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Unemployment going down in Alabama! Why is this? Illegal Immigrants are leaving and Americans are getting their jobs. Amazing how law and order works. I wish the Democrats could understand this simple concept!
This is the meme conservatives tout when exhorting how well Alabama's immigration law is "working." The above relies on a non-understanding of how unemployment rates are counted and the suggestion that Americans are grabbing onto these jobs for dear life.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
The basic concepts involved in identifying the employed and unemployed are quite simple:
- People with jobs are employed.
- People who are jobless, looking for jobs, and available for work are unemployed.
- People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force.
Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work. Actively looking for work may consist of any of the following activities:
Contacting:
- An employer directly or having a job interview
- A public or private employment agency
- Friends or relatives
- A school or university employment center
- Sending out resumes or filling out applications
- Placing or answering advertisements
- Checking union or professional registers
- Some other means of active job search
Workers expecting to be recalled from temporary layoff are counted as unemployed, whether or not they have engaged in a specific jobseeking activity. In all other cases, the individual must have been engaged in at least one active job search activity in the 4 weeks preceding the interview and be available for work (except for temporary illness).
A decrease in unemployment rates does not mean that more people have found work. To wit, if a person simply stops any and all efforts to look for a job, they're not counted as a person looking for employment and are therefore not counted in the statistics. Neither is a person who moved to another state seeking employment. As far as those who do become employed, those who became self-employed or found some form of freelance work may not be counted in the stats.
Plenty of illegal immigrants have packed their bags and moved out, leaving the jobs they used to work open and available for the taking by legal American citizens. But those folks aren't picking up those jobs, most of which happen to be laborious, backbreaking farm and production plant jobs, jobs that most Americans are woefully out of condition for and not desperate enough to take.
Conservatives believe that ordinary Americans are falling all over themselves to fill in the jobs left behind by their illegal immigrant counterparts. This may shed some light on why Americans aren't as enthusiastic about the new openings as conservatives believe they are:
On a sunny October afternoon, Juan Castro leans over the back of a pickup truck parked in the middle of a field at Ellen Jenkins’s farm in northern Alabama. He sorts tomatoes rapidly into buckets by color and ripeness. Behind him his crew—his father, his cousin, and some friends—move expertly through the rows of plants that stretch out for acres in all directions, barely looking up as they pull the last tomatoes of the season off the tangled vines and place them in baskets. Since heading into the fields at 7 a.m., they haven’t stopped for more than the few seconds it takes to swig some water. They’ll work until 6 p.m., earning $2 for each 25-pound basket they fill. The men figure they’ll take home around $60 apiece.
Most Americans believe themselves to be far more valuable in regards to labor than $60 for 11 hours of work, or $7.50 to $9.00/hr. They have families to support and unlike illegal immigrants, not enough family members in the home able or willing to commit 95% of their time spent to working minimum-wage jobs. At least when the illegal immigrants go home, they'll live very comfortable lives on the U.S. dollars they brought with them (provided they aren't robbed, harassed or killed by one of the many cartel groups prevalent in most areas of Mexico and other Central American nations). Meanwhile, Americans remain mired in a knee-deep morass of debt, with no way of pulling themselves out anytime soon.
The men lean against the car, smoking cigarettes and trying to figure out how to finish the job before day’s end. “They gotta come up with a better pay system,” says Rayford. “This ain’t no easy work. If you need somebody to do this type of work, you gotta be payin’. If they was paying by the hour, motherf—–s would work overtime, so you’d know what you’re working for.” He starts to pace around the car. “I could just work at McDonald’s (MCD),” he says.
Now there's an idea. Raising the pay would be a worthwhile incentive to most folk who wouldn't touch these jobs with a ten-foot pole. Most employers won't do this because it will eat into their bottom lines. Others aren't able to do it, since they're already operating on bleeding-edge margins:
Rhodes says he understands why Americans aren’t jumping at the chance to slice up catfish for minimum wage. He just doesn’t know what he can do about it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t pay those kids $13 an hour,” he says. Although the Uniontown plant, which processes about 850,000 pounds of fish a week, is the largest in Alabama and sells to big supermarket chains including Food Lion, Harris Teeter, and Sam’s Club (WMT), Rhodes says overseas competitors, which pay employees even lower wages, are squeezing the industry.
Conservatives just don't realize that people won't go for just any job because it happens to be there. A job that entails backbreaking, monotonous work for 12 hours or more per day won't be filled unless it pays a wage that working people can support themselves and their families on. They won't put themselves at risk for developing arthritis, joint pains, back trouble and other health problems unless they know they're getting a working wage that will hopefully compensate them for putting so much wear and tear on their bodies. And a bit of health insurance wouldn't hurt, either. This was why unions came to be in the first place.
I suspect most conservatives already have jobs -- salaried ones that trend towards the six figures. They already got theirs, and they're scratching their heads over why their poorer fellow Americans won't just shut up and take whatever's given to them. They have no concept of how hard most of these agricultural and factory processing jobs are. No concept of standing on one's feet for 12 hours a day, up to six days a week if necessary, for wages that barely support a single person, let alone a family of four.
Individual states are grabbing the issue of illegal immigration by the balls because they feel the federal government isn't doing enough to enforce immigration statues. Perhaps President Obama would do good to find a way to put immigration law back under the purview of the federal government before states like Alabama hurt themselves further. -
I've already covered one instance of fallout from Alabama's immigration law, also known as "HB 56" or "Scott Beason's Royal Cock-Up" in most circles. From what was reported, it seemed BBVA Compass was quietly making moves to pare down its investment and presence in Alabama to a minimum, thanks to this law.
And now there's this story.
TUSCALOOSA, Alabama -- A German manager with Mercedes-Benz is free after being arrested for not having a driver's license with him under Alabama's new law targeting illegal immigrants, police said Friday.
Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven Anderson told The Associated Press an officer stopped a rental vehicle for not having a tag Wednesday night and asked the driver for his license. The man only had a German identification card, so he was arrested and taken to police headquarters, Anderson said.
The 46-year-old executive was charged with violating the immigration law for not having proper identification, but he was released after an associate retrieved his passport, visa and German driver's license from the hotel where he was staying, Anderson said.
It wasn't immediately known how long the man was in custody or the status of his court case.
The law -- parts of which were put on hold amid legal challenges -- requires that police check citizenship status during traffic stops and take anyone who doesn't have proper identification to a magistrate. Anderson said that's what was done, but someone in the same situation wouldn't have been arrested before the law took effect.
"If it were not for the immigration law, a person without a license in their possession wouldn't be arrested like this," he said. Previously, drivers who lacked licenses received a ticket and a court summons, according to Anderson.
Mercedes-Benz spokeswoman Felyicia Jerald said the man is from Germany and was visiting Alabama on business. The company's first U.S. assembly plant is located just east of Tuscaloosa.
"This was an unfortunate situation, but the incident was resolved when our colleague ... was able to provide his driver's license and other documents to Tuscaloosa police," Jerald said.
Even if this executive shrugs off this "Papiere, Bitte" moment, it's bound to leave a bad impression on the rest of the Daimler AG group. You can now expect them to have a heart-to-heart with the governor and key Alabama legislators over this little incident. Money talks, and when it does, politicians listen carefully.
Given how the good doctor is busy wooing automobile manufacturers to open shop in the Heart of Dixie, he might want to be careful in making sure HB 56 doesn't step on the wrong set of toes, if you catch my drift. -
BBVA Compass originally planned to build a new office tower in downtown Birmingham, as part of a plan to expand operations and relieve crowding conditions at the corporate headquarters in the Daniel Building. According to a Birmingham News report, it looks like that's not going to happen. Instead, BBVA Compass will spend $15 million on renovations on renovating and expanding its operations center east of Railroad Park.
This wouldn't be a noteworthy story to blog on DDSS, except for a few interesting comments from AL.com's comments section:
A good friend of mine was working on the project for quite some time. The real reason is that the leadership of BBVA in Spain saw the excessively harsh immigration laws of Alabama as bigotry against Spanish speaking immigrants. They were particularly disturbed by Sen. Beason's comments in the paper last Sunday... with him stating that the fact that immigrant families were being broken up were a sign that the "law was working".
Keep spewing your mindless drivel if you want, but I assure you, the blame for this one rests squarely on the shoulders of the leadership in Alabama. I forget... which party pushed for this immigration law that's causing all this damage?
I can vouch for this post. BBVA is now pouring resources into Houston and as a result of the immigration law in Alabama will continue to move more people over to Houston. Why would a Spanish speaking executive want to be viewed as a second class citizen in Alabama?
The building was cancelled because of the immigration bill and that's just beginning.
Thanks for the article Russell. It is likely Alabama's immigration law caused Birmingham to loose a major investment. I have heard a similar rumors.
It is time for the governor and other bill sponsors to "listen" to concerns. Last week, RSA chief executive David Bronner spoke with the Birmingham News about a group that cancelled their golfing trip to Alabama because of the law.
Has the Birmingham News contacted Mayor Bell or Gov. Bentley for comment?
BBVA has high rise building planned for multiple locations including Houston. Birmingham was on the list, but the immigration law killed that future investment. A lot more jobs are moving to Houston now and the Birmingham economy is going to hurt because of it.
If this is true, then the impact from HB 56 isn't just being limited to farms and small businesses. When multinational corporations take a dim view of your shenanigans and decide to scale back on in-state investments, that's a pretty big hint you'd have to take. The other shoe that'll drop behind this is BBVA Compass leaving Birmingham altogether in favor of Houston.
I expect the lawmakers in Alabama who supported HB 56 to stand by their convictions, right up to the moment when their own campaign funds and kickbacks become threatened as a consequence of HB 56. -
Anyone remember Alabama's House Bill 56? It's the infamous state-enacted immigration law written to target "illegal immigration," only to open the doors to the specter of increased ethnic profiling of the state's Latino population. Arizona's SB 1070 has nothing on what the folks on Goat Hill cooked up:
The Alabama state legislature passed a controversial new immigration bill on June 9 that requires public schools to check students’ immigration status, criminalizes giving an undocumented immigrant a ride, requires employers to use E-Verify to check potential employees’ status, and instructs police to check the immigration status of anyone they stop if they suspect the person of being an undocumented immigrant.
The law is alarmingly tough, eclipsing Arizona's SB 1070 by several measures—including, among other punishments, incarceration and fines for anyone who knowingly employs, harbors, or transports illegal immigrants. Giving an undocumented immigrant a ride to work, offering them shelter, offering them sacrament: All of these acts are, with just the slightest interpretation, criminalized in the bill.
A federal judge is set to rule on the validity of the law today, as the order set down to block Alabama's enforcement of the law expires tomorrow.
As it stands, the law's had a pretty big economic impact on the farming industry in Alabama and other states that enacted similar laws. Latino workers, illegal or not, have pulled up stakes and left for elsewhere, leaving farmers in a jam when it comes to finding cheap labor. Apparently, the natives aren't up to 12 to 14 hours of back-breaking sunup-to-sundown labor for $7.50/hr, at least not without adding an extra $10/hr to that figure. Even the convicts and probationers aren't up to the job.
EDIT: Judge allows key parts of immigration law to stand:
A federal judge refused Wednesday to block key parts of Alabama's new law targeting illegal immigrants, including its requirements to check the immigration status of juvenile students in public schools and for police to verify the status of those they suspect of being in the county illegally.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn blocked some other parts of the law, which both supporters and critics say is the nation's toughest clampdown on illegal immigration by a state.
Blackburn wrote in her ruling that federal law doesn't prohibit the law's provisions on students or suspects pulled over by police. She didn't say when those and other parts of the law could take effect, but her previous order blocking enforcement expires on Thursday.
Showing posts with label HB56. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HB56. Show all posts
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