America: Not for you.

It's time to talk about the quiet crisis here in the Americas.  According to the Telegraph, we are on track to see 130,000 unaccompanied children come across our southern border from as far away as Nicaragua.  Unaccompanied.  That means that there are five and six year old children crossing the Rio Grande without a mommy or daddy.  If they are lucky they have a sibling with them, but many do not.  When my children were six I got worried if they slipped out of site in a place I knew well.  I get a sort of horror in my heart thinking of sending them alone into a different country.

I can only imagine that my peers south of the border(s) feel the same way.  So it bears exploring what has brought them to this point and what sort of duty that Americans have under the circumstances.

Why did they come?

Because it doesn't see much coverage in our news it seems easy to forget that there is a drug war of epic proportions raging to the south.  CNN has a nice fact sheet with timeline about the history of the war.  And here is a page of statistics about what has been going on.  Fifty thousand dead people in Mexico since 2006.  I could not find numbers for Guatemala or Nicaragua but some reports indicate that drug cartels are targeting the young for recruitment there as well.  These nations have incredible rates of poverty even without the drug war happening.  So as a parent in these countries, your only choice is to work all day to provide for your family and hope the cartels don't take your kids while you are gone.

For class today, can you draw a picture of your family?

Death by hunger, disease, or violence is all you can look forward to at home.  I can accept that as motivation to leave, even to send your kids away to a better place.  Know that these kids are being sent.  No five year old decides to travel 5,000 miles on their own.  What are they hoping to find?

In 2012 President Obama stated that he would defer the deportations of those foreigners who had arrived as children but were now adults.  Many people have misinterpreted this as amnesty, including people on the street in Central America.  They are being told that America is now welcoming all children, and so children have been sent.  Even if the children cannot stay it is possibly years that they will be cared for in the American deportation system before they are sent back to their homes.  That is still leagues better than life on the streets with Los Zetas.

How do we handle it now?

In the old days what the border patrol would do upon coming across an illegally arrived family is take down their names and give them a date to appear in court.  The immigrants were then released to provide for themselves.  All that people needed to do to stay in the country was lose themselves in our huge country, and there exist networks specifically to help them do that.

The treatment of children was different for Mexicans than for those from countries further south.  Border agents were allowed to interview Mexican children and, if the child expressed no fear of persecution for returning to Mexico, the agent would simply take them back and drop them off.  This practice has been hugely exploited by drug and human traffickers on our southern border.  They could coerce a child into smuggling across the border with the knowledge that if the child got caught, they would be brought back quickly.  It must be nice to have the US government rounding up your stray mules.

Children from non-contiguous countries were not interviewed, they were put into the full immigration/deportation process.  This means that they were detained in a facility for the months or years it would take for their case to be seen by the immigration court.  If it turns out that we bear a moral or legal responsibility to assist these children, then we have done far worse by Mexicans than by people of other nationalities.

Do we bear a legal responsibility?

This one has a quick and easy answer.  Yes we do.  The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 extends an earlier law that makes it our duty to combat human trafficking.  It was signed by President Bush, as was the 2005 version.  There are 2000 and 2013 versions of the same act, presumably signed by Clinton and Obama respectively.  This is not a partisan issue.  Though when you hear about "immigration reform" on the news, it is largely this law to which they are referring.

Do we bear a moral responsibility?

Lacking a lifetime of classical education to walk around in togas, eat grapes, and ponder the meaning of things I am left to borrow from the output of those who have had that privilege.  This leads me to the Categorical Imperative of Immanual Kant.  In summary the idea of the Imperative is that a thing can only be moral if it could be applied to all people at all times. For example, it is morally wrong to steal because society would crumble if all people stole whenever they wanted to.

This same principle can, and is, being applied both ways to these refugee children.  

Should we (and therefore all people) provide refuge to children from war torn lands?  Yes

Does violence in a different country obligate me (and therefore all people) to spend my earned resources on its effects?  No

These arguments are simple, and the current state of our politics does not encourage soul searching over the issue of the day.  However, these arguments are irresponsible to make in the first place.  It's easy to say that we have nothing to do with street gangs in Honduras, but is that true?

The great drug cornucopia

First, regardless of your own hobbies, you have to admit that America is a place that wants the drugs and has the money to pay for them.  The cartels are bringing in ten figures per year selling drugs to us.  That's in American dollars.  Our combination of a zero tolerance ban on drugs and inadequate services for addicts raises demand through the roof.  One might even say we're willing to pay out the nose for it.  

There are two routes from South America to the US.  One is by water through the Caribbean.  In the past decade there have been major busts along that route.  It helps that the water is international, so the US Navy, Coast Guard, and DEA can go about their anti-trafficking efforts without having to cater to a foreign government.  That leaves the land route through Mexico as the direction of choice for the large cartels.

Side note:  Cartel is the wrong word.  A cartel gets together and regulates price and production for mutual benefit.  These drug organizations are in a massive bloody war with each other.  They are not cooperating.  But I'll still call them cartels, despite all sense.

With billions of dollars on the table and US politicians publicly pushing policies that will continue to keep the demand and price for drugs at historic highs, it is clear that a supply market will exist for the foreseeable future.  The US government is the voice of the people via their election.  So when our government continues policies that encourage these trade routes and the violence that comes with them, then we can not escape responsibility for their existence and the effects they have on affected countries.

Back to Kant

Having established our responsibility, at least in part, for the atrocities happening in countries to our south we must return to our duty to tend to the repercussions.

Do we (and therefore all people) bear a responsibility to use our resources to care for refugees from locations made violent by our policies?

Historically the answer has been no.  The last time we gave succor to refugees on our own turf they were fleeing the Third Reich.  In the name of whatever cause was popular at the time we have helped bring fiery death to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria since then.  The case of Afghanistan is special because our premise for war wasn't against the government but against violent actors within that nation's borders.  

Read that last sentence again.  I'll wait.

The number of deaths attributable to the Taliban directly and not our efforts against them are hard to find.  I have seen numbers from 1,100 to 5,000 people killed directly by the Taliban.  If you want to add in Al Qaeda and their 4,400 murders that number comes to less than 10,000.  Compare that to the 50,000 people who have died from cartel infighting in Mexico and it seems ridiculous that we do not treat them as the greater threat.

Yeah, it's like that.

Put another way, a child is five times as likely to die from the Sinoloa or Los Zetas cartel than they are to die from the Taliban and Al Qaeda combined.  Holy AK-47 on a stick, Batman.  Besides dying, kids are being conscripted into the drug cartels and into the sex trafficking world.  It is fair to say that nobody in the world should be sending children into that environment, and therefore we have a moral duty to not do that.

WWJD?

It seems to surprise people that I know parts of the bible.  I went to Sunday school like most other kids, and modern politics sends me to the bible to fact-check the passages that evangelicals use to browbeat other people into their policy positions.  Anyway, this situation gives me the chance to reference my favorite verse of all time, Matthew 25:40:

"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'"

And the corollary, Matthew 25:45:

"He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'"

Today's post was inspired by a conversation I had, mainly with a very smart, successful, and Christian cousin of mine.  He looked to the pragmatic aspect of the whole issue.  Can we afford to house and care for these refugees?  How many should we accept before we say enough?  Should we allow them to exploit the system we have built for their own gain

The conversation was had on Facebook, which is not a great place for deep and long form dialogue.  I've had some time to brew on it now.  Admittedly my religious understanding could use some work, but it seems that the teachings of Jesus demand compassion for these immigrant children.  Taking the verse above, each of these children is an Avatar of God.  If you turn them out in order to protect your material wealth then that is your statement to God about who you are as a person.  If it calls for you to give an orphan your last jacket, is that something Jesus would refuse to do?

I'm sorry little girl, but amnesty isn't tracking well in the polls right now.

Remember that God has been known to do a bit of genocide against nations that displease Him.  My insurance doesn't cover meteor damage.

Here's a bit more bible on the subject:

"Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God." - Proverbs 14:31

"Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward them for what they have done." - Proverbs 19:17

"And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward." - Matthew 10:42

"God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them." - Hebrews 6:10

I've got some Qu'ran to lay down too:

"Have you seen him who denies the religion? He is the one who harshly rebuffs the orphan and does not urge the feeding of the poor.  So woe to those who do prayer, and are forgetful of their prayer, those who show off and deny help to others." - Surat al-Ma'un: 1-7

"They ask you about giving: say, "The charity you give shall go to the parents, the relatives, the orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien." Any good you do, God is fully aware thereof." - 2:215

So we take them all?

Illegal immigration is one of the issues where I usually fall more red than blue.  I am against giving them driver's licenses and generally support the quick and summary deportation of any that we find.  Crime has consequences and if I have to obey the law to enjoy the freedoms of this country, then so do you.  And for the steady stream of people who have been crossing our border since before the drug war began, I say that nothing has changed.  Go back and get in line like everyone else.

Real life morons stopping deportees from leaving the country.

However, it would be intellectually dishonest to ignore the fact that the current wave of child refugees is different than the stream of migrant workers we had before.  These kids aren't seeking employment so much as safety.  They'd rather spend the next year on the cement floor of a warehouse than in a brothel in Bogata.

As with all foreign affairs, the answer is not simple.  Wherever you get your morals from, we have both a secular (Kant) and a religious (Bible/Qu'ran) duty to make an effort on behalf of these orphans.  That doesn't have to mean taking them into our own country and supporting them, but it must also not mean putting them out in the rain.  We bear responsibility for their problems, so we must engineer their solution.

We must treat the drug cartels as more than a threat to our public health, but to our national security.  (Priorities there seem out of whack, but whatever.)  If we add together the amounts we spend on the border patrol, detention facilities, immigration courts and drug-related crime and medicine we would have more than enough of a "war chest" to pay for a war against them.  Los Zetas specifically were formed from members of the Mexican Special Forces units, but I'm willing to see how much that means against the US war machine.  These people are terrorists in their own countries, ruling through fear and corruption.  If we can wreck terror operations on the other side of the planet, we can annihilate these problems in our own back yard.

Notice the resemblance to Al Qaeda.  

We must bring our treatment of drugs in this country into this century.  Treat it as a contagion.  Treat the drugs as biological weapons, perhaps.  Those who have been exposed need to have treatment, both medical and psychological, made available to them.  

Reduce demand, which is easier said than done. Prohibition taught us what happens when you attempt to reduce demand by mandate.  It also shows us that drug usage remains high even when the drug is legalized.  There are many efforts to reduce demand already in play, largely focusing on education and building up our youth.  All I can say is that I wish those efforts success.  I don't have any better ideas.

Uncle Ben said it best.

These child immigrants are here because of the poor way we have addressed our own drug problem.  To send them back into the hands of the cartels is both irresponsible and immoral.  Keeping them here permanently is not a viable solution for both economic and security reasons.  So the only path forward that has any integrity is to make their homes a more palatable place to return them to.  That means setting our Eye of Mordor directly on the drug supply lines and giving them the attention they clearly deserve.  I'm not naive enough to think that drugs won't still find their way into our country.  But what we can do is kick these cartels so hard in the balls that they'll go underground like a normal terrorist operation for fear of incurring our wrath again.  

This far, and no farther.

The new location of the Hamptons totally keeps those foreigners from coming here.

The financial side of company loyalty

I had intended to do a post discussing the fact that the reason employees have no company loyalty is because companies have lost their employee loyalty.  But then I went for supporting material and found that the topic had been done over and over.  And usually with better writing style than I possess.

So instead I decided to drill down further to make it less abstract and more concrete.  Hopefully, if any management types get their hands on this post, it'll give them something to think about when doing the budgets for the next year.  First, let's set some baselines.  

A low income, front line worker at our company makes roughly $10/hr.  That means $20,000 per year at full time before taxes or benefits.  The poverty rate for a family of 3 is $19,790 so this person must pay the lowest tax rate and carry health insurance.  Tax works out to $2,546.25 so that leaves $17,453.75 for this employee to live on, purchase health insurance, and support up to two more people.

We're going to create a fictitious CEO, not at all like the one at my own company, and say he receives a base salary of $1 million and further compenation of $9 million in stock and other forms of compensation.  Remember that at any publicly traded company the salaries of the top executives must be made public so they can be found in the SEC filings.  Also, several financial sites list out the compensations most major companies, with Forbes nearly always being at the top of the google search.

The view from the cheap seats

One year, at this company, the word came down that the average raise would be 2.5%.  That means each front line manager has the authority to give out yearly raises as they see fit so long as the department's total pay rose exactly 2.5%.  Should they wish to reward someone financially for going above their normal duties, they would need to take that money out of someone else's raise.  Since everyone knew that the standard was 2.5%, whoever received below that amount knew that their money had been given to someone else on the same team.  

Also, by simply checking the internet every employee could see that the CEO's pay had gone from $4.2M to $10M for a total of nearly 250% raise.  Just his base salary went up by 15%.  The inequity isn't in the straight dollar amounts, it's in the fact that he got 100 times the award allocated to the employees.  Not that a CEO isn't an important and difficult job, but can you really classify their work as equivalent that of 100 people?

That is the point where loyalty dies.  Not only is your own raise merely a rough toss towards yearly inflation, reducing your real dollars gained to nothing at all, but then you watch the people on the upper deck reward themselves with ludicrous raises.  Yes, they deserve their own raise, but everyone in the company works towards its success.  I'd like to see an executive fix a server outage as efficiently as 100 of their employees.

Big Buck Ballparking

The realm of executive compensation is complicated.  In grad school I ended up doing three different research papers on the subject for different classes, so I consider it one of my specialties.  I am here to tell you that is worse than you think.

When the Board of Directors sets the CEO's pay for the next year, what they do is look at other CEOs in the same industry, and of companies of a similar size, and they come up with a pay range that their CEO position would fall into on the open market.  Then they pick a spot in the 50th to 75th percentile of that range, and that becomes the CEO's new pay.  I'll say again, for doing an adequate job without special merit, their next year's pay is above the average for their industry.  That adjustment hikes up the entire pay range for the next company that ballparks.  And by the time a whole year has gone by, CEO compensations have leapfrogged each other to a much higher level..  

economist.com

This has a lot to do with scope, too.  A potential CEO will move anywhere to take an inviting job.  That makes the market for CEOs national or global in scale.  IT specialists though, we can't move nearly as easily for a nice offer.  Your compeition for a good salary is determined by how far people will move to take your job.  For my job that means I am competing against my city's metro area.  Which is also why I can't ask for pay that would be competitive in San Jose.  On the macro level this is a good thing because businesses will migrate to places where the talent is less expensive.  On the flip side, it means that companies will attempt to maintain those attractive conditions and that means suppressing employee pay.

Getting engaged

The words of the day in HR circles are "employee engagement".  When your employees are engaged in their jobs and the company mission they are far more productive.  This is easy to see in companies with very powerful missions.  Boeing, NASA, Tesla, Google, Apple, all of these employers have a very engaged workforce because their core mission is to change the world.  When you have a plan to make the world a better place, it becomes easy to get people on your bandwagon.  

Not every company has such a dynamic mission, though.  Banks, insurance companies, credit companies and other such places may do good works but they aren't building the future.  A recent survey at my company asked what the employees thought the business's purpose was, and the most common answer was "to make money".  That's true in a strict sense, but betrays the fact that the vision of the company hasn't been communicated to employees.

Fortunately, some companies do respect the contributions of their employees and share success with them.  Some engineering firms I have spoken to are employee owned, with the employees getting "stock" which lets them benefit when the company makes a profit.  Other places are publicly traded, but reward stock to employees for both longevity and for merit increases.  A steel mill I worked at gave the line workers pay equal to the percentage of the quota that was produced.  (The workers regularly produced 250% of their quota and the parking lot was chock full of big shiny trucks.)  If working harder creates a reward in a way that matters to the employee, then they will devote themselves to the task.  If the reward for exemplary work is given to someone else, then you have created active disengagement.  These people will sink your company.

Now you're hitched

Who moves your cheese?

The team you hitch your wagon to makes all the difference.  Would you like your cart to be pulled by the Budsweiser clydesdales?  Or by Eeyore?  This hitch reference also works on the marriage side.  On a given weekday I spend 9 hours at work, maybe 5 hours with my family and 1 hour in commute.  I spend more time with my employer than with my wife and that's not counting being accessible for emergencies at all hours.  Employers need to take this relationship seriously.  Picture getting some sort of financial windfall or huge raise and telling your wife that she wasn't allowed to benefit from any of it.  It is fair to say that you would no longer enjoy domestic bliss.  So if that wouldn't work at home, why do executives think it would work better to say that to the people who run all the ins and outs of your business?  A wife may make you sleep on a couch, but a disengaged workforce will take all of your trade secrets to the highest bidder and leave all the doors unlocked on the way out.

Does this guy run your data center?

It simply makes no business sense to fail to share the profits with the employees or to skew them so grotesquely towards the top of the corporate ladder.  It sends the message that the skills and efforts of the employee are not valued and were only purchased for the bargain of their normal salary.  

Here's an idea to lower costs.  Give everyone a 15% raise.  What you'll see is a greater than 15% boost in productivity and the ejection of dead weight from your company.  Low level employees understand the revenue minus costs formula as well as any executive, and if you get them invested in generating profits then they'll do so in a way that will make your head spin.  But so long as you are taking your employees' lunch and handing it to the top suits, you shouldn't be surprised when you get mediocre results and the loss of your top talent.