A real immigration solution

There has been a fair amount of debate on immigration in this country lately and it has certainly become something of a "hot button" political topic.  You have the right side of the aisle arguing against immigration in general.  They seem to believe that if we let one more Mexican into our country that somehow that extra little oomph will destroy the economy, bankrupt Social Security, overburden Medicare and Medicaid and unbalance the price of vegetables all while simultaneously causing us to lose the "War on Drugs".  I, of course, am only mildly exaggerating there.  Meanwhile, you have the lefties who seem more in favor of our traditional immigration policy which is to say essentially a total lack of policy.  OK, I jest.  The left seems to favor our traditional stance which is more or less to not enforce the existing policies as they are written.  Really neither of those stances is viable in the long term.  If we choose the right side, the logical conclusion is that we have to build huge hideous monstrosities along our border to prevent easy passage between countries.  We would also need to hire a bushel or fifty of border guards and arm them appropriately to prevent any criminals from trespassing.  This would certainly not be a definitive fix, though.  How could it be?  The drug smugglers have already shown they are capable of building elaborate underground labyrinths to circumvent any attempt at stanching the flow of lucrative drugs into our fine country.  So, it would seem to be unbelievably short sighted to build an enormously expensive structure when the means to bypass it already exist and have been proven to work.  On the left side, we have basically our current policy.  I would argue that for the most part it really hasn't been TOO horrible as it is but it is a dangerous proposition as well.  In the long term, having laws that are at best not enforced willingly or at worst are unenforceable promotes a lack of respect for the law and essentially emboldens the populace not only to ignore that particular law but others which may be more essential.  Think about it for a minute.  When you are on a road that has a 35mph speed limit but everyone else seems to be doing 50mph do you continue to do 35mph or do you sort of keep up with the traffic flow?  When you are doing 50mph in that 35mph zone are you more or less likely to stop for that yellow light?  So the current policy is dangerous for similar reasons but also because of other existing policy issues.  The 14th amendment would be a reasonable place to start that discussion.  When people talk about the 14th amendment they are mostly referring to the Citizenship Clause which was a response to the 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v Sandford that held blacks could not be citizens.  The 14th amendment (and more specifically the Citizenship Clause) which was enacted in July 1868 states that those children born in the USA are citizens.  This was originally intended to apply to freed slaves but later the merit and intent of this amendment was tested in the Supreme Court.  The case of United States v Wong Kim Ark in 1898 held that under the 14th amendment a man born in the USA to foreign nationals (in this case Chinese citizens) who have permanent domicile and residence in the USA and are carrying on business in the USA and whose parents are not foreign diplomats or here in other official capacity by a foreign power are citizens of the USA.  Currently, this is bounced around in the media as the "Anchor Baby" law.  Thus it is known due to foreign nationals who come to this country late in pregnancy with what would seem to be the intent of dropping a litter and instantly having legal protection against exportation due to their status as parents and caretakers of a US citizen (i.e. having an anchor).  If you look at this closely, it would seem this is only possible based on a lack of willingness to enforce the laws as written and instead applying a loose interpretation.  What I am saying is that if you look at the letter of the law, those that traverse a border and squirt out a baby only gain citizenship if they were here and permanently domiciled while carrying on business and not here in official capacity from another country.  Certainly, if we just enforced this as written it would eliminate a fair percentage of these so-called "Anchor babies".  But enforcing that law to the letter would soak up an inordinate amount of resources and may not give us the result we are looking for despite our best efforts.  But why is the Anchor Baby a problem in the first place?  The right wing would have you believe that having (mostly poor blue collar) families cross the border and have a baby entitled to citizenship is a financial drain on the government due to social programs such as WIC and Medicaid.  While there is a degree of validity to this argument, it is also true that if we simply enforced the rules as written this would not be an issue.  So, it should be fairly apparent that this is one fine mess with no viable solution.  Or is it?  What if we instituted a brand new policy on immigration that was more enforceable, more rational, and had the potential to alter the demographics of those who choose to immigrate in the first place?  I would suggest a three headed monster as a solution.  By that I mean there should be three pathways to achieve legal citizenship.  The first option would be a "buy in".  In this model, you could pay a one time fee to obtain legal status.  This would be great because it would be consistent with the "American Way" in that those who would use this pathway would already be accustomed to buying their way into whatever they want.  The buy in price would have to be set fairly high, say $50,000 or possibly more.  This would ensure a certain percentage of white collar workers exercising this pathway.  In addition, such a large fee would assure us that people coming in via this route had a good level of commitment to staying.  The second pathway to legal citizen status would be to serve for a period of 3 years in our military.  This would be a period in which the candidate for citizenship would be paid in accordance with what other military enrollees are paid and they would be expected to be competent in their verbal and written communications in the English language because the battlefield is not a place for poor communications.  The third and final pathway to citizenship would be to spend a period of 7 years in the USA working and paying taxes.  This trial period would not entitle the candidates to any social benefits such as Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security even while they toiled away and put money into the pot for these programs.  This would allow us to build some sustainability into these social assistance programs while providing a reasonable pathway to citizenship for those who would like to seek it.  In addition, it would allow for the same worker protections afforded legal citizens to these hard working citizen candidates while they worked to prove their commitment to this country.  So, there you have it.  My possibly overly simplistic solution to immigration.  I'd be interested in hearing other opinions on how to fix this issue.

Don't fall for this scam!

I recently posted a link on Facebook to an article on Fox Business reporting that Goldman Sachs has invested $50 million and a Russian investor (Digital Sky Technologies) has invested an additional $450 million in Facebook based on a prediction that the company's valuation is at $50 billion.  To me, this is the most blasphemous financial speculation I have come across in some time.  There is simply no way that the intellectual property and hard assets of Facebook could have valuation at anything near that exorbitant amount.  For comparisons sake, let's look at some other tech companies that are already publicly traded.  Yahoo is valued at roughly $20 billion.  Their fiscal 2010 revenue hovered between $4 and $5 billion.  Facebook's revenue was down around $2.5 billion.  Yahoo also leads Facebook in total percentage of internet users by roughly 8% though Facebook users spend more in total amount of time on that site.  Yahoo's revenue per user runs at about $8 while Facebook's revenue per user runs at about $4.  Let's also look at Google's valuation.  That company is worth about $180 billion with total 2010 revenue just over $20 billion.  Google also leads Facebook in total internet users but by only about 6%.  However, Google's revenue per user is about $24.  These are the most comparable companies to Facebook in that they provide only digital or cloud service and not hard goods like eBay or Amazon does.  However, if you look at eBay and Amazon you will find that they have valuations closer to Facebook (about $40 billion and $80 billion respectively) but they annihilate Facebook in terms of revenue at $9 billion and $30 billion respectively in 2010.  So it would appear that this newly reported valuation of Facebook is inflated to a large degree.  As everyone knows Facebook is free though.  Right?  So how do they make money now and what are their long term plans for revenue generation?  They get the majority of their revenue currently from advertisements (those things on the right side of your Facebook page that apparently at least some of you actually click).  The rest of their revenue comes from the online games that are embedded into the Facebook experience wherein they get a share of revenue from sales generated in those games (like when you buy those crazy Farmville gifts).  However, it doesn't appear that their long term plan is to remain with those two income streams as their primary revenue sources.  Facebook has already positioned itself as a cross platform marketing tool.  This is evidenced by the ever increasing number of pages on Facebook from other companies such as Lowe's, Home Depot, Budweiser, Miller Lite and what seems to be a never ending list of companies.  It turns out that their long term goals are to bring in corporate electronic storefronts and make purchasing things from those electronic storefronts straight from your Facebook page possible.  An example of how this would work:  Best Buy obtains a Facebook marketing page.  They advertise certain products on that page.  Facebook functions almost as a credit card (or as PayPal currently does for eBay and other online stores) by facilitating the financial aspect of the transaction then receiving a small percentage of that transaction for their trouble.  That sounds like a sound business plan, right?  But how many people are going to be willing to use Facebook for financial transactions given their long and troubled history with regards to protecting user's privacy?  I know I wouldn't be interested in that.  Another thing that I have trouble with is Facebook's questionable business practices and evasiveness with how they operate their business.  How is that going to look when the SEC examines the company prior to their IPO?  Sounds like there could be some flaws in their business plan, right?  At best, Facebook's future financial plans are fraught with risk.  So, why then would Goldman invest in Facebook at this point?  Put another way this question would be "what do they stand to gain?"  The answer is that they stand to gain a lot financially.  I believe that they could potentially benefit from their investment when Facebook finally decides to make its IPO which most believe will end up being somewhere in 2012.  How would they benefit you may ask?  Easy.  They want to position themselves so that they are the underwriter of the IPO.  They would stand to make oodles of money initially from such an IPO as it would be very likely that there would be a huge media frenzy surrounding this event and that would drive up prices artificially.  So, I'm not that surprised that Goldman would want to invest a token sum in Facebook at this time in order to leverage themselves into the frontrunner position when Facebook needs an investment banker to underwrite the IPO.  That's sound business on the part of Goldman.  But the real losers in this deal are likely to be the unsuspecting public who succumb to the media frenzy that will no doubt surround the Facebook IPO.  They are very likely to buy their shares at artifically elevated values due to transient increased demand in the initial run in phase of selling.  Then when the world figures out that it was all just hype and that there is actually very little substance to this as an investment the bottom will fall out of the stocks value and those investors will be left holding the bag so to speak.  Goldman doesn't have to worry about the $50 billion invested now as they will make much more than that by managing the IPO.  So for them this is a sound investment.  However, for all those folks who will no doubt buy into the Facebook hype during the IPO they will lose large amounts of money.  That's my prediction anyway.  I just don't believe the hype.

So many problems, So little time, All from one incident

I was particularly impressed (not in a good way) with the series of stories that broke following the recent snow storm in New York City.  The first reports were that the snow was so bad that ambulance service was interrupted and helpless sick people died at home and babies were delivered at home and perished as a result.  Certainly those are awful stories and I sympathize with the plight of those who suffered as a result.  But it wasn't long before the cacophony of malcontents from New York echoed throughout the news network coverage with their complaints of somehow being deprived of what they perceived to be some sort of entitlement to immediate ambulance transport and medical care at their nearest health care facility.  This sense of entitlement on their part somehow abrogates the right to safety of those who would otherwise be charged with transporting these people to said health care facilities.  It is a strange world we have created wherein average citizens can convince themselves that their need for the health care commodity is of such import that it trumps the right to safety of the EMT.  I'm no EMT but I do know that one of the first things the EMT is charged with when arriving on scene is to assess the scene for safety - THEIR OWN SAFETY!  If those who are supposed to be saving you aren't safe in their rescue operations then they can't possibly perform that SERVICE.  How exactly does one come to the point that they believe they are so important that their own personal needs outweigh the safety of others?  I just can't seem to reconcile that in my mind.  I am well aware that this situation represented life and death to a few of New York's citizens but even that cannot be permitted to goad us as a society into placing our EMT's and Medical Transport personnel into harm's way.  This situation in an oblique way outlines one of the undiscussed problems with health care (and indeed other social programs) in this country.  That problem is that there is a contingent of people in this country that view the health care commodity as a right or an entitlement.  It is not and can never be for the very reason that it requires someone else to provide that service.  Rights are things inherent and do not require someone to be put out to provide that.  A right can only exist in the negative sense (i.e. no one has to directly provide it) and not in the positive sense (i.e. someone has to directly provide it).  For example, one's right to liberty requires no one to actively provide it (though certainly it does require some level of protection via police or military force I suppose).  The right to life is another example.  However, health care has to be directly provided by someone and also has to be paid for by someone and therefore can not be a right.  This situation outlines the toxic entitlement mentality that unfortunately has come to be quite common in this country.

The second and perhaps more sinister issue that cropped up in news stories after New York's Big Snow Storm was that the unionized workers of New York City's sanitation department (not really clear why sanitation would be charged with snow removal but whatever) staged a slowdown of services and complete disregard for their duties in protest of demotions, cuts in the department and declining numbers of positions.  Anyone that has ever worked in business shouldn't have too much difficulty seeing the problems here.  Heck, anyone that has ever had a job shouldn't have any trouble seeing this isn't acceptable employee behavior.  If I ever did that at my job I would be vilified before being fired.  But since there is union "protection" in place these buffoons will keep their jobs and most probably the city will cave and re-create positions that aren't really needed and therefore continue to run over budget.  That is the problem with unions in both the private and public sector.  They put too much power and influence in the hands of people who aren't really qualified to have that kind of power.  There may have been a time when unions were necessary due to gross disregard of worker's rights and unsafe working conditions or unfair pay but does anyone think any of those conditions exist in New York City's sanitation department?  So why then do they need to have a union?  If these union workers are proven to have shirked their responsibilities to make a point (and based on news reports it is pretty much a proven case already) then they should be held criminally liable for those that were left to die in their apartments because ambulance crews could not perform their duties safely.  Anything less than prosecuting these idiots with a litany of crimes will be completely unacceptable.  This would also be a prime opportunity for New York to abolish the unions that are apparently holding the city captive as well.  It would be a great first step in ridding our fine country of union influence from top to bottom.