Archive for the ‘Immigration and Labor Markets’ Category
The Failure of Do-Nothing Policies
A news story from today in a slightly alternate universe:
Jobless Rate at 26-Year High
Employers kept slashing jobs at a furious pace in June as the unemployment rate edged ever closer to double-digit levels, undermining signs of progress in the economy, and making clear that the job market remains in terrible shape.
The number of jobs on employers’ payrolls fell by 467,000, the Labor Department said. That is many more jobs than were shed in May and far worse than the 350,000 job losses that economists were forecasting.
Job losses peaked in January and had declined every month until June. The steep losses show that even as there are signs that total economic activity may level off or begin growing later this year, the nation’s employers are still pulling back.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “President Obama proposed a $787 billion stimulus program to get this country moving again. He tried to save the jobs at GM and Chrysler. But the do-nothing Republicans filibustered and blocked that progressive legislation, and these are the results.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a press conference, “We begged President Bush to save Fannie Mae, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, AIG, the rest of Wall Street, the banks, and the automobile industry. We begged him to spend $700 billion of taxpayers’ money to bail out America’s great companies. We begged him to ignore the deficit and spend more money we don’t have. But did he listen? No, he just sat there wearing his Adam Smith tie and refused to spend even a single trillion to save jobs. And now unemployment is at 9.5 percent. I hope he’s happy.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill agreed that the “do-nothing” response to the financial crisis had led to rising unemployment and a sluggish economy. If the Bush and Obama administrations had been willing to invest in American companies, run the deficit up to $1.8 trillion, and talk about all sorts of new taxes, regulations, and spending programs, then certainly the economy would be recovering by now, they said.
Filed under: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; Government and Politics; Immigration and Labor Markets; Tax and Budget Policy
Are Democrats Serious about Immigration Reform?
President Obama is meeting today with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to talk about reforming our broken immigration system. The challenge for both parties will be whether they can overcome opposition within their respective bases to expanding legal immigration.
For Republicans, the chief opposition remains the faction of talk-radio-driven conservatives who just don’t like immigration, period, especially when it comes from Latin America. For Democrats, who now run Washington, the chief opposition to allowing more foreign workers to enter the country legally is represented by organized labor.
As the Wall Street Journal reports this morning, advocates of immigration reform “worry that Democrats will defer to the AFL-CIO on the issue of legal immigration. The labor confederation has opposed a robust guest-worker program or higher levels of legal immigration, fearing they would depress wages. A larger labor presence would splinter the coalition of business and pro-immigration groups that embraced past immigration efforts, only to see them falter in the Senate.”
As I’ve argued consistently in the past, immigration reform is not worth pursuing if it does not include expanding future flows of legal immigrants, both highly skilled and lower-skilled workers. If Congress confines itself to legalizing the 8 million or so workers already here illegally, with a vow to get tougher on enforcement, then we are just repeating the mistake of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.
We will know if President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are serious about fixing the problem of illegal immigration if they face down their labor-union allies and embrace a workable, market-oriented expansion of legal immigration. Otherwise, we are in for more futility, frustration and failure.
How Many Jobs Saved? We Do Not Know
In the past couple of days the administration has been discussing the employment impact of its stimulus package. Employment has declined steadily since adoption of the package, so it might seem odd to claim that it has already had beneficial impacts. The administration’s response is that employment would have declined even faster without the stimulus, so hundreds of thousands of jobs have been saved.
The administration might be right, but how can we know? The short answer is, we cannot know with any confidence because we cannot know what employment would have been in the absence of the stimulus. Thus, the concept of “jobs saved” is problematic; it allows the administration to conclude, no matter how bad things get, that the stimulus worked because the economy would have been even worse without the stimulus.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Immigration and Labor Markets
National ID: Barrier to Re-Entry
Via Radley at Hit & Run, it’s a clear outrage that Larry Moore — homeless, but working his way back up — should be kicked back down by a costly and unhelpful city bureaucracy.
But don’t overlook how identification requirements act as a “barrier to re-entry”:
The only one who isn’t furious about this is Moore. He insists that city functionaries are giving him a break because they are letting him continue to shine shoes while he waits for a copy of his birth certificate to be sent from Kansas. Once it arrives they will allow him to get an ID card and then hand over almost every cent he has.
It’s already a burden for people overcoming alcohol or drug problems — and disasters like flood or fire — to produce satisfactory identification. For every Larry Moore who gets a break and gets in the paper, there are probably hundreds who never break back into legitimate employment. Imagine what it will be like when we have the more “secure” licenses envisioned under the REAL ID Act or the proposed REAL ID revival bill.
Filed under: Health, Welfare & Entitlements; Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
High-Tech Companies Warn White House about Tax Hike
As I warned in my “deferral” video, the president’s proposal to increase the tax burden on U.S. companies competing in global markets is horribly misguided. The White House has now been put on notice by high-tech executives that they will be compelled to move jobs out of America if this destructive policy is adopted.
Bloomberg reports:
Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits. “It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”
…Ballmer is one of 10 U.S. software company executives pushing back against the tax proposals in meetings today with White House officials including Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, and the heads of congressional committees such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat. …In a roundtable discussion today, Ballmer, Symantec Corp. Chairman John Thompson and the heads of smaller companies such as privately held Bentley Systems, an Exton, Pennsylvania-based maker of engineering software, said such policies would hurt domestic investment, reduce shareholder value and increase the cost of employing U.S. workers. …Ballmer said…fiduciary responsibility to shareholders would require Microsoft to cut costs, he said, meaning many jobs would be moved out of the country.
Filed under: Immigration and Labor Markets; Tax and Budget Policy
Iraq’s Refugee Crisis
George W. Bush’s misguided attack on Iraq has had catastrophic consequences for the Iraqi people. Although the removal of Saddam Hussein was a blessing, the bloody chaos that resulted was not. Estimates of the number of dead in the ensuing strife starts at about 100,000 and rises rapidly. The number of injured is far greater.
Moreover, roughly four million people, about one-sixth of the population, have been driven from their homes. The most vulnerable tended to be Iraq’s Christian community and Iraqis who aided U.S. personnel — acting as translators, for instance. Yet the Bush administration resisted allowing any of these desperate people to come to America, since to resettle refugees would be to acknowledge that administration policy had failed to result in the promised paradise in Babylon.
This horrid neglect continues. Reports Hanna Ingber Win:
Of the millions displaced, the United States will resettle about 17,000 new Iraqis this coming fiscal year. While that is a relatively small number of arrivals compared to the number displaced, about a third of them will end up in El Cajon and Greater San Diego. More than 5,000 new Iraqis will arrive in San Diego County during the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, according to Catholic Charities in the San Diego Diocese. Getting jobs, homes and visas to reunite the families of the new arrivals — many of whom put their lives and their families’ lives at risk by helping the U.S. military — is a monumental task.
As the Iraq War played out, the Bush administration seemed to do everything in its power to ignore the refugee crisis. Former President Bush, reluctant to admit to a failed war policy, never mentioned the plight of the refugees and for years refused to allow Iraqis fleeing the war zone to resettle in the U.S. Only after significant political pressure from members of Congress and advocacy groups did the administration’s policy begin to change, and refugees began gaining access to the United States.
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to address the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. He vowed to increase the amount of aid given to countries like Syria and Jordan, which harbor most of the displaced people, as well as expedite the process of resettling refugees here.
“The Bush administration made every effort they could to try to minimize the issue [of Iraqi refugees] in the debate on the war,” Amelia Templeton, a refugee-policy analyst with Human Rights First, says not long after the presidential election. The Obama administration, on the other hand, she says, has made the issue an explicit policy priority. “Obama has said this is a major problem, that we are responsible for this problem and we will try to change this.”
Whether the Obama administration will live up to its rhetoric is still to be seen.
Immigration is an emotional issue at any time. But there is no excuse for not accepting more persecuted peoples who are fleeing violence sparked by U.S. military action and attacks sparked by their aid for U.S. military forces. If America refuses to act as a haven for these people, then yet another light will have gone out in what was once a shining city on a hill for the world.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Immigration and Labor Markets
E-Verify: The Surveillance Solution
The federal government will keep data about every person submitted to the “E-Verify” background check system for 10 years.
At least that’s my read of the slightly unclear notice describing the “United States Citizenship Immigration Services 009 Compliance Tracking and Monitoring System” in today’s Federal Register. (A second notice exempts this data from many protections of the Privacy Act.)
To make sure that people aren’t abusing E-Verify, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Verification Division, Monitoring and Compliance Branch will watch how the system is used. It will look for misuse, such as when a single Social Security Number is submitted to the system many times, which suggests that it is being used fraudulently.
How do you look for this kind of misuse (and others, more clever)? You collect all the data that goes into the system and mine it for patterns consistent with misuse.
The notice purports to limit the range of people whose data will be held in the system, listing “Individuals who are the subject of E-Verify or SAVE verifications and whose employer is subject to compliance activities.” But if the Monitoring Compliance Branch is going to find what it’s looking for, it’s going to look at data about all individuals submitted to E-Verify. “Employer subject to compliance activities” is not a limitation because all employers will be subject to “compliance activities” simply for using the system.
In my paper on electronic employment eligibility verification systems like E-Verify, I wrote how such systems “would add to the data stores throughout the federal government that continually amass information about the lives, livelihoods, activities, and interests of everyone—especially law-abiding citizens.”
It’s in the DNA of E-Verify to facilitate surveillance of every American worker. Today’s Federal Register notice is confirmation of that.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Labor’s Waxing Political Influence
It has long been recognized that many capitalists are the greatest enemies of capitalism. They want free enterprise for others, not themselves.
Unfortunately, organized labor tends to be even more statist in orientation. Unions now routinely lobby for government to give them what they cannot get in the marketplace.
Labor influence is greatest in the public sector. And as government’s power has expanded during the current economic crisis, so has the influence of unions. Observes Steve Malanga in the Wall Street Journal:
Across the private sector, workers are swallowing hard as their employers freeze salaries, cancel bonuses, and institute longer work days. America’s employees can see for themselves how steeply business has fallen off, which is why many are accepting cost-saving measures with equanimity — especially compared to workers in France, where riots and plant takeovers have become regular news.
But then there is the U.S. public sector, where the mood seems very European these days. In New Jersey, which faces a $3.3 billion budget deficit, angry state workers have demonstrated in Trenton and taken Gov. Jon Corzine to court over his plan to require unpaid furloughs for public employees. In New York, public-sector unions have hit the airwaves with caustic ads denouncing Gov. David Paterson’s promise to lay off state workers if they continue refusing to forgo wage hikes as part of an effort to close a $17.7 billion deficit. In Los Angeles County, where the schools face a budget deficit of nearly $600 million, school employees have balked at a salary freeze and vowed to oppose any layoffs that the board of education says it will have to pursue if workers don’t agree to concessions.
Call it a tale of two economies. Private-sector workers — unionized and nonunion alike — can largely see that without compromises they may be forced to join unemployment lines. Not so in the public sector.
Government unions used their influence this winter in Washington to ensure that a healthy chunk of the federal stimulus package was sent to states and cities to preserve public jobs. Now they are fighting tenacious and largely successful local battles to safeguard salaries and benefits. Their gains, of course, can only come at the expense of taxpayers, which is one reason why states and cities are approving tens of billions of dollars in tax increases.
The government’s increased power over the economy also gives organized labor a new hook to lobby for more special interest privileges. For instance, the AFL-CIO is arguing that the federal bailout of the auto industry should bar the companies from moving factories overseas.
Explains the union federation:
The pundits and politicians inside the Washington Beltway don’t get: If the United States continues to send its manufacturing jobs [1] overseas—as [2] General Motors and Chrysler are now proposing—the result will be more low-income U.S. families.
So today, workers, economists, academics and business and union leaders, fresh from the “[3] Keep It Made in America” bus tour through the nation’s heartland, brought that message to the policymakers’ doorstep as part of a teach-in on Capitol Hill.
The 11-day, 34-city bus tour showcased the ripple effect on communities of the lost jobs in manufacturing. ([4] See video.) Today, during the teach-in, those who took part brought the stories they heard along the tour and presented principles for revitalizing the auto industry to members of Congress and the press.
Labor officials have been making similar arguments about bank lending. If you got bailed out by Washington, then you have an obligation to keep funding bankrupt concerns. Never mind getting paid back, and paying back the taxpayers.
Markets are resilient, but can survive only so much political interference. If the American people aren’t careful, they might eventually find themselves living in an economy more appropriate for Latin America than North America.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Immigration and Labor Markets
The President’s Misguided Tax Hike on U.S. Companies Competing in World Markets
Bashing big business about “shipping job offshore” may be good politics, but the real-world evidence shows that Obama’s tax hike on American multinationals is spectacularly misguided. I would say it is so bad that it leaves me speechless, but I did manage to pontificate for almost nine minutes in this new video:
One of my goals is to make sure viewers actually understand an issue after watching, so the goal is education rather than just providing soundbites against a particular proposal. As always, feedback is appreciated.
Filed under: Immigration and Labor Markets; International Economics and Development; Tax and Budget Policy; Trade
Questions for Heritage: REAL ID
The Heritage Foundation’s “The Foundry” blog has a post up called “Questions for Secretary Napolitano: Real ID.”
Honest advocates on two sides of an issue can come to almost perfectly opposite views, and this provides an example, because I find the post confused, wrong, or misleading in nearly every respect.
Let’s give it a brief fisking. Below, the language from the post is in italics, and my comments are in roman text:
Filed under: Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Transparency for Thee but Not for Me
It appears that the Obama administration is high on transparency for everyone but its own allies. There are a lot of good reasons to reduce federal regulation, but if the Labor Department is going to push coercive unionism, it should require unions to disclose their activities and finances to their members.
Not in today’s world, however. The Obama administration is moving backwards. Reports the Washington Times:
The Obama administration, which has boasted about its efforts to make government more transparent, is rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation.
The Labor Department noted in a recent disclosure that “it would not be a good use of resources” to bring enforcement actions against union officials who do not comply with conflict of interest reporting rules passed in 2007. Instead, union officials will now be allowed to file older, less detailed conflict reports.
The regulation, known as the LM-30 rule, was at the heart of a lawsuit that the AFL-CIO filed against the department last year. One of the union attorneys in the case, Deborah Greenfield, is now a high-ranking deputy at Labor, who also worked on the Obama transition team on labor issues.
The only people served by this move are union officials who want less oversight over their use of dues payments, much collected from unwilling workers. The new policy certainly runs counter to the president’s promise to set a new tone in Washington.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Immigration and Labor Markets
“. . . and Replace It with REAL ID”
CNN wrote an exciting headline on Wednesday: “Homeland Security Chief Seeks to Repeal Real ID Act.” What they left out was that the replacement would be . . . the REAL ID Act.
Intentionally or not, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has created the impression that the national ID law might go away. But simply renaming the Department of Homeland Security’s national ID program is not a repeal of REAL ID.
The REAL ID revival bill that has been circulating is the same national identification and tracking system with a few of the sharpest corners taken off and the hope of federal money held out to up-to-now recalcitrant states. The REAL ID revival bill would corral every American citizen into the national ID system to try and attack illegal immigrants.
Bills to repeal REAL ID were introduced in the previous Congress, but they did not move because the Bush administration and Chertoff DHS would have eagerly demagogued the issue. Those political conditions no longer hold. And just 10 months ago, Secretary Chertoff delayed the implementation of REAL ID without bringing any political repercussions to the Bush administration whatsoever. Secretary Napolitano can do the same if Congress fails to truly repeal REAL ID, as it should.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Senate Negotiates REAL ID Revival Bill with Anti-Immigrant Activists
Anti-immigrant groups have done nothing but lead Republicans off the electoral cliff, but they are very aggressive and vociferous. This has evidently convinced Senate staff to negotiate with them about reviving the moribund REAL ID Act. REAL ID lobbyist Janice Kephart reports the state of play on the Center for Immigration Studies blog.
Interestingly, the National Conference of State Legislatures may join the National Governors Association in seeking to sell state authority over licensing and identification policy to the federal government, exchanging state power for the right to beg for federal funds evermore.
I wrote a little bit in a previous post about the dynamics at play when a group that supposedly represents state interests in Washington, D.C. begins to represent Washington, D.C.’s interests to states.
Filed under: Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
The REAL ID Revival Bill Should Not Get a PASS
A draft Senate bill to revive the REAL ID Act has been leaked to to the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies, and they find it wanting.
The bill is an attempt to smooth down REAL ID and make the national ID law more palatable. CIS is unhappy because they want a national ID implemented right away.
REAL ID is, of course, failing. Just ten months ago, the Bush Administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security granted waivers to every state in the country - not a single one of them was in compliance by the May, 2008 deadline, and several have statutorily barred themselves from complying.
Legislation to repeal REAL ID in both the House and Senate was introduced in the last Congress, but with an administration and Department of Homeland Security eager to demagogue the issue against a Democratic Congress, that legislation did not move. Repealing REAL ID would not have the same problem in the current Congress.
But since then, Washington’s wheels have been turning. The National Governors Association has turned into an advocate of reviving REAL ID because it hopes that federal dollars will flow behind federal mandates. They won’t, but reviving REAL ID will cement NGA’s role as a beggar for federal dollars in Washington. (Maybe other state legislator groups, as well.)
Everbody in Washington, D.C. salivates over the chance to make “deals” even if that means switching positions on issues of principle like whether the U.S. should have a national ID. We’ll be watching to see which political leaders reverse themselves and support this attempt at a national ID for their love of political dealmaking.
The working name of the REAL ID revival bill is the “PASS ID Act.” It should not be given a pass by opponents of a U.S. national ID and the REAL ID Act.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
I Love You Too, America
People who don’t know me well don’t realize I’m not American. I have no accent, am among the most patriotic people you could meet, went to college and law school here, interned for a senator, clerked for a federal judge, worked on a presidential campaign, spent time in Iraq, and speak and write about the U.S. Constitution for a living. I was born in Russia, however, and immigrated to Canada with my parents when I was little. “We took a wrong turn at the St. Lawrence Seaway,” I like to joke.
The upshot is that, much as I’ve wanted to be American since about age eight — when I discovered that the U.S. governing ethos was “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” while Canada’s is “peace, order, and good government” — I am a Canadian citizen. And, because of this country’s perverted immigration system, none of the time I’ve spent in the United States (my entire adult life save a 10-month masters program in London) got me any closer to the unrestricted right to live and work here (a “green card”).
Don’t worry, I’ve always been legal, through a combination of student, training, and professional visas, but those were always tied to the school or employer, hindering the types of professional activities I could engage in hanging a sword of Damocles over my life. If I lost my job — as so many lawyers have, for example, in this economy — I would have to leave the country where about 95% of my personal and professional network is located.
When I came to Cato, the opportunity presented itself to finally be able to petition for a green card. (I’ll spare you the overly technical and exceedingly frustrating details.) Along the way, I even got a certificate saying that the U.S. government — or at least the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (what used to be the I.N.S.) — considered me an “alien of exceptional ability.” I didn’t let this go to my head; when lawyers and bureaucrats come up with a term of art, it means less in real life than, say, one of you readers emailing me that you liked something I blogged here.
Anyhow, not expecting any action on my green card petition for at least another year (based on the processing times posted at the USCIS website), last night I came home to an unmarked envelope in my mailbox. It was my green card! — complete with a little pamphlet welcoming me to America.
This is quite literally the key to the rest of my life in this wonderful country. Those who know me well know how huge a deal this is for me personally, how long it has taken, and how many arbitrary and capricious obstacles our immigration non-policy places in the way of “skilled workers.” (Three years ago I attracted media attention during the Senate immigration debate with the soundbite, “if this reform goes through, I’m giving up law and taking up gardening.”)
I’ve been very fortunate in the opportunities I’ve had and the people I’ve met — including, in significant part, through the big-tent movement for liberty — and I am eternally grateful that this day has finally arrived. Believe me that I will never take for granted the great privilege that is permanent residence in the United States. My sincere hope is that America remains a beacon of liberty and that shining city on a hill.
I may well blog or write more about this in the future, but for more on my personal story, see, e.g., here, here, and here. More importantly, check out Cato’s excellent immigration work here.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Immigration and Labor Markets; Law and Civil Liberties
U.S. Chamber on Electronic Employment Verification
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a new paper out on electronic employment verification systems. Using government estimates, it finds that operating a nationwide worker background check system would cost $10 billion a year.
The Chamber is no opponent of requiring employers to check workers’ immigration status — I oppose the policy, preferring to live in a free country — but the paper has a lot of information about the practical impediments to giving the federal government a say in every hiring decision.
It also gives the last word to my paper, Electronic Employment Eligibility: Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration. In the paper, I discuss a method for verifying work eligibility under the current immigration law without creating a national identity system. It’s possible, but highly unlikely. As I say in my paper:
Unless the federal government can accept the risk of error and is willing to commit to lasting employment eligibility rules, it will require any internal enforcement program to use databases and tracking rather than just issuing cards that prove eligibility to work and nothing more. It will push Americans toward a national ID and worker surveillance system.
Filed under: Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Should Immigration Agents Target Businesses Knowingly Hiring Illegal Immigrants?
The Obama Administration plans to shift immigration enforcement from workers to employers, but the whole policy of “internal enforcement” of immigration law is the problem, says Cato scholar Jim Harper.
According to Harper, aligning legal immigration rates with the demand for new workers in the country is the only solution to the problem of illegal immigration.
He appeared on Fox News this week to debate this issue.
For more videos, subscribe to Cato’s YouTube channel.
The Washington Times and Debunked Statistics
Yesterday, the Washington Times editorialized in favor of E-Verify, the inchoate government background check system for all American workers, saying, “[T]he system is 99.5 percent accurate, according to DHS, and it permits employers to verify work eligibility in minimal time (10 minutes or less) and at minimal cost ($419 per year for a federal contractor of 10 employees).”
Don’t be so sure. The DHS mantra of 99.5 percent accuracy was debunked long ago. The government doesn’t actually know the status of the 5.3% of workers that the system bounces out, an issue the Christian Science Monitor explored last summer.
I examined the numbers in detail here, also last summer. The 0.5% error rate that DHS acknowledges is the known error rate. Others bounced out of the system DHS assumes to be illegal aliens. This is almost certainly wrong, and the program is denying legal workers the ability to earn a living, as the Christian Science Monitor reported.
But in an op-ed published in the Washington Times last fall, lobbyist Janice Kephart argued the DHS line, as carelessly as one can be with statistics: “[T]he numbers rejected by E-Verify as not authorized to work closely parallels the estimated percentage of illegal aliens in the work force, about 5 percent.” Right, the numbers are close so the program is working. Nevermind that the livelihoods of American citizens and legal workers are in the balance.
Earlier this month, the Times printed Rep. Lamar Smith’s plea for E-Verify, which touted these (well, similar) discredited statistics.
It’s time for the Washington Times to stop shilling for the Department of Homeland Security and the anti-immigrant lobby by printing and reprinting discredited statistics about E-Verify.
Filed under: General; Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Napolitano: Scrap REAL ID
She didn’t put it so bluntly, but DHS secretary Janet Napolitano appears ready to scrap the failed national ID program in the REAL ID Act. This is good news.
Is it great news? Not really. Nothing I’m aware of in her public comments reflects awareness of the thoroughgoing weakness of identity-based security or its prohibitive privacy and dollar costs. And she’s looking for an alternative national ID.
“‘Enhanced driver’s licenses give confidence that the person holding the card is the person who is supposed to be holding the card, and it’s less elaborate than Real ID,” the Washington Times quotes her saying. Less elaborate? Yes. Reliably secure? Not really. A full-fledged national ID? Eventually.
The point is to get away from national ID systems entirely. It’s not an achievement to produce a national ID that’s less bad than the one that went before. But it is progress.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Lamar Smith vs. the WSJ
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Lamar Smith (R-TX) wrote a plea for E-Verify, the federal worker background check system, in the Washington Times yesterday. He dedicates the first paragraphs to a broad analogy between immigrant workers and burglars, then says:
E-Verify is the federal government’s system that enables businesses to hire legal workers. It is a sure way to protect jobs for U.S. citizen and legal immigrant workers alike, and ensure their jobs aren’t stolen by illegal immigrants.
Time was when Republicans opposed regulation rather than extolling it.
Smith’s advocacy for increased regulation in the name of a closed society is handily eclipsed by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial on the topic this morning, reporting on the status of the effort to expand E-Verify through the economic stimulus legislation:
[W]e’re happy to report that negotiators so far have rejected a troublesome amendment that would require any business receiving stimulus funds to enroll in E-Verify, a government program for determining work eligibility. The last thing employers need now is more bureaucratic red tape.
And the Journal is talking about solutions:
Illegal immigration tends to flow and ebb based on the strength of the U.S. economy. Given the recession, it’s likely to decline in the short-run, and Congress might use the lull to enact some substantive policy reforms. Work-site enforcement should be part of a broader immigration debate, not something slipped into a stimulus bill to placate protectionists.
The winner, by a knockout: the Wall Street Journal.
Filed under: Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Administration Delays E-Verify for Federal Contractors
The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is delaying the Bush administration plan to require federal contractors to use the E-Verify worker background check system.
Criticizing the move, Lamar Smith (R-TX), ranking minority member on the House Judiciary Committee, says, “It is ironic that at the same time President Obama was pushing for passage of the stimulus package to help the unemployed, his administration delayed implementation of a rule designed to protect jobs for U.S. citizens and legal workers.”
E-Verify may well have been designed or intended to protect jobs for citizens and legal workers, but that’s not at all what it would do. I wrote about it in a Cato Policy Analysis titled “Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification: Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration” (a 10-year follow-on to Stephen Moore’s “A National Id System: Big Brother’s Solution to Illegal Immigration“):
A mandatory national EEV system would have substantial costs yet still fail to prevent illegal immigration. It would deny a sizable percentage of law-abiding American citizens the ability to work legally. Deemed ineligible by a database, millions each year would go pleading to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration for the right to work.
Even if E-Verify were workable, mission creep would lead to its use for direct federal control over many aspects of American citizens’ lives. Though it should be scrapped, the longer E-Verify is delayed, the better.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Republicans Seek Lasting Damage in the Stimulus
Though the stimulus package racing through the house is unlikely to work, some Republicans are going a step further and seeking to ensure that it does lasting damage to our economy - and to the freedom of our society.
Amendments to the stimulus bill in committee last week include one to reauthorize “E-Verify,” the budding national identification and government background check system. Another would mandate the use of E-Verify by any business receiving stimulus money.
The growth of E-Verify would raise costs on business and make it harder for many law-abiding Americans to get work, draining energy from the economy at precisely the wrong time - not that there’s ever a good time.
I wrote about electronic employment verification programs like E-Verify in a paper called “Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration.”
Filed under: Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Porqué Amo La Raza
Several months ago, the National Council of La Raza convened a group of health care wonks to help that organization make up its mind about how Congress should reform the tax treatment of health care. The wonks included people from Harvard University, the Urban Institute, the Kaiser Family Foundation, Families USA, the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and elsewhere.
La Raza took the unusual step of inviting a libertarian (me) to be part of that discussion, despite our divergent views. Where La Raza wants to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, for example, I advocate repealing SCHIP. I’m glad they invited me; it was one of the most enjoyable policy discussions I’ve ever had.
La Raza took the further unusual step of publishing a transcript of that discussion. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a libertarian in the very un-libertarian world of health care policy — and you know you have — I recommend giving it a read. Oh, and you’ll also learn a lot about health policy from a lot of smart people.
Here is the final product of those deliberations, La Raza’s policy paper on health tax incentives, in which La Raza plugs (without endorsement) my proposal for large health savings accounts.
Filed under: Cato Publications; General; Health, Welfare & Entitlements; Immigration and Labor Markets
Enjoy the Bowls–You’re Paying for Them
In the Wall Street Journal, Mark Yost explores the taxpayer subsidies to major college football bowl games:
while everyone’s fretting over the bailout package for the auto industry, most taxpayers would be shocked to learn that they’re also footing the bill for some of these highly profitable bowl games. From 2001 to 2005, seven tax-exempt bowls received $21.6 million in government aid.
During that time, 38 percent of the Brut Sun Bowl’s revenue came from a Texas rental-car tax. Now that’s Brutish.
And what do the bowls do with those taxpayer dollars? Well, they put on a football extravaganza, of course. But also:
To ensure the bowl games maintain their tax-exempt status, the committees hire state and federal lobbyists. Watts Partners, the Washington, D.C., lobbying firm run by former University of Oklahoma quarterback and Rep. J.C. Watts, has been paid more than $500,000 in consulting fees by the BCS.
So, as happens with many other government-funded enterprises, taxpayers’ money is spent on lobbyists to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing. Some of the money also goes to pay bowl executives upwards of $400,000. Leaving aside the issue of why tax-funded entities should pay their executives more than the president of the United States, I’m not surprised that bowl committees pay a CEO a handsome salary to make everything work perfectly. But I wonder: We hear a lot of complaints about the high pay of corporate CEOs. If the executive director of a $30 million bowl game is paid $400,000, how much should the CEO of a $30 billion company get?
More on taxpayer subsidies for sports business here and here. A lengthy bibliography here (pdf).
Filed under: Government and Politics; Immigration and Labor Markets; Tax and Budget Policy
New Congress, New National ID Proposals
The new Congress came roaring out of the gate yesterday, with more than 350 new bills introduced. That should be enough for an entire two years, but they’re not likely to stop there.
Among many other subjects, Congress will consider creating “a secure Social Security card.” The idea is to protect seniors from identity theft, and the author of this legislation no doubt intends not to create a national ID. But the reality is that this would be a nationally uniform card made secure with a nationally standardized biometric, and it’s very likely that it would be administered with a national biometric database. That’s a national ID system, and it is a profound threat to American liberty.
You can learn a bit about identification and identification policy in my book, Identity Crisis.
Congress has also already seen a bill to mandate electronic employment eligibility verification. That can only be done through a national identity system, as I articulated in my paper: “Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration.”
And here’s a bill that would do both.
Welcome new Congress! Now go home.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Immigration and Labor Markets; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Scrap E-Verify
The 111th Congress and the new Obama administration should scrap “E-Verify.” The federal government’s inchoate immigration background check system is the culmination of 20 years’ failure to create a tolerable “internal enforcement” program for U.S. immigration law. Rather than building on past failure, the new Congress and president should pull the plug on E-Verify and reform immigration law so that it aligns with the nation’s economic need for labor.
More here.
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