Cheney is obviously refering to legal immigrants. We don't want those folks to leave, I am merely creating a scenario.
You didn't answer the question, though, so I'll try another approach.
We can safely assume that many illegals ARE working. What happens if they all leave? Do all those businesses simply collapse until we get it all worked out perfectly?
I have no idea how we would get illegals to leave short of hiking taxes, which we are all against, to have the manpower to investigate immigration violations and arrest and deport the illegals.
I don't see anyone providing valid answers on this, just slogans and easy, impossible answers.
My answer (and I suspect others') would be to tighten border security now, to try to stop the flow into the country. Then we would issue a national I.D.--something many here are against for various reasons--and attack this at the employers's level, making every employee on a payroll match with its legal ID number.
But I don't have any expertise on immigration reform, and frankly those who have easy answers on both sides don't seem to have any, either.
No one can seem to give an honest, informed, straightforward representation of what can be done to remove the illegals from this country and what this would entail in cost. We can sit here and say "Well they should just stop spending on X, Y or Z," but that's unrealistic, especially with our current congress, which is spending like drunken sailors. And as this article points out, thanks to our wonderful government of some years ago, anyone born here is a citizen and thus their parents have a toehold.
I'm sorry but your solution doesn't seem to solve anything. Simply saying "find and deport them all" is asserting what has to be done--that's not a solution, it's the end result, like saying "stop all the criminals from killing and raping". And the short-term hit to the economy would be massive in terms of the money to pay for that and the loss of workers.
"Cheney is obviously refering to legal immigrants."
NO, in the interview (with hannity ) today he clearly referred directly to the ILLEGALS... period end of discussion.
they want the illegals to stay and become 'legals'.
it's amnesty plain and simple by another name.
and its wrong for America.
What happens if they all leave? Do all those businesses simply collapse until we get it all worked out perfectly?
Nope. I doubt that any given business is so heavily reliant on illegal workers that it would 'collapse' in their absence, and if any business is so heavily reliant on illegal workers then it should be shut down as a criminal enterprise anyhow.
The very highest estimates would put illegals at 3-4% of the nationwide labor force. The economy would survive their departure..
A few businesses might have to budget some additional overtime for a while. They'll get over it.
I don't see anyone providing valid answers on this, just slogans and easy, impossible answers.
Have you actually looked? Did you look here?
Then we would issue a national I.D.
The National ID will do nothing to reduce illegal immigration when it's implemented over the next few years under the REAL ID euphemism Congress passed it with.
Otherwise, whatever short-term loss their may be is worth the long-term gains in my view.
"No one can seem to give an honest, informed, straightforward representation of what can be done to remove the illegals from this country and what this would entail in cost. We can sit here and say "Well they should just stop spending on X, Y or Z," but that's unrealistic, especially with our current congress, which is spending like drunken sailors. And as this article points out, thanks to our wonderful government of some years ago, anyone born here is a citizen and thus their parents have a toehold."
Let's start with enforcing the laws that give the government the right to audit employers'I-9 documentation and checking out businesses that are likely to hire low-end workers, like meat-packing plants and agribusinesses. That's what the departments have been funded for and DON'T do because Congress stops it when big business squeals.
Second, if you're not happy with the costs that would result for those businesses, guess what? Capitalism says you can stop buying what they produce. OSHA, EPA, and DOL regs drive up manufacturers' costs, but nobody seems to care about them!
Your argument boiled down is "Money talks and we shouldn't enforce the law until we can afford it." My argument is that law oughta mean what it says and be enforced as it's written. I think in America, my argument ought to win. Especially on a conservative board. That it probably won't is proof our government is worth every penny Tyson and ADM have paid for it.
The closest answer might be the Operation Gate Keeper in which we tried to see if a 66 mile stretch of border could be sealed.
Double fences (some concrete and steel), guard towers, flood lights inferred cameras, ground sensors, patrol roads, horse patrols, ATV patrols, 16 helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, trucks, and a ratio of 25 guards per mile were incorporated. An estimated 30,000 t0 40,000 got through anyway.
Apply that ratio of 25 guards per mile to our 105,000 mile border/coastline and it comes out to 2,625,000 guards at an annual cost of $459,375,000,000.00 per year, and still 47,670,000 to 63,630,000 people could cross undetected into the U.S. each year.