Inexpensive Immigration Reform

Inexpensive

 

price-cut

Why is being inexpensive necessary for any new immigration policy to be effective?

To ensure participation.

 

If the majority of the people don’t participate, or even if a large number of people don’t participate, very little will have changed and we will have wasted our time.

When we increase participation of our new immigration laws, it helps ensure the success of the program on many different levels:

  1. It removes the shadow community that is highly vulnerable.
  2. It reduces the number of unknown people who may be a possible danger to our communities and our national security.
  3. It also removes the shadow economy and it’s deflation of wages for everyone concerned. This protects both immigrants from wage and benefit abuse, as well as citizens from any associated wage and benefits reductions in industries associated with undocumented workers.

Barriers to entry, financial or otherwise, will only make the law less effective and therefore less beneficial for all of us.

So what are some of the ways we can reduce the cost of this program without needing immigrants to come up with unrealistic sums of money, or require subsidies from the American taxpayer?

  • Make the fees annual, like auto registration, instead of one lump sum.
  • Take advantage of already built-in infrastructure such as DMV offices. Post offices could also use a shot in the arm with this additional revenue stream, as there are many of them, located all throughout the US, and staffing and services are on the decline.
  • Using data infrastructure already in place ie: crime database, dmv records, tax records, and medical records. All these datacenters can be cross-checked to ensure location and identity of people on an ongoing basis.

If we can keep the overhead down, immigrants should be able to financially support this program by themselves through annual fees and possible payroll taxes. (more on that later)

Using built-in infrastructure would also help speed this program into place. We will need more people to staff these offices, and programmers and data technicians to link up datacenters and expeditiously process and utilize the mountains of data we will be collecting.

The following is a benefits comparison chart that should help visually represent the anticipated benefits to both US citizens and immigrants, showing many reasons for both to participate and help ensure the success of the program.

Good for US

Good for Immigrants

   Affordable For both taxpayers and immigrants.

x

Should not place financial burden on us.

x

Increases our border security

x

Annual and payroll fees, helps locate immigrants if needed.

x

Participation fees help pay for ongoing program overhead.

x

x

Affordability increases compliance, which increases the effectiveness of the program.

x

x

Affordable immigration naturally prohibits immigrating illegally.

x

Reduces their dependence on parasitic employers and illicit vendors.

x

x

Reduces fraud.

x

Reduces victimization.

X

Uses infrastructure already in place as much as possible.

As you can see by the above chart, the benefits of having an inexpensive immigration program are even more beneficial for the United States, than it is for the immigrants.

A few other things need to be said about funding, especially when politicians are involved:

  1. Immigration fees sole purpose is to fund immigration programs.
  2. Never raid the immigration coffers for any other program.
  3. Funding is not a punishment, but rather, a pay-to-play fee.

This last part is important; the higher the costs involved, the less effective the program will be.

The importance of inexpensive immigration programs can be argued all day by the most conservative of us- but the facts won’t change.

Here are some everyday examples of financial barriers to entry:

How many people own Lexus?      How many people own Toyotas?

How many people fly in a private jet? How many people fly commercial 

How many people join Country Clubs?  How many people golf on public courses?

Our new immigration policy should be inexpensive to ensure near 100% participation. This will help protect the immigrant from abuse and encourage their participation that much more. Immigration needs to be easier and less expensive than paying hundreds of dollars for a coyote to lead you through the desert. The fact that this option is already often used shows the insanity of the legislation we currently have in place.

Any immigration program should also be easy to participate in, which we’ll look at next.

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The Republicans vs the DREAM Act

The Republicans have been trying to defeat The DREAM Act since it first started circulating Congress in 2001. This bill was created as a compromise to all the comprehensive immigration reform bills that failed to get through congress in the decades after President Reagan’s landmark immigration reform bill in 1986. In 2008, after failing to get the backing of Congress several times, a Republican, Kay Bailey Hutchison, announced she would work with the authors of the DREAM Act to add some language that would make it more palatable for the GOP to buy-off on.

 

This DREAM  Act 2.0 was then re-introduced to congress. You would think this version would have been a slam dunk, as Republicans got to put their fingerprints all over it by making it more restrictive on who is eligible and excluding some of the benefits it bestowed upon those who qualified, but even after being able to amend the Dream Act and make it more restrictive, that still wasn’t good enough. The DREAM Act v2.0 failed to pass a vote in 2009.

 

Back to the drawing board and Republicans got to water it down some more and make it even more exclusive by adding background checks, biometric data, specifying specific crimes that would make some candidates ineligible, and more. Surely this DREAM Act would sail through Congress.

 

Wrong again. Just as the DREAM Act went through its last changes in 2011 and had been stripped of many of it’s benefits that had been designed to encourage the best and brightest of our undocumented citizens to stay and participate in making this country better and safer, the Republicans were proving to be an increasingly negative obstacle.Their best effort for trying to evade the issue has been ” self deportation.”

 

Stopping President Obama from accomplishing anything in his first term appears to have become their primary objective. Most of the initiatives the President put forward have been stalled by the Republicans. The only DREAM Act the Republicans seem to have been working on was a one term Democratic President.

 

Now that the Republicans have watered down the DREAM Act into something more likely to be called a SHORT NAP Act, they continue to vote it down and deny the Democrats (and Americans) another victory. And guess what? Along comes a Republican with a NEW idea!

 

He hasn’t said what it is, but his new DAYDREAM Act will surely have what it takes to get Republican support in Congress. This time it will have one thing that the other three versions didn’t: a Republican author. (Those blasted Democrats are always getting in the way.)

 

But what about history repeating itself you may ask? I have been wondering too. I don’t think this version of the DAYDREAM Act will pass either. Just think of all the years of effort and compromise the Democrats– and some Republicans went though in order to appease the stalwart ultra-conservative Republicans. Do you think the Democrats will vote for this version whenever it gets revealed?

 

Me neither, and I also think that’s just what the Republicans want. This way they will have an excuse to blame the Democrats for this stalemate.

 

The DREAM Act as it stands right now has been crafted by both Democrats and Republicans. If that won’t help it pass through Congress, I don’t think anything will.

 

Some Republicans liken the latest, most stripped down version of the DREAM Act as “back door amnesty.” I urge you to read the article below on the DREAM Act and what it really says about the bill, in it’s latest version. How could any sane person see this as a gift that will be used against us by masses of undeserving people? It is so restrictive and sets the bar so high for those to qualify, and STILL doesn’t guarantee anyone citizenship –just the opportunity to apply for it– AND only the best of the best will qualify.  Smart, ambitious, strong, sacrificing. Who wouldn’t want these fine young people to be a part of their nation?

 

Yet the DREAM Act is still is not good enough for our Republican Ultra-conservative Congressmen, who have forgotten they work for us. Somewhere along the way, these elected officials began to fill themselves with themselves and I don’t think there’s anything other than themselves they are capable of thinking about. If you were to ask Congress what was the best solution to our immigration woes for the good of the country, do you think you would get a truthful reply? I don’t think they’ve even thought about it in that context.

 

After you read the article below, I urge you to let Congress know how you feel. I left a link to their contact info too. And let’s not forget about the House of Representatives.

 

Any logical person would come to the conclusion that if they can’t pass a law that has been eleven years in the making with help from both Republicans and Democrats, then they are incompetent of doing so. What happens to you or I when our bosses think we can no longer do our jobs? Yep, we get fired.

 

Congress, you are on notice.

 

Give something for the President to sign or you will not be invited back, and the people who will be filling your current positions will know that the same fate will apply to them, but instead of having eleven years to get something done, they will have just one term, or the rest of their current term to get the job done. We need people in our government who can play nicely with each other and help solve our nations problems. Jokers, posers and frauds need not apply.

 

Mike J Quinn is an American citizen with a Multi-national family and has managed restaurants for over 25 years. Currently he is working to unify his family in the United States in an increasingly difficult and hostile environment. He is also the Author of “The Dishwasher’s Son” an upcoming novel about an American teenager and local Arizona Minuteman volunteer who gets accidentally deported along with his co-workers and must sneak back into his own country using the same methods he defends against with his Minuteman unit. Along the way he must learn to deal with the Mexican heritage he has denied his whole life.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act

 

http://www.dreamactivist.org/text-of-dream-act-legislation/

 

http://www.house.gov/representatives/

 

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm