Later.
4. Establish a Worker Visa Program.
Along with total border control, we need to make it easier for people to get work visas to enter the country legally and to work here at a specific job for a set of period of time and as long as they obey the law. We need a worker visa program that ensures that work visa holders pay taxes, get driver’s licenses, buy auto insurance, abide by the law. Such a program will also filter out criminals and potential terrorists, which is why we will require from foreign governments a continually updated list of their criminals.
Required Elements of a Worker Visa Program. As a part of this program, every work visa holder will be required to:
a. Carry a “smart card” with a photograph and bio-metric identifier, like a thumbprint and/or an embedded retinal scan that will be entered into a database so that their presence in the United States can be validated;
b. Sign an agreement in which the work visa holder agrees to pay taxes, obey the law, and waive any rights to appeal his or her removal from the United States within 72 hours for violating their agreement; and
c. Open and maintain an account at any U.S. financial institution with an American Bankers Association routing number into which employers of work visa holders will be required to electronically deposit their wages. No bank account, no smart card.
Additional Incentives for Work Visa Holders.
As we think through every aspect of a practical and enforceable legal policy on immigration and work visa holders, we must continue to be creative in crafting additional incentives that will ensure compliance with the rules of a worker visa program.
One example of a creative incentive is to require each work visa holder to establish a mandatory 10% tax free savings account drawn on a regular basis from the wages that are being deposited into the work visa holder’s required bank account. This account will have a tax free build up, which the work visa holder would be allowed to withdraw upon his or her timely return to the home country. Requiring such an account would provide an additional assurance that the work visa holder will return home on time as well as create a nest egg for the work visa holder to use to start a business or go to school back home. In the event that a work visa holder failed to return to their home country in the time period set out in their agreement, their bank account (and 10% savings account) would be frozen until such time as the work visa holder returned home.
Administrative Aspects of a Worker Visa Program.
As an administrative matter, the worker visa program smart card system will be outsourced to a company like Visa, Mastercard or American Express so people who actually know how to run a sophisticated card and computer program with expert systems for tracking fraud would be implementing the smart card program. We should have zero confidence that a federal government agency can run this program effectively. These companies can work with Kelly Services-like companies in Mexico and elsewhere to coordinate the work visa holder program and provide screening (e.g. felon check lists, other background check). Kelly Services-like companies offer staffing solutions that include temporary staffing services, staff leasing, outsourcing, vendor on-site and full-time placement and would therefore be valuable components of a worker visa program. The Vernon K. Krieble Foundation has been in the forefront of thinking through the design of such a private sector approach to managing a worker visa program that has met with widespread support.
5. Zero Tolerance for Amnesty.
As Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it so eloquently in a Los Angeles Times op-ed on March 28, “We can embrace the immigrant without endorsing illegal immigration. Granting citizenship to people who are here illegally is not just amnesty ... it's anarchy. We are a country of immigrants, yes. But we are also a nation of laws. People who want to be citizens will want to do it the right way.”
And doing it the right way means that all those who are currently working in the United States illegally and who wish to apply for the worker visa program must return to their home country and apply. Application for the worker visa program should not be permitted in the United States under any circumstances.
Anything less than requiring people who are working here illegally to return home to apply for a worker visa is amnesty.