 Frequently
Asked Questions about the EDZ Concept
By Richard Gottbreht
1. What is the real reason we are in
such a mess? The underlying causes of our current situation in
many areas is that our country is starving for new and younger people,
in the face of heavy losses of baby boomer people to retirement.
Population and job growth are the keys to any economy especially
ours. As I travel around, I see hundreds of help wanted
advertisements in almost every city I go to. In these same cities, I
see the housing markets collapsing with no new buyers on the horizon
and no available workforce to attract employers. Our workforce is
simply tapped out and we will have some 84 million people and workers
nearing retirement and no plan of record to deal with the need for
workers. We, as citizens, have not said to our governments to make more
babies and we have not said to increase immigration to the levels
required to offset the forecasted retirement numbers. We simply
set around and wring our hands and blame others for this problem or
that without saying what is really going on here? Some
businesses, government agencies, the military and educational
institutions I have been in meetings with are working very hard on
getting a better share of the existing workforce or student base.
Unfortunately, they rarely ask how to increase the size of the whole
pie not just theirs. Until all of ask this simple question, we
will continue to see immigrants and illegal immigrants as problems
rather than as the key to our economy and countries survival.
Business, especially big multinational
ones, who have the ability to outsource will not blow the horn on the
population growth issue because they have built high speed access to
low cost countries and found low cost labor in other countries and
workers in other countries that do not carry the burden of high wages
along with a looming social security problem, unemployment taxes,
worker injury compensation taxes, health plans, savings plans and so
on. Even if they paid the same hourly rate as they do here in
other countries, eliminating loadings on labor represents approximately
a 30 percent decrease in operating cost. Politicians will not
blow the horn on the babies issue because in an over crowed world
saying make more babies is considered to be a political nightmare and
it is too late for a make more babies approach to work anyway.
Politicians will not blow the whistle on the need for more workers
through increasing immigration because big business does not want it
because of its high hourly rate and high overhead rates. Small,
midsized and some large businesses are blowing the horn but have no
real clout with politicians.
Given the government and businesses who
can outsource opposition to more immigrants and more babies, the
population growth dilemma rests solely on the shoulders of “we the
people” and to solve it “we the people” must force the issue on every
ones agenda and drive it so that immigration is increased and
immigration process are sped up, made more efficient and made more
humanitarian.
2. How do EDZs benefit the parties
involved:
1. For the United
States and individual states, EDZS would set up a way to bring back
some outsourced jobs lost in recent times and put the country and its
states on a track to become more globally competitive. Over the
long term, companies needing low cost labor could be incented to build
new facilities in the border EDZs, giving them labor access and the all
important legal and intellectual property rights protection of the
Unites Sates.
2. Are enormous
savings to the entire country by not doing things like sending massive
numbers of people back to their home countries and invading our own
businesses to expel illegal workers. These savings would go a
long way towards financing the EDZs.
3. EDZ’s offer a
managed and human way to future citizenship for illegal immigrants and
their families over the long run. In the short run, illegal
immigrants to attain a temporarily legal status, which allows them to
work and travel within the country and back and forth to their home
country. Once they have the temporary status they can file for a
permanent status for them and their families should they desire to do
so. Also, the processing centers in an EDZ could easily be used
to deal with an immigrants whole situation including family members as
a single application. An especially important advantage for immigrants
and their families is that border EDZs virtually shut down the
trafficking of humans for labor.
4. EDZs offer small,
medium and large business all across the country the availability of
lower cost labor to fill their needs for workers now and get them
skills and language training. Over the longer term, the border
EDZ’s offer a way to continually resupply the aging and retiring baby
boomers with skilled and semiskilled workers from a seemingly unending
supply of people wanting to immigrate to the United States who would
take advantage of both the language and skills training centers within
the border EDZ’s.
5. EDZ’s would help
with the burden on existing immigration centers by, and they slow
illegal immigration by offering opportunities on our side of the
boarder.
6. EDZ’s would offer
work to seniors who need additional income as they try to live on their
meager social security income.
7. EDZ’s strengthen
boarder security buy using fencing to allow access to opportunities as
opposed to being simply barriers to keep people out. In addition,
people on both sides of the boarder have a vested interest in
protecting the United States from terrorist because people on both
sides of the boarder have a vested interest in the U. S. economy and
its people.
This last point is crucial because
all opportunities on Mexico’s side of the border do not benefit the
workers rather they only benefit the corrupt business and government
people who control everything in their worlds across the border.
This environment is what my book describes and it is terrible from a
human standpoint and from a business/economics standpoint. It
also is ripe for revolution, which would leave the U. S. with a refugee
problem of enormous proportion.
3. Aren’t these just modern slave
camps? In the proposed EDZ concept, people with credentials can
live in and work inside or outside the EDZ. They can also live
outside the EDZ and work inside it or outside of it. All they
need is the proper credentials that they receive when they first apply
to the EDZ’s Immigration Processing Center and they can also get
temporary credential for their family members who happen to live with
them in this country today. With proper temporary credentials,
immigrants and their families can even travel back and forth to their
home countries while they are awaiting the longer processing time to
change status and/or include their families in the applications.
I know of no slave labor camps that operate with this type of approach.
4. Why fences? Fences all around
border EDZs are required because the United States has no way of
correcting the enormous social and economic problems of all our
neighbors to the south where a large portion of illegal immigrants are
trying to get away from. Without fences and border EDZs together,
there is no practical way to stop the huge influx of illegal
immigrants. On the other hand fences around EDZs wholly within a
state, fences are optional because illegal immigrants will move towards
them to register and because through registration they can legally work
and travel and begin the process of getting to some permanent status or
citizenship.
5. Aren’t these just modern slave
camps? In the proposed EDZ concept, people with credentials can
live in and work inside or outside the EDZ. They can also live
outside the EDZ and work inside it or outside of it. All they
need is the proper credentials that they receive when they first apply
to the EDZ’s Immigration Processing Center and they can also get
temporary credential for their family members who happen to live with
them in this country today. With proper temporary credentials,
immigrants and their families can even travel back and forth to their
home countries while they are awaiting the longer processing time to
change status and/or include their families in the applications.
I know of no slave labor camps that operate with this type of
approach.
6. Isn’t this just another form of
amnesty? What we have proven to date is that amnesty without social
changes in third world countries, new immigration processes, and
without better boarder management/control, simply creates a new wave of
illegal immigrants waiting for amnesty.
7. Isn’t this unfair to workers? I also
agree that there needs to a labor-company balance. I simply point
out that such a balance cannot begin to occur until labor is legally
integrated into the country, so it can organize and/or join existing
labor organizations.
8. Can you explain the concept of go
back home at night? There are two types of EDZs: one within a state and
one a border. For the within a state version, it is not possible
for workers to go home at night in Mexico; however it is OK to live
outside the EDZ with family and or friends who are in that state.
They can also go back to their native country for visits and return
once they get the appropriate credentials. For those along the
border whose families live in Mexico, they can go there if they want
when they are off work or they can stay in the EDZ if they
choose. Are illegal immigrants stuck at the below min wage level
or can they move up and how does edz help: My answer is that, in the
short term, this is fundamentally not possible in today’s globally
competitive labor markets. Over the long term it is possible, but
only if U.S labor grows in sufficient numbers becoming more powerful in
the process so they can negotiate better. Such rates also require
that U. S. labor be highly productive which means more educated and
skilled in the use of the technologies that abound in this age.
9. Discriminatory
10. Will immigration pressure ever
ease? Immigration pressures will not ease up until countries
become more socially responsible balanced democracies. There are
few, if any, short term chances of U.S business and government people
supporting social reform in third world countries because they every
move towards social consciousness as a return to communism rather than
a move toward a balanced and fair democracy.
11. How are existing centers helped by EDZs?
What we have proven today is complete incompetence in the area of
immigration processes. This must be fixed but will not by itself
solve the pressures caused by poor government in other countries.
EDZ Processing centers could be set up with new, human and family
friendly processes. Setting up new centers in many places would
take a great deal of burden off existing immigration centers and spread
the load across all 50 states.
12. Would there always have to be EDZs? If we
follow the EDZ thought over the long term, EDZ’s within states go away
or significantly shrink in size and their processes move into existing
immigration centers. This happens because success in border EDZ’s
greatly reduces illegal immigration and existing illegal immigrants
gain citizenship or some other desired immigrant status. Future
special status workers then mostly come from the border processing
centers.
13. Should there be a grandfather date in
order to keep illegal immigrants from flocking into the country in
anticipation of this concept?
Isn’t this unfair to workers? I also agree that there needs to a
labor-company balance. I simply point out that such a balance
cannot begin to occur until labor is legally integrated into the
country, so it can organize and/or join existing labor organizations.
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