>> Coming “down hard” on businesses is Obama-speak for, “Let’s destroy small businesses who innocently hire illegals based on fake identification that’s impossible to verify, and pretend we’re going after illegals.”
It’s not a business’s (big or small) responsibility to police every job applicant, it’s government’s. <<
And government has failed on that account. But I would say that there are many places that knowingly hire illegals that need their feet held to the fire. In Denver the city hires contractors to do outdoor work on their lawns, medians etc. They hire contractors who knowingly hire illegals, Both the City government and the contractors need to have their feet held to the fire for this.
The government needs to make it easier for businesses to hire legal citizens and to be able to check on the immigration status of individuals to make sure they pass. The left has killed off the E-verify programs etc. If you hire illegals you should be fined because that is just as illegal as being here illegally.
If the illegal has used false documentation, then they need to detain the illegal and grill them until they give the name and source of their fake ID and lay the hammer down on them too.
Just punishing the illegals isn’t going to affect the issue, just like punishing the drug users won’t work. You have to hit the entire supply and demand chain so that you remove the demand for illegal labor so that it is easier to hire legal citizens and the penalty for hiring illegals makes it unsavory to hire illegals. We need to poison the saccharine sweet sugar that is cheap illegal immigrant labor.
E-Verify is only for government hiring and contracting, but it hasn't been killed all the way dead, yet.
You want to make the business sector responsible for illegal workers? Join the Democrat party because that's the Obama immigration policy. Obama killed all the Bush immigration directives that set up the factory/business raids, extraction, prosecution and deportation, in favor of holding businesses criminally liable. But Bush never got credit for his efforts anyway so it really makes no difference.