Posted on 06/17/2013 4:16:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
Immigration reform is notoriously contentious. Yet it's hard to find anyone who doesn't think employers should be barred from hiring illegal immigrants — and sharply penalized if they do so.
When President Obama last week endorsed what he called the "common-sense, bipartisan" immigration package now before the Senate, he praised it for getting tough on "shady employers" who "knowingly hire undocumented workers." The White House website devotes an entire page to workplace enforcement of immigration restrictions. It leads off with the president's call for "cracking down more forcefully" on companies that employ undocumented aliens, and boasts that his administration has imposed more than $100 million in employer sanctions since January 2009.
Whatever else may polarize Republicans and Democrats, on this issue they march in lockstep.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich favored intensifying the penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants. Romney drew flak for praising "self-deportation" — inducing undocumented workers to leave by making it impossible for them to find employment. On the Senate floor last Tuesday, Democrat Charles Schumer said essentially the same thing: "Even if someone is able to get here illegally or overstays their visa, their main goal for being here — working — will be impossible after the bill is passed.… If we eliminate the jobs magnet, we eliminate illegal immigration."
Even leading pro-immigration advocacy groups, such as ImmigrationWorks USA and America's Voice, trumpet their support for "crack[ing] down hard" on "bad employers" who hire immigrants without legal work papers. They may have concerns about the details of workplace enforcement — especially the expanded use of E-Verify, the federal government's electronic database for vetting job applicants. But like most Americans — 85 percent, according to a recent Gallup Poll — they seem to regard it as in the natural order of things that the government should forbid the hiring of the illegal migrants, and that employers should have to check the residency status of anyone who applies for a job.
I cannot fathom why.
I don't dispute that Washington has the authority to establish rules for immigrating to the United States, and to proceed against anyone caught violating those rules. But by what logic does that entitle Congress to turn employers into involuntary immigration agents, and to compel them to enforce a federal policy that the government couldn't enforce? It would be one thing to call for "cracking down hard" on an employer who hires someone to do work that is in itself illegal, fraudulent, or a threat to public safety. But why should a job applicant's green-card or visa status — which is a matter between him and US immigration officials — impose obligations on an employer willing to pay him honest wages for honest labor?
If the law can ban a company from hiring a competent and peaceable worker who happens to be in the country without appropriate documents, can it also ban a company from hiring a worker who happens to be bankrupt? Or who has unpaid speeding tickets? Or who was once arrested for smoking marijuana?
The government can levy penalties on Americans who cheat on their tax returns; it can discipline airline passengers who refuse to undergo a security screening at the airport. Does it follow that every employer, as part of its hiring process, can be required to check with the Internal Revenue Service or the Transportation Security Administration to make sure it doesn't hire someone with a tax-code infraction or an airport security breach in his past? Can any legal skeleton in your closet be used by Congress not just to strip you of the right to work, but to punish any employer who hires you?
There is nothing self-evident about a federal prohibition on hiring illegal immigrants. It is an innovation that dates back only to 1986 and the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Before then, as the Cato Institute's Jim Harper notes, "employers were free to hire workers based on the skills and willingness they presented, and not their documents." Indeed, while federal law before then made "harboring" illegal aliens unlawful, it explicitly exempted employment from the definition of harboring.
That was as it should be. Immigration enforcement is the government's job, not the private sector's. No employer should be punished because of an employee's immigration problems. "Workplace enforcement" wasn't an effective answer to illegal immigration in 1986; there is no reason to think harsher sanctions will prove more effective now. But whether or not such harshness is effective, any free society should find it offensive. Even if it is the one piece of immigration "reform" that everyone agrees on.
Under Obama, immigration officers are not immigration officers.
I do wish the government was as hard on itself for knowingly letting them in, giving them taxpayer-funded benefits etc.
Not “sharply penalized”...imprisoned!
“Does it follow that every employer, as part of its hiring process, can be required to check with the Internal Revenue Service or the Transportation Security Administration to make sure it doesn’t hire someone with a tax-code infraction or an airport security breach in his past?”
The winning bid contractor showed up at my General Dynamics facility with roughly 25 illegal aliens. It took five minutes for the guard at the door to determine their status. The entire operation was sent on its way. He showed up later with a considerably smaller force and did the job.
I am glad the guard did his job. I would not be surprised if most of these employers who hire illegals take advantage of them, by paying them under the table, yet still take taxes and social security out, but putting the amount in their own pockets instead of sending it in. What do these dumb illegal immigrants from Mexico know?
Those knowingly employing illegal aliens should;
Have their assets seized immediately by the IRS for
non payment of SS and FICA taxes.
Be fined and jailed for violating OSHA regulations.
And upon completion of their jail sentence, have their
Citizenship revoked, and be deported to whatever
third world s-hole the majority of their “employees”
came from.
There are no rights to cheap vegetables and low cost concrete finishing in the Constitution.
Try to get hired in any country but here without the correct paperwork !
The employers will not hire you !
They refuse ,
We are the only. First world country were the employers get away with this crap. !
Jeffy is an idiot
But by what logic does that entitle Congress to turn employers into involuntary immigration agents,
The fact that many employers are intentionally hiring illegals.
Why can’t the government use e-verify to deny welfare benefits? They are holding businesses to standards they themselves cannot uphold.
Why can’t the government use e-verify to deny welfare benefits? They are holding businesses to standards they themselves cannot uphold.
There are businesses that deliberately employ illegals, and they should pay the consequences, but employers have been made responsible for determining and documenting the residency status of their employees, when they are forbidden from asking the questions that would give them a clue, and they are forbidden from profiling people with foreign accents or names.
from my home page
___________________________________________________________________
Whenever an illegal alien kills someone in a drunk driving accident or something similar, here’s what I recommend:
What can we do about it? Here’s my standard post.
RICO —Citizen Recourse
Private persons and entities may initiate civil suits to obtain injunctions and treble damages against enterprises that conspire to or actually violate federal alien smuggling, harboring, or document fraud statutes, under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO). The pattern of racketeering activity is defined as commission of two or more of the listed crimes. A RICO enterprise can be any individual legal entity, or a group of individuals who are not a legal entity but are associated in fact, and can include nonprofit associations.
Here’s what I’ve been pushing: it’s time to file Racketeering, Influencing, and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuits.
RICO lawyers could turn it around in a few years and MAKE MONEY at the same time. I’m surprised they haven’t done it already.
In the absence of enforcement, we can get the word out in the meantime that there is money to be made in filing RICO lawsuits against employers who hire illegal aliens like this jerk.
Employers would have no trouble shutting down the border if they could get sued by someone under the RICO statutes for hiring these people in the first place. The next time an illegal alien kills someone in a drunk driving accident or somesuch thing, I’m going to point out that the victim’s family might be able to seek compensation from the employer under these statutes in the hopes that it would catch on. If this did catch on, would see such a swift backlash against illegal immigration that no employer would go near these people and they’ll all simply want to go back home.
Good points.
Thank you Kaslin! I’ve been saying this for awhile now. It’s the constitutional obligation of the federal government to enforce immigration laws.
We claim to follow the constitution - and there it is right there.
It’s not the obligation for other entities to arrogate constitutional privileges accorded to the federal government.
All E-Verify do is give the federal government increased control over employment.
I have an easier solution.
If they are caught breaking the law, deport them.
That’s what Mexico does.
It’s an easier solution, but it does not work. We cannot rely upon la migra to do their job.
Excellent point.
Maybe other countries do what they are supposed to do. Here they don’t
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