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A recent presentation at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston highlighted how challenges associated with the outdated US immigration system have cultivated an inefficient, unethical, and unsafe shadow economy that threatens the sustainability of the construction industry. Stan Marek, CEO of MAREK, and Loren Steffy, award-winning author and business journalist, discussed how workforce shortages, the lack of a pathway for unauthorized immigrants to earn legal status, and the lack of enforcement against worker misclassification and payroll fraud have made it easier for unscrupulous employers in the construction industry to profit at the expense of law-abiding taxpayers, workers, and businesses. They called on lawmakers to pass a bipartisan ID and Tax policy as a solution.

In the construction industry where workforce shortages are rampant and competition for bids is fierce, Marek explained that one way that many companies cut costs is by classifying their workers as independent contractors instead of employees. Many businesses also pay workers off the books in cash. This allows those employers to avoid paying payroll taxes and providing benefits like health insurance and workers' compensation. Doing this not only allows those employers to undercut and underbid companies that are following the rules, it also cheats taxpayers, and leads to a degradation of the trades due to a lack of emphasis on training and the treatment of workers as disposable.

Marek stressed the importance of the employer-to-employee relationship and the safety and skills training that comes along with it and explained how doing things the right way can actually end up saving costs in the long run and even help to alleviate rising housing costs.

When you have a system where everybody is an independent contractor and you dont have an employee to employer relationship, they dont get the training that employees do. Our company prides itself on safety. Job sites are dangerous. Safety is number one, and then skills training. Somebody that is trained to do a specific function does it better. A big problem we have in construction is doing it twice. So many people, when theyre not trained, make a mistake and it has to be redone. Its estimated 20-25% of projects have to be redone because people dont have the skills training, said Marek.

I have watched the degradation of trades, especially in residential housing that has all independent contractors. Nobody has an employer-employee relationship, and it's amazing they can build the amazing houses that they do, but if they were trained and had constant skills they could lower the cost of housing. Housing has gotten more expensive because workers are not trained. Unfortunately, thats whats now happening on the commercial side as well, people getting away from the employer-employee relationship, he added.

Marek also emphasized the fiscal shortcomings of this situation where employment and income taxes are not being paid and uninsured independent contractors end up in emergency rooms leaving taxpayers to foot their bills.

If you're not an employee and you're a self-employed independent contractor, youre supposed to pay self-employment taxes, but most of those people dont and the government doesnt do anything about it. The IRS is totally ineffective when it comes to collecting money from these people Its also a public charge because the taxpayer has to take care of the healthcare costs for independent contractors that arent provided employer healthcare insurance for what can be a dangerous job, said Marek.

The Speakers also explained how this troublesome situation is compounded by the lack of legal immigration status for many construction workers. With rampant workforce shortages, a lack of legal pathways for immigrants to come and work in the construction industry, and no existing method for unauthorized immigrants to obtain legal status, it is estimated that around half of construction workers in Texas are unauthorized immigrants.

Since 1986 theres been no way for millions of people to get legal status, so theyre working off the books, said Marek. Weve had to lay off a lot of outstanding workers because we found out through ICE or insurance audits that the ID they had was not their own. When ICE comes in and tells you these people are not authorized to work in the US, the first thing you think is oh well theyre going to deport them. They dont do that. Those workers just no longer work for me. They go to work for someone else as an independent contractor where they get paid less and dont receive proper training, he added, explaining why many unauthorized immigrants end up working as independent subcontractors or off the books due to their lack of employment authorization.

The speakers called on lawmakers to pass targeted bipartisan legislation including an ID and Tax policy that will help to discourage this type of worker misclassification while increasing the legal tax-paying workforce. This makes economic sense at a time when open jobs in the US are at an all-time high and workforce shortages are contributing to rampant inflation

Immigration reform is a political footballwere never going to solve the whole thing, the term comprehensive immigration reform, its too big, too complicated and too divisiveWe have a solution. Its an adult DACA that we call ID and Tax. Weve got 11 million undocumented people here, many of them have been here for over 30 years. Were not going to deport them, workforce shortages are killing our economy, and most of them, including construction workers, were labeled essential workers during the pandemic, said Marek.

Why cant we ID them for national security, do a background check, and then let employers hire them and pay taxes on them? Its commonsense, he added, noting that in the interest of legislative success the policy does not include a path to citizenship.

Creating a method for unauthorized immigrants to earn legal status and work permits would allow them to work for tax-paying employers and generate significant fiscal revenues without raising taxes on law-abiding businesses and taxpayers. This would also help combat inflation by helping to reduce federal deficits. Combining such a policy with legislation to increase enforcement against worker misclassification and payroll fraud would increase its effectiveness in this regard.

Right now, we all need workers. I need one hundred workers and I can't hire them. And there are so many undocumented workers out there that have been working with 20 years of skills but we cant hire themFor every 1 million people that we can take out of the underground economy and put on a W2 payroll working as an employee, thats 4.75 billion a year into social security. Multiply that by 10 and thats a significant amount of money, said Marek of the fiscal benefit of ID and Tax.

Steffy also pointed out that in addition to fiscal and workforce improvement related benefits of ID and Tax, it would also have economic ripple effects by allowing unauthorized immigrants to participate more fully in the economy.

Its not just about hiring them and paying taxes, its the societal change that comes about with this. If you have someone that has a job with an employer who can vouch for them and say yes were issuing them a paycheck every two weeks, they can open a bank account, they can get a car loan, and they can get a home loan. Theres an economic ripple effect here that affects all of us whether we realize it or not. We have allowed these 11 million people to live here for many years, but not to fully participate in our economy. ID and Tax is a way to bring these people out of the shadows so we can get the full economic benefit of these immigrants, said Steffy.

The speakers also placed emphasis on the need for a legislative solution for DACA, a program that has allowed unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children to earn legal status and work permits. Although the 10-year-old program has wide public support and has helped enable DACA recipients to increase their contributions to society, it has faced legal challenges based on the fact that it was created through executive order, and faces a real risk of being terminated by federal courts.

For us, the most important thing right now is the Dreamers. DACA has been floating around out there for almost ten years, and all those kids, Ive got a bunch of them working for me, theyre great young men and women. 740,000 who signed up and have given all their information to the government, and theyre scared to death theyre going to be deported, and thats not right. But at least theyre working and contributing. There are another 2 million undocumented kids who have grown up here and gone to our schools, and when they graduate high school they cant get a job as an employee, said Marek, pointing out the irony of the current immigration system that does not allow unauthorized immigrant children whose educations we have already invested in to go on and work in legitimate tax-paying jobs.

To learn more about these issues, check out Deconstructed: An Insider's View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades, a book co-authored by Steffy and Marek.

Also check out the free Rational Middle Video Docuseries that examines more issues and challenges associated with the US immigration system. Click here to view the episode about ID and Tax.

Read more from the original source:
ID and Tax Solution for Construction Worker Misclassification and Immigration Challenges - Construction Citizen

Talk to people in the leisure and hospitality industry, and theyll tell you the shrinking population of young people is not the only reason for the on-going worker shortages. An abrupt decrease in immigration is another.

People in the leisure and hospitality industry should know. In no other industry is the worker shortage as acute.

The leisure and hospitality industry is a massive collection of industries. It consists of two subsectors, one being arts, entertainment and recreation; the other, accommodation and food service. Arts, entertainment and recreation includes performing arts, spectator sports, museums, zoos, fitness centers and golf courses. Accommodation and food service includes hotels, restaurants, bars and a plethora of the like.

Prior to the pandemic, leisure and hospitality ranked third among the nations leading private sector employers (behind professional and business services, and education and health services). It employed 17 million people, 10.7 percent of employed U.S. workers. Accommodation and food services employed 14.5 million; arts, entertainment and recreation, 2.5 million.

In Glynn, leisure and hospitality is a monster industry, far and away the countys leading employer. Just before the pandemic, leisure and hospitality employed about 8,500 Glynn workers, 22 percent of the countys employed workers. Accommodation and food services employed about 7,350; arts, entertainment and recreation employed about 1,150.

The pandemic hit leisure and hospitality harder than any other industry. Nationally, the industrys recovery from the pandemic has been impressive, but not complete. U.S. leisure and hospitality employment currently stands at 15.5 million, 1.5 million below its pre-pandemic level.

In Glynn, leisure and hospitalitys recovery has been impressive and probably complete. The most recent industry employment figure for Glynn is 8,243 for the third quarter of 2021. But tourism here has been roaring for months. A current employment figure below 8,500 would be surprising.

Lurking beneath those numbers is a detail that explains why the worker shortage in leisure and hospitality is so acute. Leisure and hospitality relies heavily on two sets of workers: young workers and immigrants.

The median age of a worker in the U.S. is 42.2 years. The median age of a leisure and hospitality worker in the U.S. is 31.7 years. In the U.S., 12 percent of employed workers are age 16 to 24 years. In leisure and hospitality, 35 percent of employed workers are age 16 to 24 years.

The problem? Between 2010 and 2019, the population of 16 to 24 years olds in the U.S. shrunk by 843,029. The population under age 16 shrunk by 876,772.

In the U.S., 17 percent of employed workers are immigrants. In leisure and hospitality, the figure is 20 percent. In accommodation, its 32 percent.

The problem? Between 2000 and 2017, the U.S. foreign-born population increased by an average of 743,000 per year. Between 2017 and 2019, the average increase fell to 203,000 per year. With the pandemic, the U.S. foreign-born population appears to have decreased (though official figures for 2020 and 2021 are not yet available).

To the point, the abrupt shift in immigration in 2018 and 2019 from the 2000-2017 trend cost the U.S. about 1.1 million workers, half of whom would have been college educated.

Would an additional 1.1 million workers solve our current worker shortage problem? No. But it would take a nice chunk out of it.

The new trend in immigration is old news to people in the leisure and hospitality industry, especially hoteliers. The industry has been lobbying hard for immigration reform since 2018.

Hows that for a predicament? The population of young workers cant be unshrunk. And immigration reform requires serious people in politics.

Look for leisure and hospitality to become the leading employer of robotics engineers.

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Another reason workers are hard to find | Editorial Columns | thebrunswicknews.com - Brunswick News

The ideas that immigrants are a drain on resources or present an environmental risk to the United States are not limited to explicit eco-fascists though. Both of those narratives are common on Fox News, including from the networks top star Tucker Carlson. On April 25, after Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) blamed migrants for causing environmental degradation at the southern border, Carlson thanked him for mentioning the effect on the physical landscape, on the land. The host added, Where is the Sierra Club, you know, as our country is being trampled?

Carlson has discussed this theme repeatedly over the years. The Potomac River has gotten dirtier and dirtier and dirtier and dirtier, he said in a 2019 interview in The Atlantic. I go down there and that litter is left almost exclusively by immigrants. (The Potomac Conservancy condemned Carlsons remarks, calling them racist plain and simple.)

I actually hate litter which is one of the reasons I'm so against illegal immigration. It produces a huge amount of litter, he said in August 2018.

That December, Carlson said that immigrants make our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. He faced a significant backlash following those remarks, including from 26 companies which pulled advertisements from his show. But he doubled down on the comments just days later in a monologue that explicitly called increased immigration levels not just the act of migrating a threat to U.S. natural resources.

Thanks to illegal immigration, huge swaths of the region are covered with garbage and waste that degrade the soil and kill wildlife, he said. Illegal immigration comes at a huge cost to our environment.

The left used to care about the environment the land, the water, the animals, he continued. They understood that America is beautiful because it is open and uncrowded. Not so long ago, environmentalists opposed mass immigration. They knew what the costs were.

Far-right website The Federalist wrote up that segment under the headline: Tucker Carlson Is Absolutely Right: Illegal Immigration Is Destroying The Environment.

One year earlier, far-right pundit Ann Coulter wrote an opinion piece for the Daily Caller titled Choose Between A Green America And A Brown America, criticizing the Sierra Club for adopting progressive immigration policies. In the piece, she made a racist reference to a Mexican cultural trait of littering and promoted taking white Western European immigrants over Mass Third World immigration.

The eco-fascistic right often couches its anti-immigrant conservationism in Malthusian anxieties about overpopulation. A sensible environmentalism would have to ask is it good for us or the environment that the population grows artificially through the mass introduction of foreigners? Christopher Roach wrote in a piece for American Greatness, a hotbed of far-right Trumpist nationalism. Roach also referenced an immigration regime that transports billions from the fertilethough impoverishedThird World, highlighting again the overlap between great replacement panic and eco-fascist narratives.

The far rights demonization of immigrants as dirty or bad stewards of the environment goes hand-in-hand with the lie that they steal wealth from the United States, or otherwise dont contribute their fair share.

Our national wealth is up for grabs by whomever gets here first, and they are coming, Carlson said on May 21, 2019. The United States is being plundered.

That segment was based on a report from an immigration restrictionist group that has deep ties to the far-right ecology movement, called the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The group seeks to drastically reduce the level of authorized immigration and stop all unauthorized border crossing, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has designated FAIR as an extremist group.

In a recent blog post, FAIR government relations manager Preston Huennekens argued that any increase in our population is going to our tax natural resources and that migration had negative environmental impacts through the physical act of migrating itself, including border trash, smuggling trails destroying fauna, etc.

The idea of scarcity is crucial to the racist appeal of eco-fascism, and Fox News regularly suggests that municipal and federal resources cant accommodate increased migration.

At a time when there were more than half a million Americans homeless living on the streets a crushing number that our leaders ignore but that rises every single year at that moment, Joe Biden is giving hotel rooms to illegal aliens, Carlson declared. It's hard to believe that's real. Oh, but it is real.

Anchor Harris Faulkner played that clip on her March 23, 2021, show, to which Fox News Will Cain responded: Welcoming in migrants from Central America, that's all fine and good but not if its coming at the expense of a limited amount of resources that we're depriving of Americans. As Media Matters noted at the time, immigrants contribute more to governmental resources than they use.

Read this article:
Eco-fascism is on the rise and its anti-immigrant beliefs have a bullhorn on Fox News - Media Matters for America

Democrats are taking Republicans to task this week following a racist mass shooting in western New York, accusing GOP lawmakers of fomenting violence by embracing the same white nationalist views as the alleged gunman.

Lawmakers in both parties have been horrified by the massacre in Buffalo, where a lone gunman shot 13 people 10 of them fatally at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood on Saturday afternoon. The suspect, an 18-year-old from Conklin, N.Y., a small rural town 200 miles east, had reportedly posted a long, online screed voicing fears that Americas white population is being overrun by growing numbers of minorities.

That conspiracy, known as replacement theory, has a long history at the fringes of American politics, reverberating for decades within the underground worlds of white nationalism and white supremacy. But it gained a recent mainstream foothold under former President Trump, whose Make America Great Again campaign launched with a blanket attack on Mexican immigrants, won legions of followers across the country and remains the single most animating force in the GOP even more than a year after Trumps departure from public office.

In the wake of Saturdays massacre in Buffalo, MAGA-loyal Republicans and their allies are now under sharp scrutiny for past comments suggesting, to various degrees, that Democrats and other elites have sought to empower minorities largely through immigration policy at the expense of white people.

Some of those conservative commentators have embraced replacement theory by name; others have avoided the term, but warn of an immigrant insurrection designed to keep Democrats perpetually in power. In either case, the critics say such rhetoric contributes directly to acts of nationalist violence, including Saturdays massacre in Buffalo.

What truly needs to be replaced in this country is ignorance and hate, which is driving division, perpetuating lies, and killing our neighbors, Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), said in a statement.

Higgins is hardly alone. And among the loudest voices denouncing the GOPs flirtation with fringe nationalism are a pair of Capitol Hill Republicans Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) who accused their own leadership of doing far too little to combat the bigotry in their own ranks.

The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse, Cheney wrote on Twitter. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.

The debate over replacement theory has been thrust into the national spotlight following a string of violent episodes in recent years. The list includes the 2017 marches in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists yelled that Jews will not replace us; the 2018 shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, where Jews were targeted for supporting immigrants; and the 2019 massacre at a Walmart in Texas, where the shooter said he feared a Hispanic invasion.

The suspect in Saturdays shooting in Buffalo, Payton Gendron, had aired similar grievances, writing online that the Black shoppers he targeted were a threat to my own people a threat he equated to genocide.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) lamented that such views have become more mainstream in recent years, blaming some MAGA Republicans and cable news pundits for lending the theory a purported legitimacy.

The message is not always explicit, but weve all seen the pattern, he said Monday on the chamber floor.

In Trumps absence from Washington, other prominent conservatives have stepped up their fight against what they perceive as a threat to Americas national identity.

Tucker Carlson, the popular Fox News host, has led that charge, saying on his show last year that demographic change is the key to the Democratic Partys political ambitions. He then accused Democrats of trying to replace the current electorate with more obedient voters from the third world.

I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate, he said. Why should I sit back and take that?

Appearing on Carlsons show in March, GOP Ohio Senate nominee J.D. Vance said that Democrats have decided that they cant win reelection in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here.

And Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a close Trump ally, has issued similar warnings about immigrants.

For many Americans, what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is what appears to them is were replacing national-born Americans, native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation, Perry said in a committee hearing last year.

Among the lawmakers under the brightest spotlight since Saturdays shooting is Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a member of GOP leadership.

Stefanik was accused in a hometown paper editorial of subtly parroting tenets of replacement theory with Facebook ads in September 2021 that said Democrats were plotting a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION with the plan to give amnesty to undocumented immigrations for electoral purposes. Kinzinger resurfaced those posts in the wake of the shooting on Saturday, asserting that Stefanik pushes white replacement theory.

Those figures vigorously deny that their rhetoric is inherently racist or promotes the same kinds of worldviews as the Buffalo shooter, saying there exists a clear distinction between opposing legal rights for undocumented immigrants and elevating hatred toward minorities.

Carlson said on his show that critics were trying to make a racial issue out of it, but that it is a voting right question.

Stefanik adviser Alex deGrasse said in a statement that she is credited with diversifying the GOP and supports legal immigration, but opposes amnesty.

Any implication or attempt to blame the heinous shooting in Buffalo on the Congresswoman is a new disgusting low for the Left, their Never Trump allies, and the sycophant stenographers in the media, deGrasse said. Despite sickening and false reporting, Congresswoman Stefanik has never advocated for any racist position or made a racist statement.

Stefaniks team also pointed to New York City approving a measure to allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, falsely saying that it would allow illegal immigrants to vote when the measure would apply to legal permanent residents and so-called Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children but legally allowed to remain under the DACA program.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) brushed off criticism from Cheney and others about replacement theory, telling reporters Monday that the GOP has have never supported white supremacy.

Same thing Cheney always does, just trying to play a political game when she knows somethings not true, McCarthy said.

GOP defenders also cite older research and news articles asserting that immigration is likely to lead to electoral gains for Democrats.

A 2013 article on a failed Gang of Eight immigration proposal said that its amnesty provisions would create an electoral bonanza for Democrats. The same year, the liberal Center for American Progress said that supporting real immigration reform that contains a pathway to citizenship for our nations 11 million undocumented immigrants is the only way to maintain electoral strength in the future.

Those arguments, from Stefanik and others, have done nothing to satisfy their critics, some of whom are calling them out by name.

Great Replacement Theory is a vile, racist and false conspiracy theory that the Buffalo murderer relied upon. GOP Rep Elise Stefanik ran ads promoting it, tweeted Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.)

Rep @EliseStefanik has now issued a statement and nowhere does she say I condemn replacement theory. Why?

Mychael Schnell contributed.

Updated 7:50 p.m.

More here:
Democrats hit GOP over replacement theory - The Hill

Registration opens for 2022-23 school year K-12 classes/programs at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate

BOSTON, May 18, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Civics, social studies, history, and other U.S. classroom teachers looking for a unique, memorable experience in civic education for their K-12 students are invited to explore the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senates "Senator for a Day" interactive education programs.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220518005886/en/

Registration is now open for the 2022-23 school year for K-12 in-person and online classes and programs at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston. For the first time, Kennedy Institute offerings will be available at no charge for public-school students from all 50 U.S. states, and during Tuesday-Friday morning time slots in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. (Photo: Business Wire)

Registration for the 2022-23 school year is opening today to teachers and schools nationwide for both in-person visits at the Institutes beautiful, one-of-a-kind, full-scale replica of the U.S. Senate chamber and as online classes. Participation is now free of charge for public-school students from all 50 states.

Educational experiences at the Kennedy Institute use immersive role-play and simulation to teach civics and inspire our countrys next generation of leaders. Led by highly trained, nonpartisan instructors from the Kennedy Institute, students of all ages take on the role of a U.S. senator from a state of their choosing and help debate, shape, and vote on key legislation. Groups can choose from topics including immigration reform, voting rights, environmental justice, the Green New Deal, or updating the Electoral College. A two-minute video showing Kennedy Institute virtual education programs can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVr99Jq4toA .

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Since it opened in 2015, the Kennedy Institute has welcomed more than 100,000 students for in-person and online civic education programs and classes.

In the coming year, the Kennedy Institute is particularly focused on welcoming more students and teachers from the 44 states outside New England for online programming. Besides eliminating for this year all fees formerly charged for non-Massachusetts public-school students, Kennedy Institute staff will make every possible effort to accommodate time-zone differences when scheduling virtual sessions of 60 to 120 minutes in length.

"Over and over, we see how young people are engaged and inspired by taking on the role of U.S. senators and learning about the research, deliberation, and decision-making that go into producing legislation, said Sarah Yezzi, Kennedy Institute Director of Education, Family and Youth Programming.

Additionally, for students in kindergarten through 3rd grade, the Kennedy Institute offers the "Welcoming Words" program in which young learners hear about the history of the Statue of Liberty and the welcome that she offers to diverse new neighbors. As part of this program students create their own special welcoming art and collages.

Examples of feedback from teachers whove participated in online and in-person programs recently includes:

"Our recent visit to the EMK Institute was a huge success for both our 8th grade students and faculty. The staff was knowledgeable, friendly, and encouraging of our students. Their presentations were energetic, engaging, and completely unbiased."

"Being Senators for the day at the EMK is always the highlight of our study of the Constitution and learning about how our country functions. My 10th graders love the experience of sitting in the Senate chamber and debating bills!"

"My students [high school] were engaged and willing to challenge each other in conversation that would have been unlikely in a different setting. The presenters were experts in their content and at engaging students.

"The EMK Institute offers excellent programming for all ages. Their programming is well thought-out, engaging, and well-paced. They really know what they're doing!"

A full list of available 2022-23 programs and details on how to register is at https://www.emkinstitute.org/resources/visit-request-form Fees may apply for some private and non-Massachusetts schools, with significant tuition scholarships available.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220518005886/en/

Contacts

Media: Sarah Yezzi, Director of Education, Family and Youth Programming at the Kennedy Institute, press@emkinstitute.org

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Civic Education: Learning by Legislating at the Kennedy Institute - Yahoo Finance