Quote:Again, well thought out. In all due respect, we have to secure the border first. Right now we are looking at nearly 3/4 of a million crimes committed by those in this country illegally in the state of Texas over the last 8 years. The first organizing principle of the federal government is to protect the citizens from all enemies foreign and domestic.
Secondly, the point of an immigration policy in general, as an expression of the sovereignty of a nation, is to regulate the amount of people that come into a country. We can't have a carte blanche system by which all 6 billion of the worlds inhabitants can come to this country and compete against our citizens for jobs. We already have 93 million adults in this country that wake up and don't go to a job. At a certain point if the ratio of workers paying a high enough level of taxes to those drawing some form of benefit to the government becomes too low then you have greece. We should be talking about a moritorium on immigration period until the labor force participation rate normalizes.
Third, the problem now is that we have too much undocumented cheap labor. A lower minimum wage for undocumenteds would just codify the current competitive advantage they have over american citizens. a.) its going to be hard to catch people employing people outside the system because they are already doing it and getting away with it. one of the inherent problems with an income tax as it currently exists is the level of inefficiency we have keeping up with the individual activities of 300 million people. And when you factor in the other overhead associated with legally hiring another person (like workmans comp, insurance, etc.) its more often than not cheaper to pay people cash. b.) e verify sounds great, but it would be handled by the same people that ran healthcare.gov into the ground. Then you would have people with a flower shop who couldn't get online facing fines and jail time for higher a gardener with a fake social security card.
I think that what it would come down to is that after you secure the border (wall, fence, drone surveillance, whatever you choose) then and only then you would have the ability to deal with the people already here. The most common sense would be work permits for them in recognition that in large part their undocumented status devoid of rugged enforcement means that they are competing for jobs already and not paying into the system. On the employee side bump up their fica contributions and sur tax on income and call it a day. Mass deportation is going to be impossible with the 5th and 14th amendments and the sheer logistics, and incidentally i think this is the biggest political miscalculation that could keep Trump from the nomination.
I hate quoting incredibly long posts, but I feel like I wouldn't be doing you justice here if I didn't.
Regarding securing the border, I think the real answer is feet on the ground and a true dragnet of Border Patrol units stationed along the border itself (where practical) and at major, known "Rubicons" like Interstate 8 or Arizona Highway 86. How do you do that? Simple. Get rid of the "interior checkpoints" that do nothing but hassle American citizens. That'll free up a lot of money right there. Then take some of those funds that politicians want to throw at the fence and let the Border Patrol hire more agents at good salaries (to attract quality) and properly equip them for nighttime interdiction. That's how you secure the border, not pushing to finish an impossible fence.
I will never support a moratorium on immigration, because that's about the most un-American immigration policy imaginable. What I would support is, again, a one-time deal with a guest worker program that would allow people
who are already here to register, get ID, work for smaller companies (not Walmart) that need help, and stay in the US as long as they're employed. This program would
not be a path to citizenship, nor would it allow a guest worker to bring their wife and three kids up to live with them. It would also not be an ongoing thing. It would be done once for anyone here illegally who chose to take part, then the doors are closed. If you enter the US the next day, too bad. Any immigrant here without a green card or a guest worker permit is deported and never welcome back, end of story. If you commit a misdemeanor or felony, you're deported after serving your time (or in lieu of serving your time) and never welcome back. That's not to say that the registration program couldn't be repeated if it's found to actually be helping the economy and the demand is clearly there, but there would have to be stipulations attached to the conditions for repeating it involving unemployment percentages in each state that takes part. If Arizona's at 10% unemployment, allowing illegal immigrants to come in and work the farms and ranches for sub-minimum wage just seems silly, doesn't it?
As to point three, I think that it could be handled numerically. As mentioned above, if a state has 10% unemployment, forget it. If a state has 6% unemployment, but the majority of the open jobs are in low-wage sectors--i.e., the things Americans would rather take unemployment than do--then maybe they allow the first 25,000 illegal immigrants in that state who apply to stay in the country, assuming they find and maintain employment. That puts a very firm hold on things. There's a time deadline to go with a numerical deadline, and the numerical deadline is figured by demand. Consider that you probably wouldn't even get that many people to register--many illegal immigrants would be afraid that by giving information about who they are, where they're from and where they live, they're all but inviting INS to show up at their door. It's not like this would break the US workforce. If allowing a few thousand illegal immigrants to work at sub-minimum wage boosts small business production and the economy itself without displacing Americans, where's the harm? If it ends up displacing Americans or doesn't have the desired effect on the economy, hey, there's no need to ever do that again. That's the great thing about experiments. If they don't work, don't repeat them.
I'm not advocating sending a gardener to jail because the website was down. Prison time would be reserved for only the most egregious offenses. Say Walmart is caught employing 5,000 illegal immigrants. They would pay a massive, massive fine (proportional to the amount they "saved" on labor by doing things illegally, with an additional penalty on top, maybe), and perhaps leadership in charge of staffing at the highest levels (EVP and C-level?) would be fined for negligence and given a very firm warning about what happens if there is a "next time". If the company gets caught again, then jail time is on the table for those in upper management who had oversight last time around. A gardener who gets caught once would face much more modest fines. If they persist in failing to verify (and hiring illegal immigrants as a result), then maybe jail time goes on the table after several violations, but I'm not saying just throw small business owners in prison left and right.
Mass deportation would be all but impossible, but case-by-case deportation, made even easier by the fact that the person was given the opportunity to remain in the US legally just by getting a guest worker permit, would slowly stem the tide. Once the e-Verify regulations are in place and the problem of businesses hiring illegal immigrants is largely addressed, the illegal immigrants bringing their families north to find work will slowly stop doing so, and more and more of the people being chased down in the desert will be the drug smugglers and human traffickers that, imo, should be our number one priority anyway.
