The Massaschusetts gubernatorial race between a black Democratic nominee, who won a primary yesterday, and an aide Governor Mitt Romney who made one of the more colorful remarks about illegal immigrants. Lt Governor Kerry Healey, a Republican ,said last year during a radio interview that she opposed proposed legislation to enable children of illegal immigrant families to obtain the in-state tuition benefits for education at the state’s public colleges and universities. She said that they can perfectly well pay themselves for private college education, presumably at colleges such as Wellesley and Amherst. Healey owns homes on the North Shore of Massachusetts, Vermont and Florida. I wonder if her lawns are being manicured by illegal workers.

Here is my wrap up for the past six months. in short, life has become more uncertain for both illegal workers and their employers. And, Hispanics may have become more politicially mobilized.
First, the number of illegal workers may have grown from the outset of about 7.5 million, not so much because of new in-migration but because the normal level of out-migration by illegals may well have dropped to a trickle because it probably seen more riskier to try to get back into the U.S.
Second, the Senate and House of Representatives are deadlocked over an immigration bill. Because the dispute involves Republications as much as Democrats it seems to me very unlikely that any substantive legislation will pass this year.
This deadlock when combined with fire-fanning at the level of state politics creates more uncertainty among American companies who use illegal workers as employees or outsourced workers. There was a chance that they would be hit by RICO suits but that threat seems to have passed or at least been moderated by Supreme Court action of the Mohawk case (see my posting). they still can be hit by state and federal enforcement action.
The Katrina cleanup has been the largest aggregate new employer of illegal workers — some 5,000, but the estimate of a Tulane researcher. Two studies suggest that most if not substantially all of work injuries by these workers have been turfed out of the Louisiana workers comp system (see my postings for Katrina).
Another major development was the series of rallies of Hispanics in May to make their voices heard, their faces visible. This may well have been a turning point in which Hispanic households become more politically active, supporting politicians who seek a guest worker solution to the country’s illegal immigration mess.

Investment bank J.P.Morgan reported that about 20 million overseas Indian workers — NRIs, or non-resident Indians — remit $21 billion annually back to India, a sharp rise from the 1990s. These remittances are equivalent to double the size of foreign institutional investment inflows and about quarter the size of product export earnings for India.
I have previously posted on remittances to Latin America, estimated at $54 billion.

Public Act 94 -0511 (HB 3471), Illinois’ new Day Labor act went into effect January 1, 2006. This act is designed to fill a gap in labor protection laws.
The National Law Employment Project has said that the majority of workplace laws protecting day laborers and temporary workers were written for full-time, permanent employees. The short-term nature of the day labor and sub-contracting pose significant barriers to enforcement of laws and the workers do not receive the same benefits or wages as full-time permanent employees performing the same work.
Temporary employment agencies are integral to the day labor market. According to the Governor’s press release:

Although there are approximately 150 registered day and temporary labor service agencies with nearly 600 branch offices registered with the state, there are also many unlicensed agencies in Illinois.

Provisions of the Act include (per a press release from Governor’s Rod Blagojevich’s office):
Requiring agencies to provide workers with detailed employment and wage notices, which can be inspected by the IDOL;
Protecting day laborers’ paychecks from unreasonable deductions for meals and equipment;
Requiring agencies to pay workers for lost time when they are sent to a job, only to be sent back because the agency sent too many workers;
Requiring employers that contract with day or temporary labor agencies to verify that they are registered with IDOL or face monetary penalties;
Prohibiting agencies from charging workers fees for transportation between the agency and the job site and requiring that such transportation meet basic safety standards; and
Prohibiting agencies from retaliating or discriminating against a worker who exercises his or her rights under the Act and giving workers the right to sue for damages when harmed by violations.
This new law will allow IDOL to impose a $500 penalty against a day labor agency for each day it is not registered. For all other violations, the department may fine first-time violators up to $6,000 and repeat violators up to $2,500 per violation per day. To pay for increased enforcement of the day and temporary labor industry, the legislation increases agency registration fees to $1,000 and adds a fee of $250 per branch office.
The state has a hot line to report problems: 877-314-7052. Or, to file a complaint or get information go online. The reporting systems are described on the website of the IL Department of Labor’s webpage on day labor.

When applied to persons in the American workforce, these two terms refer to about the same population. At least I think so. Each has its advocates and distractors. I personally prefer undocumented worker, and generally use it. But if I cite a document which uses the term illegal alien, I also will use it to clarify the reference and out of deference to the author of the document.