Enforcement Sense

The House of Representatives will have an opportunity this week to show the nation — and the White House — that it means to impose some order on the chaos that is our immigration system. That opportunity will come when the House debates Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner’s H.R. 4437, an immigration-enforcement bill approved last week by the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote. The bill is a good first step toward ending immigration anarchy, but it’s a first step only.

The most important element of Sensenbrenner’s legislation would enroll all employers in the online system that verifies Social Security numbers of new hires. This measure is 20 years overdue; in 1986, Congress prohibited the employment of illegal aliens, but opponents of immigration control neutered the bill by removing the mandate for an electronic verification system. This left employers facing a blizzard of fake documents and no way to know who the illegals were. Even worse, employers who looked too closely at the bogus documents could be (and were) sued by the Justice Department for discrimination.

In 1996, Congress finally provided for an experimental verification program, called the Basic Pilot, which has been road-tested for nearly a decade now. The main drawback has been that participation is voluntary — so that an employer in an immigrant-heavy industry who signs up puts himself at a disadvantage, as his non-participating competitors are still able to hire illegals. Making electronic verification of Social Security numbers an integral part of the hiring process is a crucial step toward leveling the playing field.

The other provisions in the bill are less important but still positive. Most notably, the bill would make illegal presence in the United States a criminal offense. Right now, only entering illegally is a criminal offense: Simply being here illegally is a civil violation. Consequently, if the government wishes to open criminal proceedings against an alien, it must figure out where he jumped the border and prosecute him there. (Unsurprisingly, that never happens.) By making it a crime simply to be an illegal alien, the Sensenbrenner bill would allow the prosecution of illegals wherever they are arrested. The government would still have the option of going after them with the civil code, but it would be free to use criminal proceedings as warranted.

The bill would also make overstaying a visa a criminal offense — and since visa-overstayers account for perhaps one-third of illegal aliens, this step is long overdue. Further, the bill would provide for more enforcement personnel and resources, as well as increased penalties for alien smuggling and gang membership.

Some will want to present this bill as solving our enforcement problem, clearing the way for the president’s amnesty and guestworker program, which the Senate is expected to consider early next year. But as valuable as the Sensenbrenner reforms are, they remain incomplete. One addition is especially needed: a provision that would systematize cooperation between state and local police and federal immigration authorities, ensuring that the feds will take illegals off the hands of local police forces that run into them in the course of normal duties.

In any case, the mere passage of reforms shouldn’t be seen as a green light to start importing millions of new foreign workers, much less to legalize the aliens already here. Only after the enforcement measures are fully operational — fully funded, fully manned, fully supported — should we discuss whether specific industries can't find enough "willing workers" among native-born Americans and legal immigrants. Even then, we should encourage those industries to try what most industries do when they need to attract more workers: Raise wages. (We suspect, along with Adam Smith, that the economy will be perfectly able to match supply and demand.) If Congress nonetheless decides to craft specific changes to the immigration law to help those industries, it should do so as part of an overhaul of legal immigration. Current law has enabled an ever-rising flow of immigration — as a new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies demonstrates — but it is far from obvious that the size and composition of this flow are ideal for our economic needs.

Promises of enforcement have been made, and broken, before. It may well be that the administration can be trusted to start enforcing immigration laws if a foreign-worker program is passed, but experience — and particularly the disastrous consequences of the 1986 amnesty — should make us leery of assuming that is the case. Congress would do best to emulate President Reagan’s example on another matter: Trust, but verify.

These are a beginning ten steps I feel necessary to preserve America's sovereignty and solvency as the nation our ancestors built for their posterity.

1) I am in favor of the United States government securing America's citizens and believe the most immediate and effective method to accomplish this is by restricting the flow of illegal aliens into the U.S. by the construction of a continuous 24 ft high linear border barrier structure topped with razor wire and to reduce or end the attraction of felon employers by assessing them disabling fines and/or penalties. An additional benefit of such a linear border structure would be to restrict the movement of illegal drugs into the United States from South and Central America thereby reducing the annual federal expense of drug interdiction.

2) I am in favor of the Fourteenth Amendment being redefined - even if at individual state levels - to clarify that to qualify for birthright citizenship of the United States, a child must have been born of or adopted by a citizen or legal resident of the United States and that at least one parent or legal guardian must have to verify their citizenship or legal status before a birth certificate is issued by any agency. Any child born in the US not of a citizen or legal resident should be issued a certificate of birth with non-citizen status clearly marked so that birth may not be used to complicate deportations of illegal aliens. I am also for rejecting of and the nullification of any certificates of marriage issued in the United States to any person who is not or was not legally admitted into the United States prior to the certificate's issuance or the application thereof. Persons who marry in other countries and whose non-citizen spouses wish to immigrate into the U.S. must follow current applicable immigration protocol.

3) I'm in favor of developing and implementing a scannable social security card system containing embedded digital information and images which can be electronically compared via network to that of national databases which would help reduce fraud, and the linking of those card ID's to state DMV licenses and state voter registrations. By making the SSI cards scannable and verifiable online, many excuses felon employers and illegal employees now use to circumvent U.S. immigration code would be reduced or eliminated as well as helping eliminate claims of ignorance which complicate successful prosecutions. This system would also help reduce incidents of identity theft, thus providing consumers added security from those with malicious intent as well as adding valuable security in the information off shoring trends taking place where consumers' personal and financial information is being distributed among entities in countries not subject to U.S. courts' jurisdiction.

4) After such ID is implemented, I believe our government should set a firm date whereby all employers will have had to verify and swear out an affidavit to the legal status of all their employees and after that cut-off date, those still intent, charged with, and found guilty of the felony of hiring illegal aliens would be fined $50,000 for each violation of the perjured affidavit or a maximum sixty percent of their annual net revenue. After that date, the government should allow enforcement of our immigration code to the letter and insist on apprehensions by any and all appropriate law enforcement authorities and should tie local governments' receiving federal monies to enforcement compliance. I believe it has become necessary we implement a system of bounties for information leading to both the apprehension and successful conviction of those felons and for the detainment and deportation of illegal aliens. Those states' Attorneys General should be given enforcement capabilities and allowed enforcement discretions within their respective states without hindrances from courts of law obstructing their enforcement duties.

5) I am in favor of taxpayer funded programs which are currently misused to pay able bodied people to not work to either cease to do so through more strict controls, be reduced so as to be considered as supplemental levels only, or be phased out totally. I would propose any agricultural related employer who is found guilty of employing illegal aliens should immediately cease the right to employ persons under the Federal agricultural minimum wage for five years, the standard minimum wage rates would apply for the duration of that term.

6) In order to augment #2, I would push for a mandate that no one but a parent or legal guardian who is a legal U.S. citizen and has contributed to the Social Security trust fund for a minimum of twenty consecutive quarters may apply for taxpayer funded benefits or services on behalf of minor children. Legal immigrants are currently restricted by law from receiving taxpayer funded benefits for a minimum twenty quarters or five years so this requirement is in keeping with applying a measure of fairness for all and may help reduce the attraction of "anchor babies" as a means to circumvent and complicate U.S. immigration code and its enforcement. This measure would also require at least five years of prior gainful and legal employment of any recipient and show proof of their contributions to the Social Security trust fund.

7) I'm in favor of removing immunities for all organizations which knowingly aid and abet illegal and fraudulent activity related to illegal immigration and in favor of aggressively seeking their demise should they insist on continuing to undermine U.S. law. These, by their very nature, are seeking to undermine established U.S. law and deserve prosecution to the fullest extent.

8) I'm in favor of establishing a Federal reimbursement system whereby monetary exchanges or transfers with countries whose illegal citizens "borrow" our taxpayer funded services are assessed, invoices prepared, and duties or taxes levied in percentage proportion by nationality of illegals apprehended as reported annually by our nation's Border Patrol.

9) I'm in favor of hospitals and health care providers being required to disclose publicly, in print, and upon demand, the names of all non-citizens/indigents receiving any medical care which is billed to or paid for by taxpayers along with the costs of those services billed or be penalized by losing reimbursements for any payments due to be paid from taxpayer funds. All hospitals and health care providers should be held openly accountable for how they spend or use public funds and accountable to the citizen first and the illegal alien only in emergency cases.

10) I am FOR the citizens of these United States to remain a sovereign nation and people, rejecting any outside influence of the United Nations into the laws of and upon the internal affairs of the American people. Cooperation from a position of strength is the foremost bargaining chip the USA should bring to the UN's table.

Any plan to deport the illegal alien and heavily penalize the felon aid or employer has my vote as a start, but MUST be combined with other efforts to end the illegal alien attraction. One PRIMARY prerequisite is a secure linear border barrier, for without it and the effort to keep it secure, all other efforts are in vain.

The President and some others speak of a "guest worker program", but to implement such without strict entry control measures in place FIRST is asking for America's catastrophic social failure of gigantic proportions. The President's announcements and play upon and around with the issue without strong enforcement efforts to date has netted 7.9 million new immigrants - legal and illegal - having had entered America on his five year watch. If statistics hold true, his Administration will have handed portions of America to a little under 13 million NEW foreigners over his two terms.

And they speak of "securing America"?

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