Q&A: WHY NOT REPLACE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS?: Obama Pick Kreuger to Join Growth Debate - WSJ.com

Obama Pick Kreuger to Join Growth Debate - WSJ.com

Question:

"You can solve unemployment and illegal immigration at the same time.

Replace illegal workers by using longest unemployed policy. As each employed illegal alien is found and returned the first listed unemployed is required to do that job or forfeit all benefits. The faster you deport the illegal aliens the faster the unemployment is solved."


Answer:

You know deep down you are in la-la-land don't you?

Let's see? The unemployed person making, say $40,000 a year with benefits (or much more), is going to take a job for $20,000 a year?

Or, the American who joined a union and worked on a seniority system where performance was secondary - if at all - is going to replace someone who knew they really had to work to get paid.

This idea is the most wishful, boldfaced wrong thinking.

It is very sad.

The issue is best summed up by the unemployment numbers someone quoted in this week's Barrons - i.e. that respectively 4%, 9% and 14% unemployment rates applied to those with college, a high school graduation degree and no graduation from high school.

As such, those chronically unemployed would likely be those with no high school diploma - or, they'd be competing with jobs filled by those with such a situation (the likely circumstances of illegal immigrants).

The President and liberals have told the bottom of the educational rung that they are 'entitled' to equal things like healthcare, etc. They know they don't have to work.

A much more insightful comment was to recognize that labor will have a clearing price at which people would be hired. To do this, things like Obamacare need to be killed off.

Likewise, we need policies to make America business friendly.

Note, such a committee to make the US business friendly was not and has not really been created (albeit the committee with Immelt, etc.). Where's a report.

Instead, the President is appointing someone to the Council of Economic Advisers, Krueger, who says minimum wage rates don't impact employment.

I can tell you from broad personal experience that minimum wage rates encourage substitution of equipment - especially in the fast food industry, a place where there used to be many low wage, starter jobs.

And, to make himself look like even a more consummate idiot, the President then takes the opposite tack and is apparently going to argue for a $5,000 credit for new hires.

He doesn't see the dichotomy between the two positions because a high minimum wage is part of liberal dogma (the old 'living wage').

We are truly in a 1984 George Orwell situation.

Your idea sadly is one of such ideas.