If wages in a particular industry get too high, employers will hire people in other countries if it's feasible. For example, Mexico is close and has cheaper labor, so it makes business sense for Ford to move production down there.