Posted on 04/04/2006 8:09:18 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
Once again, we are embroiled in debate over immigration — and especially over the 11 million-plus migrants without papers who don't have trouble finding jobs.
Don't expect a quick fix.
We need to secure our borders and fix our broken immigration system. But simplistic solutions — such as building walls and militarizing the border, or deporting a population as large as Ohio's — won't do it. Nor will we get improved results by redoubling measures that haven't worked.
Since 2000, President Bush has been calling for comprehensive immigration reform. But until now, his calls only galvanized the ultra-conservative elements in his own party into fierce opposition.
For Bush, there is no turning back now because with the GOP xenophobes demanding strong curbs on immigration while his Big Business backers want the continued flow of lower-wage foreign workers.
Last fall, hardliners in the U.S. House made their stand by passing a bill focused on enforcement that would turn all undocumented migrants — and those who help them — into felons. It also called for mass deportations and construction of new immigration prisons and 700 miles of walls along the border.
And now, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is considering a proposal that calls for more barriers, stronger border enforcement, more deportations and detention facilities, and doubling the U.S. Border Patrol's staffing. It would let more migrants work temporarily in more economic sectors and significantly increase the number of green cards issued. But controversially, it would also provide them avenues — if they pay fines and any back taxes and learn English — to eventually become naturalized.
Interestingly, all sides seem to embrace some sort of guest-worker program, though some do so only tacitly by recognizing the impracticality, prohibitive cost and economic damage of deporting 11 million migrants. Vociferously, all oppose "amnesty" because it would reward the violation of our laws.
At the same time, all sides want stronger sanctions on employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants.
This is beginning to sound suspiciously like the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which also was going to end illegal immigration through stronger border enforcement, more guest-worker visas and ways for the undocumented to earn naturalization.
But IRCA's key feature was that it provided, for the first time, punishment for employers who knowingly hire the "illegals."
What happened?
It was subverted into yet another instance of American hypocrisy about hiring undocumented immigrants that began in 1952, when Congress amended existing laws against with the "Texas Proviso" that redefined "harboring undocumented aliens" by excluding "employment" from "harboring."
In IRCA's first two years, work-site raids and employer sanctions were limited to publicized "showcase raids" because enforcement officers were assigned to visit employers to "educate them" about the sanctions. Later, the sanctions became more widespread until raids started leaving large businesses without workers.
Fuming, business trade groups continued pressuring lawmakers to cut them a little slack until they had the free rein they enjoy today.
By 1999, only 417 Notices of Intent to Fine were issued to errant employers, a number that dropped to 100 in 2001, and to three in 2004.
Wait a minute? Isn't that rewarding those who break the law?
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To contact Carlos Guerra, call (210) 250-3545 or e-mail cguerra@express-news.net.
Pathetic!
"But simplistic solutions — such as building walls and militarizing the border, or deporting a population as large as Ohio's — won't do it."
Says who? They haven't even tried yet.
I don't mind the criticism so much in this article but I do mind the lack of alternatives offered. I can only assume this writer things the "solution" is to do nothing different and that things are just dandy the way they are.
Yeah, this guy is really interested in a levelheaded debate. Xenophobes? Since when is wanting basic laws enforced xenophobic, especially since the last amnesty led to an increase in illegal immigration?
Secure the borders first. THEN we'll talk about how to handle illegals who are already here. Otherwise, we'll just get a bunch more illegals.
Proof that the girly men in D.C. has no back bone to stand up for U.S.A.
I might be a racist for wanting our borders secured but he's a traitor for supporting open borders.I didn't know that race had anything to do with the government enforcing the laws of this country.
He is disingenous. He knows that counterfeiting made the enforcement impossible. Anyway, this is just part of the anti-corporate lefist mantra. Do you think illegals are hired by big corporations, mostly? I don't think so. It is the little guy who is swinging past the Home Depot looking for brawn for the day.
Don't worry my FRiend, we are all going to get a bunch more illegals; in fact, more than any previous generation has ever seen.
As they say, it's all over except for the crying. Some movements are simply inexorable - history must be repeated. Any by that, I mean patterns that have played out since before recorded time and continue today.
Face it - the other side won. The thing to do is figure out a way to profit from the inevitable.
Not true. Tyson for example, big busts at Walmart through their subcontractors, also at naval bases, nuclear power plants and other "secure" installations.
Here is another aspect that makes this irrelevant.
EVEN IF LEGAL an employer does not have to do any paperwork for "brawn for a day".
This is all orwellian doublespeak.
(your 20 gram ration is now increased to a full 10 grams)
...if I recall correctly, the '86 "reform" did call for the construction of a large fence along the Mexican border. The then-dominant Lib media killed the idea with sensational horror stories about how the sharp wires would be shearing fingers and toes from illegals. It was absolutely shameless!
Stopped reading after this. The use of inflammatory and dishonest labels = "I have no idea what I am talking about".
Yes, big corporations don't quote "hire them." They contract with other firms in the cleaning, landscaping, construction, maintenance fields that base their operations on semi-slave labor with no benefits.
Remember WAL*MART recently?
I am starting to see more and more illegals working on jobs where government supervision is utilized to cause the job to be done to the government's standards. This is recent in my state, yet I'm not surprised. Democrats run the state I live in, except at the federal level.
" ... GOP xenophobes ..."
I thought he was quoting the White House.
vigilante
Walmart is an excellent example of why big corps wouldn't hire illegals. Bad PR and they have a lot of lose.
If you mention Tyson or meat packing plants in NE the whole argument that the illegals push down wages goes up in dust. Those operations are located out in the boonies where there aren't any other people.
OK, you mentioned one big corp and three government operations. If this is a big corporation problem, then employment place enforcement on them might be effective. However, if most ilkgals are working off the books for millions of small employers, then enforcement will be a lot harder. Walmart already got the message.
" ... GOP xenophobes ..."
7 of 8 ways to destroy america:
7.I would place all subjects off limits ~ make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.' I would find a word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century - that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' or 'xenophobe' halt discussion and debate.
For less than $50, immigrants can buy a set of fake documents — usually a Social Security card and green card, indicating permanent residency — to get a job. The fake ID's provide employers with crucial protection in the eyes of the law: companies can plausibly deny that they knew they were hiring people without legal permission to work.
The upshot is that millions of illegal immigrants work on the books, with the odd side effect that the Social Security Administration receives millions of Form W2 wage reports from employers that bear random Social Security numbers.
In 1996 the inspector general of the Justice Department warned that fraudulent documents were allowing unscrupulous employers to avoid accountability for hiring illegal immigrants. If the government decided to halt, or at least substantially dent, the flow of these immigrants into the work force, it would find that it probably already has the tools.
Since 1997, immigration authorities and the Social Security Administration have been running a voluntary pilot program that allows employers to check worker documentation on the spot — matching documents against government databases over the Internet.
This system could end employers' deniability, because they could determine quickly whether a given employee was authorized to work in the United States. That's probably why so few companies have signed up: only about 2,300 of the more than six million employers across the country.
EVEN if such a system became mandatory, people might continue to hire illegal immigrants as nannies and housekeepers, and to pay them in cash. Small businesses operating under the radar might also hire them off the books.
Yet many illegal immigrants work on the books. For employers, it is one thing to fail to question the dubious provenance of Social Security cards. It is quite another to overtly break the law.
As far as working off the books, clever law enforcement can deal with the problem. Interior sweeps at schools, neighborhoods that are known hotbeds of illegal immigrants, surprise visits to certain industries that tend to hire illegals. If there are no benefits, if you have to have a national id to register your child at school, or to open a bank account, or to rent an apartment, or to recieve any benefits, the trip north might not be worth it any more.
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