There are now approximately 10 million illegals in the USA right now, correct? Assume half of them are actually employed. The rest are between jobs, in jail, living with relatives, homeless or unemployed, are children, etc.
No problem. Just charge the employer of every undocumented worker a $1000 fine for every day that an “illegal” is on the job. Just send ICE into every business where Spanish is being spoken and demand to see some ID! That’s five billion bucks right there! That’s more than what Trump says he needs to pay for his wall.
Granted, you couldn’t visit every single workplace employing illegals in one day, it might take years, but the word would get around real quick and the bosses would start firing them immediately. It would also give both businesses and illegals time to adjust, and no one else would be hiring them any time soon. They would eventually self-deport! Those foreign workers with green cards and their bosses would not be affected, so critical industries like agriculture would not be threatened, and law-abiding employers would be spared any inconvenience. And we could make laws for passing out temporary working papers to get over short-term spot skilled labor shortages or emergency situations. For emergencies, humanitarian crises, and special cases, we could always issue temporary papers so the immigrant would have time to settle his affairs, get legal counsel, etc. But getting a temporary card would require registration and keeping in contact with the authorities. Without that document, in a short time it would expire and no one would be able to hire him without risking a fine or jail time. See, its humane, constitutional, fair, reasonable, everybody wins except those who lie or cheat.
Those who profit by breaking the law should be the ones to pay for the damage they cause and for the law enforcement needed. The illegals are broke, highly mobile, and they will vanish, but the bosses who hire illegals are already making piles of dough by paying substandard wages and no benefits to their slave labor. They can afford it.
We can’t afford to round up all the illegals and haul them back across the border, or throw them in concentration camps. And we can’t afford the police forces, detention facilities or border barriers. We can’t afford the courts or the lawyers needed to process them all. But the people who hire illegals are making money from their labor, untaxed money. My scheme would not cost much, and it would require no new laws or raise any constitutional issues. Hiring illegals is already illegal, but foreigners could visit or live in the US whenever they pleased, they just couldn’t work without getting proper papers. The “sanctuary cities” laws could be used against local governments that didn’t cooperate with the Federal authorities and who tried to shelter crooked companies hooked on foreign slave labor. Sure, we couldn’t stop all the corporate crime overnight, but once we started cracking down they would quickly realize that hiring illegals is risky, and they would stop.
The great demand for foreign workers could be managed by making those jobs now occupied by illegals available to foreigners seeking political asylum, giving them an incentive and opportunity to work legally while their cases were vetted. This would allow us to keep track of them so they wouldn’t vanish into the population. And they would pay taxes, earn benefits, and have to register with the authorities or lose their status.
Everyone here looking for asylum would get temporary working papers and their employers could use their labor legitimately while their cases were in the courts. The employers could help solve the problem, instead of making it worse. Without illegal hiring, the illegal worker problem goes away. And if the bosses give us any shit, we could always just LOCK THEM UP.
The scheme I’ve outlined above is what should be part of any comprehensive immigration law. So why don’t we have one?
It, or something like it, is what we’ve always had in this country. But any attempt to pass immigration reform (like what the bipartisan Gang of Eight proposed) has always been blocked by Conservatives on the phony issue of “Amnesty”. Actually, what Conservatives were really opposed to was losing a limitless source of slave labor so they could stop paying American salaries to American workers. They don’t mind the illegals here, they just want to be able to kick them out before they can assimilate into American society. They want to make it easy to bring in cheap labor, but just as easy to get rid of it on payday. As always, its the same old problem this country has always had. The white boys are too lazy to pick their own cotton, and too cheap to pay their neighbors to do it.
So I’m not surprised that Republicans don’t bring any of this up. What I can’t understand is why Democrats don’t.