Ummmm, No.John Hawkins is a
terrific blogger, but....
You want to get rid of the majority of "undocumented workers" coming into this country? You want to see the river of illegals flowing into this country turn into a trickle? Here's what you do:
Go after the people who are employing them.
Jack the fines way up for hiring illegal aliens. Throw flagrant abusers in jail. Have agents regularly show up at businesses known to hire illegals. In other words, make the penalties steep and chances of getting caught so high that business owners won't hire illegals.We had this argument in the 1980s and Reagan pointed out that this amounts to turning employers into immigration authorities. We already require companies hiring people to get social security numbers; what more beyond that do you want?
I have dealt for a significant part of my life with occasional hassles with the federal government because I was born at an US army hospital in West Germany and not in the United States, although both my parents are US citizens and I have lived in the USA almost constantly since I was six months old (I did spend three months in Great Britain during my college days). These situations have resolved themselves since about the time I was 17 (after a fair amount of effort on my parents and my part), but none of them gave any desire to deal with some more government immigration officials.
But you know what? I'd prefer to be on a watch list from the federal government than be on a "don't hire" list from the private sector. And that's what this would boil down to; nobody in their right mind would hire me versus a guy born in Massachusetts assuming all other things were relatively equal.
