I think if the drug trade has taught us anything, it’s that supply-side enforcement is a losing battle. The idea of building a sufficiently secure wall hundreds or even thousands of miles long across the Soutwest seems pretty ludicrous to me, and present fences mostly shunt people into the open desert, where they often wind up in serious trouble. Besides, such barriers often create ecololgical problems and are expensive to maintain.
There’s all this discussion in Washington about how to change the laws, etc., and some of the bills seem so convoluted and unworkable as to make it unclear who is even a illegal alien or not.
We’ve got some pretty clear laws about employing illegals on the books, and their very straightforward: Bilking the govt. out of taxes, and the employees of benefits, by hiring illegals is itself illegal. Despite that, there are millions of illegal workers in this country, and their employers are well aware they’re breaking the law to cut costs. They create an emormous demand, and the supply is only too eager to come.
They wouldn’t do it if they thought they could get away with it. So why not put all this money and effort into cracking down? Hire the hundreds or thousands of new agents for the IRS and INS and put them to work enforcing the existing laws. You don’t even have to deport the workers. Just fine the hell out of the employers like we already can, and the illegals will find they’re hitching a ride back home for want of work.
There will be short-term pain, but long-term, I’d expect two things to happen:
Costs of certain goods and services will go way up.
American consumers will squeal, and reformation of our patently unworkable immigration laws will finally seem attractive enough for the electorate to embrace the necessary changes, allowing the erstwhile illegals a practical means of working here legally.
Seems pretty simple to me. And probably I’m wrong, but that’s why I’m asking: Why aren’t we doing this? What’s the difficulty? Why is this less attractive than these DOA bills and vast barriers?
I agree with you completely. If there’s no one to hire illegals, and if hiring illegals becomes a serious crime, then the jobs won’t be here, and illegal immigration will slow the hell down. Of course, we still have the good healthcare–some will come for that.
I’m pretty sure we’re not cracking down for one reason: our government does NOT want to anger Big Business. It’s much easier to take the focus off their sins by painting a picture of selfish, lazy immigrants mooching off our poor, poor country.
“Government” may not want to anger big business, but “government” isn’t saying that illegal aliens are “selfish, lazy immigrants…”. You just made that up.
I have to wonder what the effect would be on legal immigrants, especially from Hispaninc countries, if the feds decide to crack down in a big way. I supsect that many employers would shy away from hiring Hispanics for fear that they’d have fake papers. Why deal with the hassle of tangling with the feds unless you absolutely have to? I don’t think such a crackdown would make sense unless we had a really good national ID system. Which presents two problems: 1) Americans are wary of a national ID and 2) can you make one that is impossible (or at least very hard) to forge?
But you must consider that a lot of illegals have real/real-looking documents. Not every business owner can afford a private detective to invistigate their employee’s immigration status. In a lot of places, a crack down on employers just means they won’t hire any Latinos.
Don’t we have a theoretical “good national ID system” with respect to immigrants of all nationalities in green cards? If you are here legally and with a work permit don’t you have a green card?
OK. Blanket discrimination was something I hadn’t thought of, and that’s a good counter-argument.
Are there workable solutions to avoid employers refusing lations across the board? JM points out the difficulties inherent in a national ID system, and I agree that’s possibly a showstopper.
To be honest, I don’t really know. Just speaking anecdotally, I know a few guys who run some small businesses and they tell me they hire people they “know” are illegal, but that they have either forged or stolen IDs, and they really can’t do much about it.
Why not just establish an easy way for employers to verify a Social Security number? Employer logs onto secure website, enters SS# plus name, date of birth, current address, etc. If the data doesn’t match, employer gets “not valid” message. That would eliminate the vast majority of made-up or stolen SS#'s. I would be willing to absolve employers of responsibility for hiring the remainder of SS#'s that were issued to fraudulent applications; that’s the government’s responsibility to ensure fraud doesn’t occur.
I’m here legally and I haven’t had a green card for nearly 20 years. I’m a naturalized U.S. citizen. When applying for a new job, I use a driver’s license and Social Security card, just like everyone else. If my current employer were to be audited by INS, like a previous one was, I’d have to show my Naturalization Certificate, but that’s not something I usually carry with me for much the same reasons I don’t carry my birth certificate with me.
I agree that penalizing employers makes sense, but the trick is telling legal immigrants from illegal ones.
Also, don’t employers deduct payroll taxes and report them to the IRS, along with the corresponding SSN?
Can’t the IRS just tell the employer that the SSN number they just reported is invalid?
Or, do illegals have a way of obtaining valid SSNs?
If multiple people (like tens or even hundreds) are sharing valid SSNs, it’s still easy for the IRS to see that Joe Smith with SSN XXX-XXX-XXXX seems to be working at 15 different jobs, and thus inform the employers.
I think it would be hard to obtain valid SSNs for every single illegal immigrant in the US.
No, because the only people allowed to log onto the secure website are legitimate employers with tax identification numbers.
Each time an employer checks an SSN, it would return a valid/not valid message, along with a transaction number. If an employer is challenged on any of his employees, all he has to do is produce a valid transaction number, which can be used to access the original verification. Likewise, if a worker is denied employment on the basis of a “not valid” message, he can use the transaction number to appeal the “not valid” message if he believes it to be in error.
How hard would be to get one of those numbers illegally?
I guess what I don’t understand is why the government can’t already do this, if it is indeed so simple. The IRS has all this information already-- why not just cross check and then prosecute for there?
Look, we have online banking that is secure enough that the system hasn’t imploded. Would it be foolproof? Of course not, but even with a marginal error rate, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. We cannot throw out ideas simply because they arre not foolproof.
I know my Dad lives in fear of this problem, and regularly does his own digging into the payroll of his subcontractors (he’s a general contractor building residences and very small industrial structures). It’s a conversation I had with him and my brother two weeks ago that got me thinking about this a lot. My brother, an electrician, was all for nailing the employers, and my Dad was like “Well, careful what you wish for, for the sake of your dear old Dad!” That said, he works as hard as he can to make sure he’s not associated with illegal hiring. He considers this a problem in Maine . Must be pretty daunting in New Mexico or Arizona. Yet, the resources do seem to be there.