For fuck’s sake, these people are in your country because your people are willing to hire them. Just accept reality already and start issuing work visas.
-my effort at cutting to the chase.
Either that or choose the option of enforcement that will actually cut down on undocumented aliens coming in to work…prosecute the employers who hire them as vigorously as the Republicans want us to prosecute the undocumented aliens themselves. The employers are the SOURCE of the problem. But of course, most of those are the Republican base…industrialists, manufacturers, Big Ag.
ETA: It also doesn’t produce the optics that the Tea Party loves so much: the government cracking down on those smelly brown people.
But then we’d have to treat them like human beings. We want them here without the sanction of the government, it makes them easier to abuse and exploit. And it makes it easier to blame our victims for their own victimization.
How is defunding an agency going to compel that agency to enforce the regulations the Congress wants?
The agency can just respond, “Well, we can’t enforce the regulations: you just cut our manpower and equipment budget.”
Congress wants ICE to do something specific. Defunding them produces exactly the opposite effect.
The second sentence does not follow from the first.
The percentage of the population which is willing to hire illegal immigrants once they’re here already anyway is very high.
The percentage of the population which wants illegal immigrants to be here in order to be able to hire them is very low.
It’s a big mistake to conflate one with the other.
In theory, cracking down on the employers would be preferable to cracking down on the immigrants themselves. The problem here is that your final sentence in the paragraph I quoted is false.
Most illegals are not working for big employers. Most are working for small employers, in construction, home repair, auto mechanics, small retail establishment, gas stations, and similar jobs. It’s not at all efficient to try to crack down on these businesses, especially as many of them work on a cash basis as it is.
The reality is that if we truly wanted to enforce immigration laws we could. We could use the army to patrol the border including drones for surveillance. The Mexican government does this on the Guatemaulan border although I don’t think they use drones. Charge the Mexican government for the cost to provide for the illegal immigrants. Deport illegal immigrants to Chad. Rewrite the 14th Amendment to eliminate anchor babies. Sue companies that hire illegal immigrants into bankruptcy. Appoint “Fighting Joe” Arpaio as head of INS.
But the Pubs don’t have the political guts to take a serious stand against illegal immigration and the Dems don’t want to acknowledge that illegal immigrants = more Dem power both in terms of number of residents for apportionment and illegal voting (under the Voting Rights Act you don’t have to prove citizenship- merely pinkie promise you’re a citizen)
So is it any wonder that immigration policy is the clusterfuck it is?
Very droll. And here I thought you lacked a sense of the absurd.
I stand by my suggestion that Americans bitchslap themselves into reality.