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Obama’s Enforcement Strategy To Eliminate Illegally Employed Workers

In the recent news the Obama administration has replaced immigration raids at factories and farms with a quieter enforcement strategy: sending federal agents to scour companies’ records for illegal immigrant workers.  While the sweeps of the past commonly led to the deportation of such workers, the “silent raids,” as employers call the audits, usually result in the workers being fired, but in many cases they are not deported. Over the past year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted audits of employee files at more than 2,900 companies. The agency has levied a record $3 million in civil fines so far this year on businesses that hired unauthorized immigrants, according to official figures. Thousands of those workers have been fired.

Employers say the audits reach more companies than the work-site roundups of the administration of President George W. Bush. The audits force businesses to fire every suspected illegal immigrant on the payroll— not just those who happened to be on duty at the time of a raid — and make it much harder to hire other unauthorized workers as replacements. While the sweeps of the past commonly led to the deportation of such workers, the “silent raids,” as employers call the audits, usually result in the workers being fired, but in many cases they are not deported. The most inexpensive labour force can be the costliest for an employer if it involves illegal workers, underage workers or child labourers used in hazardous activities. It is illegal and morally wrong to hire these employees. Plus, heavy penalties are imposed on employers violating the labour laws. Regarding each prospective employee, a producer must ask the question: “Is it legal for me to hire this worker?” If the answer is no, it is risky business for the producer who goes ahead with the hiring. Here’s why.

Illegal Immigrants Illegal immigration concerns have resulted in lively congressional debates over solutions to the problem and demands for increased enforcement measures to identify and deport illegal immigrants. Enforcement measures focus more on employers, since most illegal immigrants are drawn to the U.S. for jobs and some employers have taken advantage of unauthorized workers as a cheap labour supply. The priority is to go after employers, but the policy says agents will continue to arrest illegal workers as long as local U.S. attorneys commit to prosecuting cases against their employers. The Obama administration stressed that humanitarian guidelines will be followed in more cases than under President George W. Bush. The prevailing question is the same as what Republicans ask is President Obama talking tough but softening up?

July 21, 2010 Posted by | News | , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Grading Barack Obama’s New Age of Economic Integration Takes Place

The Obama presidency has been all about bridging gaps, compromising extensive differences and arriving a new understanding between opposing perspectives both in the domestic scene as well as in the United States’ foreign relations. Yet that ideal that the Obama administration has aspired for is beginning to wane as global realities bit by bit eat away at the dream of renewing United States. As observed in Toronto, “they talked nice”, but President Barack Obama and European leaders failed Saturday to bridge a fast growing divide over government spending and will emerge from a weekend summit charting different courses for ending the global recession. Obama will head home Sunday night with his government’s foot still on the spending accelerator to stimulate the economy, saying it will cut back later. European leaders, however, are pledging to start cutting back government spending now.

This fact is made more evident by the end of the current economic summit that the United States through President Barack Obama recently attended with one of the closest economic block partners of the United States, the European Union. The latest economic summit with the members of the EU has not made any significant improvement on the G8 and G20 summits that came before it. It is clear that the US economic policies under the Obama administration are inconsistent in the least and dangerously at odds with that of EU’s members.

The fundamental differences of the US and EU’s economic policies are their own solutions to the decline of the global economy as well as well its response to shifts in the global economy such as the rise of China. The differences may have emerged from different realities which each face yet these realities are not entirely unconnected. After all the global economy and the forces that take part in shaping it are all interconnected and the US depression as well as the  EU’s economic shifts both affect and are attributable to each other. The US insists that government spending is the key while the UE believes in extensive reform of economic structures and systems with lesser government spending.

True to each their own yet these nations must understand that their policies most especially their inconsistency and disparity have far reaching and long term implications not only on their economic well being but also on the global economy and most especially on the economies of other nations. They have to understand that global economic prosperity and sustainability require integration of different and often opposing economic approaches. More importantly their policy – making and interaction determines the economic fates of many nations. How many economies are dependent on the US economic system and how many economies are intertwined with the EU’s economic system? The 21st century global economics should be built on prudence and insight lest the economies of many nations be brought to ruin due to the inability to effectively integrate by the world’s leading economies.

June 28, 2010 Posted by | Uncategorized | , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

US and Russia finally hanging out

Thursday saw what seemed to be an impossible sight if it occurred 40 years ago at the height of the could war, the President of the United States and the President of Russia, taking a leisurely stroll in the park, joked about twitter and grabbed some burgers. Those who served at WWII can remember those times that immediately two years after the Great War, US-Russia relations have deteriorated until it turned into the Cold War. This war without weapons almost destroyed the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 if not for the brilliant intervention of, then, US President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy and the rest of their team. Although the Cold War ended officially in 1991 after the fall of the Iron Curtain, it took decades to finally reach speaking terms between the two nations.

Informality was the game of the day, with no summit, no conference, no weapons treaty being discussed, just two world leaders relaxing from their long day at work. With both leaders acting like they were long lost buddies to the extent that they both shared fries together, everyone cannot fathom that these two countries almost destroyed each other. For President Obama, this has been the break time that he needed after the difficulties of the past week. And it would seem that none other can sympathize with him more than the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Word around the White House is centered much more on the presidents’ unexpected jaunt for cheeseburgers to Ray’s Hell Burger in Virginia— Medvedev took jalapenos_ and less about the many substantive matters they discussed.

Even Obama acknowledged the topics seemed a bit foreign. “You know, sometimes its odd when you’re sitting in historic meetings with your Russian counterpart to spend time talking about chicken,” Obama conceded in describing an agreement to export U.S poultry products to Russia. Upon questions from reporters, Obama said there will be no more firings in the chain of command over Afghanistan, although he will be sternly monitoring his team. Medvedev seemed reluctant to wade into the topic, recalling the ultimately disastrous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan decades ago.

“I have quite friendly relations with President Obama,” he deferred, “but I try not to give pieces of advice that cannot be fulfilled.” The presidents showed solidarity on a range of matters:

  • Coordinated humanitarian aid for Kyrgyzstan, wracked by deadly unrest in the wake of the president’s ouster there.
  • Russia’s push to join the World Trade Organization, which has stalled. Obama endorsed wholeheartedly the idea as a matter of world interest.
  • Concerted efforts to get lawmakers in both countries to ratify a new deal that would reduce the nuclear weapons of both nations.

Where there was conflict, even that was framed in an upbeat way. Both also stated that they would even thrive despite disagreements. Until the next visit, President Medvedev promised to keep in touch with Obama, and when both talk on the phone, I takes then more than an hour.

June 28, 2010 Posted by | Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

   

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