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The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare, four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News.
The move, which would not need congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller's plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.
[...] Though its effects could be far-reaching, the proposal to limit citizenship to immigrants who have not used public assistance does not appear to need congressional approval. As the Clinton administration did in 1999, the Trump administration would be redefining the term "public charge," which first emerged in immigration law in the 1800s in order to shield the U.S. from burdening too many immigrants who could not contribute to society.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Thursday August 16 2018, @05:24PM (2 children)
I mentioned the UK's milk trade in my OP, which is a pretty good example of why some of these the menial labour wages are so low, and it's not entirely down to the employers - the consumers have to carry some of the blame too. If you're shopping for the cheapest deal at the discount store - regardless of what quality corners they're cutting to get that price point - rather than supporting the farmer directly at farmer's markets etc. then you're part of the problem, like it or not. For their part, consumers (understandably) don't want to more pay for stuff than they have to - especially after several years of inflation outpacing wage increases - so it's beneficial for stores to put pressure on their suppliers to lower costs, and if a given supplier won't cut costs, well, maybe one of their competitor's will. There's *always* someone willing to shave off a few more pence when they're desperate rather than risk produce going off, so the price went into a downward spiral into unsustianable levels for many farmers. When you're faced with selling at a loss and at least putting some food on the table as your debt accumulates, or pouring your milk down the drain and having nothing, what are you going to do?
What the UK is starting to see now is many more industries getting into that level of cut-throat competition - they've *got* to start increasing wages to get the workers, but whoever does so first will be at a financial disadvantage compared to their competitors who have held out. Ultimately the wages, and the prices for produce on the shelf, are going to go have up but that just fuels inflation and we're back to the start of the circle again. What remains to be seen is whether those wage increases are going to outpace the resulting inflation or not, and if not (which seems more likely based on previous examples) then ultimately everyone ends up worse off.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday August 16 2018, @06:07PM (1 child)
Economics, especially at the end of a cycle, like now, is a "press your luck" game. The more you play god with peoples lives and force immigration and otherwise F with them, the longer it will be until the next phase of the natural cycle AND the longer and deeper the eventual recession will be, so some folks want the reboot now to minimize human suffering, whereas some folks have outstanding bets on the financial markets etc and F the people we're gonna run this into the ground so I can 'win'. Typical human fight over whats better for all of humanity vs whats better for one's own pocketbook.
So... the specific strategy being discussed is you can goose the economy along a little longer into a much deeper and longer depression IF you weaponize immigrants to keep the wheels turning that little bit slower during a cycle. But its no long term solution, obviously.
The real outcome of permanently lower standard of living is eventually the milk marketplace (from your example) absolutely inevitably stops. Its a market that is running now but is inherently not immortal and the end is coming up. To some extent its desecration of the dead to keep messing with the world to prop it up a little longer. Just shut it down now with some dignity rather than crashing the whole thing to keep it running a little longer. In a world of shrinking opportunity for all, no amount of scrambling will prevent the end of the milk market, but there are people trying to profit off it by turning human misery into revenue, which is the immigration game.
Two interesting aspects of the immigration game never discussed in public; if these people are so profitable, why is their home country such an economic disaster? Surely you'd think if they're an endless pot of gold, they'd want to stay home. So surely they're a massive economic drain. And the second aspect is supposedly immigration boosts an economy, but in the future why would it be any better in the sense that OK take the fairy tale that "new where-evers" will be more profitable than the natives, well, why is that assumed to be permanent; surely if they assimilate their productivity would drop to that of the natives and you'd be back to where you started, the natives aren't profitable enough we need ever more immigrants?
In that way immigrants are economic heroin; if its supposedly so great why don't all the dealers keep it and use it for themselves, and there's no rational argument why a long term ever increasing addiction would improve quality of life in the long term. A little pain killer under reasonable scientific control is often quite valuable, but uncontrolled addiction is another.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @04:04AM
Presumably because the nation states they are coming from lack sufficient physical and social infrastructure to allow them to value-add. Hard to be productive when you are ducking bullets or laid up in bed from poorly treated water.
And in almost all the cases that are relevant to at least the USA's interests, it was their foreign policy failures and frankly war crimes that created the problems in the first place. Supporting brutal dictators, training death squads and arming insurgencies doesn't do wonders for stability, and its rather unfair to expect people to build a prosperous nation when a Superpower rolls over in its sleep and crushes their democratic government and installs a nightmare fashioned from their own paranoia.