Employers who hire illegal aliens should face stiff fines and tax penalties
Yes, Bush's proposal requires the same thing.... President Bush, January 7, 2004 - "There must be strong workplace enforcement with tough penalties for anyone, for any employer violating these laws."
Everyone screaming about his guest worker proposal is completely ignoring that part of his statement.
17-Ignoring employer sanctions in Bush proposal??? DUH!!!
http://www.networkusa.org/fingerprint/page3/fp-cato-pa237.html Policy Analysis No. 237
September 7, 1995
by John J. Miller and Stephen Moore
The Failed Legacy of Employer Sanctions
Most illegal immigrants come to the United States in search of employment, not to go on welfare. For many years federal officials have attempted to deter illegal immigration by denying undocumented aliens access to the U.S. job market. In 1986 Congress passed the "employer sanctions" provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Employer sanctions made it a crime for employers to knowingly hire illegal aliens. Under IRCA, job applicants must prove either their citizenship or their legal residence by completing an I-9 Form before they can begin work. Business owners who fail to comply with the law and knowingly hire illegal immigrants can face thousands of dollars in fines and, in the severest cases, prison sentences.
After a decade of experience with employer sanctions, any objective assessment could only conclude that the law has been an unmitigated failure. Employer sanctions have done virtually nothing to halt illegal immigration. The number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the Mexican border rose steadily from 1989 through 1993 (see Figure 1).(1) Last year, 10 years after employer sanctions were established, 1 million illegal immigrants were apprehended. That is not altogether surprising. Before passage of IRCA, a General Accounting Office study reported that employer sanctions had been unsuccessful in virtually every developed country that had tried them.(2)
Despite the failure of employer sanctions, much of the hysteria over illegal immigration is not confirmed by the official statistics on the size of the illegal alien population. The Bureau of the Census estimates that there are now 4 million illegal aliens living in the United States and
Figure 1
Impact of Employer Sanctions on Apprehensions at the Mexican Border
Year Millions of Apprehensions
1980 0.8
1981 0.9
1982 0.9
1983 1.2
1984 1.2
1985 1.3
1986 1.7
Employer Sanctions Implemented
1987 1.2
1988 1.0
1989 0.9
1990 1.1
1991 1.1
1992 1.2
1993 1.3
1994 1.0
Source: Immigration and Naturalization Service, Statistical Division.
that about 300,000 more settle permanently each year. Four million illegal immigrants is undeniably a large number of people, but it is far below the "invading army" of 8 million 10 million aliens regularly reported in the media and by anti-immigrant lobbyists. Illegal aliens constitute only about 1.5 percent of the 260 million people living in the United States. Surely that number does not require draconian enforcement measures that would touch every single American worker and employer--especially the majority of Americans who do not live in areas with large numbers of illegal aliens.(3)
In addition to not working, employer sanctions have caused significant harm to many Americans. Virtually every independent study on the impact of IRCA has discovered that employer sanctions have caused discrimination against foreign-looking American workers, particularly Asians and Hispanics. In 1990 the General Accounting Office documented a "serious pattern of discrimination" resulting from the employer sanctions law.(4) The documents of Hispanic job applicants were three times more likely to be challenged than were those of whites. A report by a New York State task force found similar problems. According to the New York Times, "The report clearly demonstrates that employers in New York State are adopting practices that discriminate against foreign residents, out of fear of penalties under the immigration law."(5) Employer sanctions give even well-intentioned employers an incentive to discriminate in order to avoid costly confrontations with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. As the Wall Street Journal aptly put it, employer sanctions are the first set of laws "since Jim Crow where the government is so closely aligned with a process that produces discrimination."(6)
When employer sanctions were passed in late 1985, many critics complained that precisely those discriminatory effects would occur. Critics also said that employer sanctions would inevitably lead to a national ID card.(7) Supporters of the law promised that neither of those things would happen.