What should be done about illegal immigration?

On the issue of using a dead person's social security number, here's an overview that would include all illegal uses for it.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080508090647AA06chl

They have E-verify, but not all states use it. Unemployment insurance (and benefits paid) is done by states? I'm not familiar with it, but I think no tax-payer money is used, rather it's pooled by employers and benefits are paid from that pool?

Indiana just this month passed legislation that would require all state agencies, municipalities, and employers that contract with state and local government entities to use E-Verify.

There was also a brouhaha regarding E-verify and the healthcare bill, as I recall. Reid was against utilizing it, but I don't know what the final outcome was (wasn't on C-Span LOL).

Unemployment insurance is indeed administered and paid by the states, and it comes from unemployment paid by employers. There is also a federal unemployment tax. I'm not sure what happens to the money. Possibly it is paid or lent to the states when the state becomes eligible for extended unemployment benefits.

E-Verify should be helpful. It matches SS numbers with name, date of birth, and sex, so circumventing the system would have to involve genuine identity theft. In the normal case I've seen in the oilfield, the documents are simply counterfeit. The numbers on the SS card may match someone else's name, or may not match anyone. I seriously doubt very many illegal immigrants are taking the identity theft route.

Most of the extensions for unemployment insurance benefits comes from the feds.

I really doubt many illegals are collecting unemployment.

It is one thing to hand a fake SS or green card to an employer who doesn't care if it is genuine or not. All the employer cares about is having proof that they checked documents not that the documents were accurate.

It is another thing altogether for an illegal to hand documents to a government agency along with their address. I doubt many illegals would want to take the risk of giving that information to the government itself. A business never checks after they hire you. A government agency will have them on file for who knows how long and can check them any time a question arises.

Exactly.

Sounds right to me! I've looked into eVerify and found different levels of accuracy - from 94% to 100%. I think it's a good system.

Probably a good system, but so far only required for government contractors. If an E-Verify failure by itself were a basis for termination, it would probably be more popular on a voluntary basis.

The big problem with eVerify is the high rate of false positives which happen to be prevalent for Americans of Hispanic descent. This is compounded by the problem of racial profiling (not all employees are even checked).

This would be equivalent to only giving drug tests to one ethnic group.

How about closer scrutiny on Arabs when they go through security at airports and terminals?

Yeah that too... or rounding up Japanese citizens and putting them in internment camps.

No. When you sign up for eVerify, it's all or nothing. Now, those employers that are not enrolled may call for individual verification, and I don't at all doubt there is some serious profiling going on.

Cannot comment on higher rates of false positives for Hispanics.

Two different issues; no Japanese was ever charged with espionage before, during, or after WWII.

Your perceptions about reality are off; most terrorist activity today are performed by Arabs. Doesn't mean they should be mistreated, but it pays to scrutinize them closer, because almost 100% of terrorist activities around the world are performed by Arabs.

It's called common sense.

- Albert Einstein.

I suspect if you were Hispanic, or of Middle Eastern descent, you may have a different set of prejudices.

Of coarse! I know for a fact that even Asians have prejudices; we all do. So, what's your point?

That is my point...

And that given the history of the treatment of Asian immigrants in this country, your position toward today's Hispanic and Arab immigrants is .... let's say it's... ahh... "interesting".

A hundred years ago, every illegal immigrant in the United States was Asian.

Every? Prove this, and please show how many terrorists there were of Asian descent - who tried to come to this country? The US government discriminated against Asians, not because we were potential terrorists, but because of ignorance and racial discrimination.

You need not give me a history lesson on Asians. I've lived it.

Before the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924, immigration was unrestricted for anyone except for Asians; the Asian Exclusion Act was passed in the late 1800s (this is why before 1924, every illegal immigrant was an Asian).

The arguments against Asian immigration were much the same as the arguments now used against Hispanics. Asians were accused of bringing disease. They were accused of crime. They were accused of stealing jobs from Americans. They were accused of not assimilating-- the racist propaganda claiming in the 19th century claiming that California would be taken over by Asian invaders is eerily similar to the anti Hispanic rants you here today.

Asians (both the Chinese and the Japanese) were accused of being disloyal, which is not unlike what Middle Eastern Americans deal with today-- but I think that the Asian experience was probably closer to the Hispanic experience.

The Italians were accused of being anarchists and subversives. You may have heard of Sacco and Vanzetti.



It amazes me that Americans or Asian (or Italian or Irish) descent could, after a few decades, disown their own heritage by attacking people who experience much the same things their own ancestors suffered.

You haven't shown how many illegal Asian immigrants came to the US before 1924.

You wrote:

How did my grandfather emigrate to Hawaii from Japan in 1896 if it was illegal? That was before 1924; show me how his immigration was illegal?

You are ignorant about the exclusion laws then in place. It applied only to the Chinese.

Do you know what a ¨paper son" is?

The Wong Kim Ark supreme court decision in 1998 decided that even though Chinese people were excluded from immigration, a child born here was a citizen (restrictionists are still complaining about this decision).

To get around the Asian exclusion rule, people would lie and claim that they were born here.

The San Francisco fire of 1906 gave a great opportunity for Asians to immigrate by lying, claiming that they were born in San Francisco. Since the records were lost in the fire, there was no way to contradict the claim.

It is reported that if everyone who claimed to be born in San Francisco were telling the truth, each Asian woman would have had to have 800 children.