My interest in the subject of whether the U.S. is trying to stop illegal immigration began when I read Hanson's 2006 article about Mexican migration. It seemed to me that the United States didn't really want to stop illegal immigration. They slowed it down on one hand to appease one group of constituents but gave it a free pass with the other hand to appease the manufacturing, farmers, and retailers. Although giving lip service to stopping the flow of illegals the US policy seemed to be primarily focused on stopping illegal contraband such as drugs. However, that journal article seems to not reflect 2009 policies. It appears that within the last year or so, U.S. policy on illegal immigration has begun to move beyond the search for contraband to a serious attempt at reducing the illegal population in the United States. The first part of this article will briefly outline the 2006 research of Hanson and will be followed by government documentation of their attempts to enforce immigration laws. The cost to cross the border is the expense of physically crossing, the threat of being caught, the loss of social networks, the expense of setting up a new home on the other side, and the expense if you are later deported and have to start over. To stop illegal immigration the cost of migrating must exceed the profit of migrating (Hanson, 2006). The expense of hiring a coyote to help the crossing will keep out the most economically distressed Mexicans, but is not insurmountable for most and will be repaid within 13 weeks of steady employment in the United States. The cost of being caught is that you will have to start over after the bus drops you off on the other side of the border as their is no other penalty if you willingly leave. There are networks in the United States consisting of Mexicans from a particular area who help new illegals to settle into their new community and to find a job. This mitigates the loss of social networks and expense of setting up a new home. The jobs will be there because in 2004 the ICE department did not assess the $5000 fine against any business employing illegals and it is common to overlook the huge numbers of illegals working the harvest. And, finally, it is US Federal policy (not by written decree but by actions) to allocate resources to guarding the border and not to removing existing illegals who are further buoyed by the likely and commonly known expectation that if they can hang on long enough the US will give them amnesty. Therefore, the only amazing thing is that moving to the United States is not more common than it already is (Hanson, 2006). Border Security As a result of an Immigration and Border Security Action Directive from Secretary Napolitano in January 2009, the DHS plans to put more personnel on border security and improve intelligence capability and coordination with local and Mexican authorities for the purpose of cracking down on drug smuggling (Torres, 2009). In 2006, Border Enforcement Security Task Forces (BEST) were formed which are led by ICE but include members from: - CBP (Customs & Border Protection) - USCG (U.S. Coast Guard) - DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (Department of Homeland Security) - DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) - ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives) - FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - U.S. Attorneys Offices - State & Local Law Enforcement Agencies - Mexican representatives and law enforcement agencies These teams have been successful in catching Mexican fugitives and gangs; and confiscating drugs, currency and vehicles (Torres, 2009). However, they are focused on stopping contraband and not illegal immigration. U.S. Interior Strategy - Employers In April 2009, a new Worksite Enforcement Strategy was released which plans to use penalties, asset seizures, and administrative audits to discourage employers from hiring illegals. This new strategy focuses on stopping illegal immigration by removing the jobs (Torres, 2009). After determining that the most efficient method of auditing businesses use of illegal labor was to review the I-9 (document which businesses must provide for each employee documenting their legal status to work in the U.S.), ICE reports that the new Worksite Enforcement Strategy has netted the following since April 30, 2009 (ICE News Release 2009): Enforcement 2008 2009 Business debarred 0 45 Individuals debarred 1 47 Notices of Intent to Fine (NIF) 32 NIFs $2,355,330 142 NIFs $15,865,181 Final Orders 8 orders $196,523 45 orders $798,179 Cases Initiated 605 1,897 I-9 Form Inspections 503 1,069 U.S. Interior Strategy - Deportation Current ICE policy promotes the identification and deportation of criminals, but puts roadblocks in the way of law enforcement agents who are trying to remove illegals who have not committed major crimes. Deportation of illegals from the U.S. interior by ICE consists of two primary methods: identification of criminals and interrogation of suspected illegals. Identification of criminals that are currently being detained in civilian jails is the purpose of the Secure Communities Program and is a top priority for ICE (Torres, 2009). Deportation of illegals residing in the U.S. is more problematic and has come under fire by community organizations who worry about racial profiling (Stana, 2009). If interrogated at the border then the burden to prove their legality is upon the suspected illegal; However, If interrogated in the interior U.S. then the burden of proof rests on the ICE official. If a suspect refuses to speak and the agent does not have "reasonable suspicion" about the suspect's legality then the suspect must be released (Mead, 2008). The 287(g) program allows state and local law enforcement officers to perform immigration enforcement duties; however, the program is currently being revised to discourage law officers from using the program to pick up illegals who are not guilty of major crimes (Stana, 2009)(Riley, 2009). The government's decision to enforce laws prohibiting hiring of illegals will if carried out uniformly and consistently remove one of the primary reasons that Mexicans immigrate to the United States. However, putting the burden of proof on the agent and not encouraging the deportation of all illegals seems to indicate a lack of resolve to solve the illegal immigration program or perhaps simply a bending to the political winds. References Hanson, G. H. (2006). Illegal migration from Mexico to the United States. Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 1039-1043. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30032389 Accessed: 20/11/2009 18:19 ICE News Release (2009). ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton announces 1,000 new workplace audits to hold employers accountable for their hiring practices. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, 19 Nov 2009. Retrieved on 23 Nov 2009 from http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0911/091119washingtondc2.htm Mead, G. E. (2008). Problems with ICE interrogation, Detention and Removal Procedures. Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law, D.C. 13 Feb 2008. Retrieved on 23 November 2009 from http://www.ice.gov/doclib/pi/news/testimonies/garymead_testimony_ice_interrogation_detention_and_removal_procedures.pdf Riley, W. F. (2009). Examining 287(g): The Role of State and Local Law Enforcement in Immigration Law. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, D.C., 4 Mar 2009. Retrieved on 23 November 2009 from http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/testimonies/index.htm Stana, R. M. (2009). Controls over Program Authorizing State and Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws Should Be Strengthened. GAO testimony before House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, D.C., 4 Mar 2009. Retrieved on 23 November 2009 from http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09381t.pdf Torres, J.P. (2009). Securing the borders and America's points of entry, what remains to be done. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Homeland Security, D.C., 20 May 2009. Retrieved from on 23 November 2009 from http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/testimonies/index.htm
Monday, November 23, 2009
Illegal migration from Mexico to the United States
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Chapter Summary Strategic Management in the Public Sector
The decisions that an organization makes in response to a long-term objective it wishes to obtain is strategy. When an organization makes a conscious choice to link its day to day decisions to this long term objective then it is utilizing strategic management. In order to use strategic management it is necessary to discover where the organization is, where they want to be at some specific time in the future, and what tactical (steps along the path) objectives they need to reach in order to succeed at their strategic objective. Strategic planning is a method commonly used to form answers to these questions. Strategic planning is necessary to utilize strategic management but strategy can exist without formal planning and even without ever being written down. President Truman gave a speech announcing that the United States must stand against those who would oppress others. In response to this strategy to practice containment of Communism, the United States provided money to Greece, a show of force in support of Turkey, and helped to rebuild Europe via the Marshall Plan in 1947. In the 1950's and 1960's the United States entered armed combat to stand against Communist movements in Korea and Vietnam. In the United States during the 1950's the Containment Strategy was used to justify the Federal Aid to Highway Act (build interstates), create NASA, and establish a National Defense Education Act to provide student loans and grants. Strategic planning requires the following minimum steps: Vision Statement Future Objectives Planning Horizon Date for objectives to be completed State of the Union Current conditions of the organization Environment Current and future external threats Decision Select strategy Implementation Strategic management The vision statement must focus on what will be achieved and not on the functions of the organization. According to MBO (Management by Objective) popularized by Peter Drucker in 1954, the vision statement must be achievable by the organization, must provide a specific description of the future status, must be limited in time, and must be measurable. SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is a method of analyzing the current capabilities and weaknesses of an organization. Forecasting the future threats to an organization requires the use of historical and current patterns to determine what demands will be made by customers and what opportunities will possibly exist. An important part of strategic management is feedback to make sure that the company is moving towards their strategic objective. Two strategic management tools are benchmarking, comparing mission critical processes with industry best practices or other organizations; and management scorecard which is a basic tally method of quickly comparing departments. The Presidents Management Agenda of 2002 required federal agencies to rank their departments red for failing, yellow for borderline, and green for meeting standards on the following criteria This method allows management to focus attention on mission processes and to create motivation where no real competition might exist. The temporary nature of politicians makes them unwilling to focus on long term planning which may not bear fruit while they are in office; however, the GPRA (1993) requires federal agencies to use the following strategic planning methods: Strategic planning and management has worked successfully in countries where there is limited political debate but has had less success in the highly political Federal government of the United States. It works best when it is not in the center of political debate and in smaller organizations that have measurable outputs and are less dependent on political bodies for funding. Shafritz, J.M., & Russell, E.W. (2005). Introducing public administration (4th ed). New York: Pearson. Kruschwitz, N. The five disciplines. Retrieved on November 9, 2009 from www.fieldbook.com Anderson, J.E. (1975). Public Policy-Making. New York:Praegar.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Chapter Summary Managerialism
Chapter Eight Managerialism According to Sharfritz and Russell (2005), managerialism is a return to classical organizational theory with a focus on hierarchical commands and scientific management. Scientific management never goes away as all business seek a measurement tool that will allow them to find the best way to do something. But by their own examples managerialism is not a return to hierarchical command systems because empowerment of teams is a move away from hierarchy. Empowerment, change, entrepreneurialism, constant quality improvement, and customer focus are keywords associated with managerialism. Performance management is a tool to implement managerialism. It involves leadership setting organization wide overarching objectives, measuring their effect, and using that measurement and customer feedback to set new strategic plans. Management control is the component of performance management concerned with linking the entire system together by comparison of actual result to intended result to keep equilibrium between goals of individuals and goals of organization. However, it is difficult to implement the changes necessary in public administrations because managers are restricted in their ability to reorganize workers or reclassify work. In addition there is no incentive for improvement as budget is based on what is spent and not what is saved. Savings go back into the general fund. Empowerment is the formal authority to implement change. In classical organization theory the manager holds all the power. However, one person cannot do everything and if a manager tries to keep all control then workers perform less optimally and manager loses power. Giving away power will result in an increase in power because the group becomes more efficient. Self directed work teams are given the power to self discipline and authority to manage their work along with the responsibility to produce a particular output. This frees up administration to plan and managers to coach employees and focus on customer needs. However, certain policies must be in place for empowerment to work. The information about where the organization is, where it is going, and feedback about processes must be available to every level so that teams can make informed decisions; rewards must be based on outcomes; and the power to make decisions must be at level where decisions are made. Reengineering is change on adrenaline. It rejects incrementalism and re-evaluates not how something can be done better, but if it should be done at all or if something entirely different should be done. It involves determining what the customer needs and then developing processes to meet that need using the latest technologies or managerial ideas. A major change in public administration is a new focus on entrepreneurialism. This competitive public administration model forces public agencies to compete with private business to provide the cheapest product. In order to do this new public management must utilize private sector business techniques, trim their budgets and personnel, decentralize, and put an emphasis on quality. Most importantly it must focus on the customer and not on policy. Three methods of making organizations successful are having an unlimited budget which has resulted in trillions of dollars of debt; producing the cheapest product available without regard to safety or quality which has worked well for China; or putting a greater importance on quality than cost or quantity and meeting your customers needs. Total quality management seems to be the ideal solution but it may not be the solution used because it requires a focus on long term goals and a constancy of purpose which stands at odds with the constantly changing policy setting environment as politicians come and go. The facets of total quality management are: Shafritz, J.M., & Russell, E.W. (2005). Introducing public administration (4th ed). New York: Pearson. Kruschwitz, N. The five disciplines. Retrieved on November 9, 2009 from http://www.fieldbook.com/ Anderson, J.E. (1975). Public Policy-Making. New York:Praegar.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Chapter Summary Organizational Theory
According to Shafritz and Russell (2005), organizational theory is "A set of propositions that seeks to explain or predict how groups and individuals behave in differing organizational arrangements" (pg 247). The mother of modern organizational theory was the military in ancient times; but it is commonly agreed upon that formal organizational theory, classical organizational theory, began with the Industrial Revolution. Classical theory is the trunk of the tree but in modern times the rigidity and top management dictatorship of the trunk has created neo-classical branches of organizational theory that incorporate sociology. Each branch improves upon but does not replace classical theory. Classical organizational theory began with the military where large armies could not be maintained without an administration handling pay, food, taxes, and supplies. The logical choice for an administrative officer to handle these affairs was to take an experienced soldier and put him in charge. And thus, even in modern times, the language of war and administration share terms such as loophole, line officer, and rear echelon. This method of organization was codified in the early part of the Industrial Revolution in the form of parables or principles of management. In time, people began to look for more efficient ways for workers to work. This scientific management using the time and motion studies promoted by Frederick Taylor utilized quantitative measures to study output of workers to create new more efficient techniques, management of workers to promote worker buy-in and to select and develop workers for specific positions, and to develop formal rules of interaction and separation between management and labor. In 1937, Gulick turned this scientific bent onto management and developed seven tenets of managerial functions under the acronym POSDCORB: Planning : What to do and how to do it Organizing : structure of hierarchy and subdivisions Staffing : hiring and training Directing : day to day decisions and management Coordinating : bringing all the parts of the job together Reporting : Record keeping & reporting to superiors Budgeting : planning, accounting, control Max Weber (1922) further defined classical theory by synthesizing the core characteristics of a bureaucracy from the study of existing bureaucracies. He said that bureaucracy is individuals, who do not specifically own any part of the business, freely associating on a permanent and fulltime basis in a hierarchical organization with clearly written job specifications who are assigned their current and future positions based on merit and the judgment of their superiors. The neo-classical branches developed after WWII and represented a movement away from the mechanistic treatment of workers. Where earlier they were considered replaceable flesh cogs, new recognition of the psychology of groups and individuals led to organizational methods which take into account that people have goals and beliefs not necessarily shared by the organization as a whole and that must be taken into consideration when making plans. The new focus of organizational theory related to structural changes (Systems Theory) and personnel development (Learning Organizations). Systems theory views an organization as a whole organism where a change to any part affects the whole. Broken into parts it consists of inputs, internal processes, outputs, feedback and the environment in which the organization exists. It still utilizes the methods developed earlier by classical theory but puts more focus on measuring outputs that are used to analyze cause and effect to find optimal methods. Systems theory was used by James Anderson in his 1975 book, Public Policy-Making, to describe how the government worked. The inputs are the demands for a solution by constituents, judicial system, other administrative departments, or policy formulated by Congress. The black box is the policy implementation processes by the government agency. The output is some action, distribution, regulation, or redistribution that impacts society and creates new demands that are feedback to the system. Learning organizations such as those formulated by Peter Senge in his book, Fifth Discipline, focus more on developing traits in employees that will improve performance. Senge's work incorporates many of the same ideas as the psychologist Abraham Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs. According to www.Fieldbook.com learning organizations focus on teaching people how to recognize and act on their personal goals and to recognize the mental filters they use and mental short-cuts that can cause them to not see things as they truly are. In addition, it focuses on developing a shared vision among the members of an organization so they are moving in the same direction and an understanding of how system's theory works. Administrative doctrine is the actions of an organization towards it employees and clients that is a reflection of its values. Values are set by the organizational theory at the base of the organization. Under no pressure or competition administrative doctrine can be as simple as follow the leader's instructions, do your work, and collect your paycheck. Under competition businesses must be flexible enough and with enough power and responsibility at all levels so that the system can adapt to new opportunities. If they do not adapt then organizations are surpassed by competition. One important fact is that change is eternal. As a new theory is developed and adopted by an organization, that company thrives, other companies follow suit, everyone is then equal (except for those that do not adapt and die), and all advantage is gone until the next theory is developed and implemented. The process repeats as long as competition exists. Shafritz, J.M., & Russell, E.W. (2005). Introducing public administration (4th ed). New York: Pearson. Kruschwitz, N. The five disciplines. Retrieved on November 9, 2009 from http://www.fieldbook.com/ Anderson, J.E. (1975). Public Policy-Making. New York:Praegar.
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