Transterrestrial Musings

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"Bush needs to get a simple message: build a fence, and then get back to us." What kind of fence Rand?

A two thousand mile physical barrier is an expensive, laughable non-solution. Anyone who has ever owned a long fence on a ranch or farm knows that you have to work the fence, mending holes and repairing constantly. How many holes a day do you think will be created in that fence once it goes up.

The kind of fence that is needed is one around employers who hire illegals. If you put employers behind bars for hiring illegals then that will end our immigration "problems". Of course that would mean we would have to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of employers who utilize illegal aliens. We'll start with your landscaper, move on to most of your restauranteurs, then the dry cleaners, the home builders, the farmers, the ranchers, and the meat packers. I am sure these are pretty nice people, but hey, they are breaking the law. Why should they be gven amnesty?

Posted by Jardinero1 at June 11, 2007 09:45 AM

I forgot to mention incarcerating anyone who has an illegal nanny or housekeeper.

Posted by Jardinero1 at June 11, 2007 09:47 AM

I'm simply describing the Republican base's attitude, not necessarily mine. I simply think that the whole thing is a political farce.

Posted by Rand Simberg at June 11, 2007 09:56 AM

My apologies. Still, employers are the crux of the problem.

Posted by Jardinero1 at June 11, 2007 10:15 AM

One Republican who did not watch her words last week was Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing: "If the president can pardon 12 million illegal immigrants, he can pardon Scooter Libby."

Posted by at June 11, 2007 10:21 AM

Oh stop already.

First, building a fence is certainly possible. Whats more, it could be done (and maintained for decades) at the cost of say, 1 year's Iraq War funding. Okay, half a year's Iraq War funding. And that didnt break the economy doing it.

Second, you dont need to lock up every employer who hires an illegal alien (just like the fence doesnt need to stop *every single person* from crossing it to be effective.) And they already got the meat packers (last year). Interestingly, that company's quarterly report (they had almost 1000 illegals "confiscated" by the government on their property in raids) estimates the costs of hiring non-illegal workers and training them at about $21K per worker. And they have rehired workers.

This "illegals do work Americans won't" is crap. Construction used to be a business that people spoke English in. (and we built as many houses, using *more* labor in 1970 than we do now). Now go to a building site. Its spanish-only. Everywhere. Why do you think that is?

And what are the people who would have those jobs doing for a living? (Ans: Working at Burger King or Home Depot, making *less* money...)

I'm a Republican but any Democrat who can think should be all over this issue. A big reason lower middle class incomes are stagnant is that their jobs have been outsourced - to Mexico (and Guatamala, etc.) And until about 2 years ago, the government did *nothing* about it. I would charaterize whats happening now as "progress" but at a fairly glacial pace. And only becuase the government started actually *checking* the social security #s people gave on job applications.

The only thing that put this issue on the map was when the Minuteman showed up on the border in Arizona. Once that happened, "illegal immigration" became a "problem" to most of the country. Its been a "problem" in the desert Southwest for decades...

So you Democrats who care about the lower-middle class income equality issues - pick this issue up and run with it. It's your ball....

-jcp-

Posted by Joe Pistritto at June 11, 2007 10:48 AM

Punishing employers is problematical, morally, practically and politically. There's no reliable way for employers to determine an applicant's residence status; not hiring someone who turns out to be here legally may make an employer vulnerable to anti-discrimination prosecution or lawsuits. There's also a moral question of punishing someone for committing a victimless crime. And if punishment is to deter effectively it must be severe and imposed frequently enough to change the behavior of millions of employers. Politically, this makes it almost certain that business groups will organize against such measures, and also that punishment will become difficult to sustain as a policy once the inevitable horror stories about imprisoned small-business owners get publicized.

The fence is much easier. Its only drawback is expense, but I suspect it's cheaper in the long run than are any of the other suggested anti-illegal-immigration measures (whose costs, unlike those associated with the fence, are hidden). The technology for effectively keeping people out of the country without hurting them has been proven in Israel. The USA is a much wealthier country than Israel. We can afford to build a robust fence and staff it appropriately. It doesn't carry the moral problems that punishment of employers does. The fence isn't a perfect solution but all of the others are worse.

Posted by Jonathan at June 11, 2007 10:53 AM

I don't think the Dems WANT a solution that involves enforcement. The status quo:

Pisses off the Republican base, without enhancing the status of the Republican leadership, thereby depressing Republican support / turnout

Makes it easier to manafacture improper / illegal votes, by enhancing voter anonymity.

Enhances the immiseration of the lower income folks, thereby keeping them on the Democrat plantation.

I am unclear what Republicans get from the status quo. Perhaps continued support from businesses interested in low-cost, exploitable workers?

The area in which I grew up was about 1/3 Mexican descendants. Now it is 2/3, with the difference being first generation Michoaquenos (sp?). The trouble with the rapid transition seems to be economic / cultural. My home town recently passed a town ordnance forbidding the joining of gangs. I have no idea of the specifics, nor to what extent it violates Constitutionality. Suffice it to say that when I grew up, drive-by shootings didn't occur, and now they do, with regularity, in a town of 15,000.

More important than the physical and economic barriers to entering the US are the legal ones, and they have been non-enforced for a l-o-o-o-ng time. Laws that are on the books, but unenforced lead to a break-down in the respect for, and rule of, law. With that, comes the need to renew marksmanship skills.

*heavy sigh*

Posted by MG at June 11, 2007 11:13 AM

You should not look at it as punishing "employers" Jonathan, but rather punishing those who break the law (who happened to be employers).

With that said I don't believe punishing those who hire illegals is THE solution, but it should be part of the solution. In order for it to work at all there would need to be a system whereby an employer could readily check and see if a potential employee is legal or not. Most small landscape companies etc. don't have the resources to do background checks on potential employees.

Those whom I would punish most severely would be anyone who providing false papers to illegals, IE false Social Security documents, drivers license etc. Huge fines and long jail time for such forgers.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at June 11, 2007 11:23 AM

It wouldn't be "punishing employers" if I could enter some simple information, like my name and employer ID number + the prospective applicant's name and SS# on a web form and get a simple answer back "Not a valid SS#." Adding a trivial cost ($1 each) would make it wipe out most of the fraudulent uses for something this simple.

Something that mind-numbingly simple isn't available at all. You can physically look at the SS card, but the fakes are essentially identical. (Your driver's license is tougher to duplicate). The first feedback you get from the government is a minimum of three-months out. And they don't necessarily point anything out until as much as 3 years on, where there's another type of audit.

Posted by Al at June 11, 2007 11:47 AM

It's a political farce, all right. Build that dumb-assed fence and the beaches of California and Texas are going to start looking like Normandy on D-Day. Gonna build some fences there, too? Or maybe draft a few million kids into the Coast Guard?

The idea of magically busting all their employers is equally stupid. Planning to cordon off the state of Montana to hold the resulting prison population?

Last I checked, unemployment was 4.5% in this country. Anytime between the early '70s and the late '90s, we'd have all thought we'd died and gone to heaven if we'd seen those numbers. Immigration is a non-issue.

Posted by Jay Manifold at June 11, 2007 01:29 PM

JM: "Immigration is a non-issue."

What was that you were saying about stupid?

Posted by Cecil Trotter at June 11, 2007 02:57 PM

Immigration is a non-issue economically only _if_ you assume that the unemployment rate will always be 4.5%. Should we get back up to the old 10% rate of thirty years ago (and the economic ignorance in Congress is sufficient to accomplish that feat), will the illegals pack up and go home?

Illegal immigration also has cultural impacts. How many stable bilingual/bicultural nations are there, versus how many have had insurrections and civil wars and genocides? Is it wise to have millions of citizens of another country living within our borders who are here only for the jobs? Not because they want to be Americans or care much about liberal democracy and the rule of law, but because the system in their home country has been a corrupt failure. And is it wise to let immigrants to our country self-select? That is, no doubt the bulk are decent people who just want to work and take care of their families, but some probably figure better to commit crimes in a rich country than to rob poor people at home. Do we need to accept the criminals?

An actual, physical fence or wall would seem to be a necessity as we have many millions of data points indicating that it’s not hard at present to cross the border illegally. Will there be other crossing methods once a fence is in place? Most likely, but it gets easier to police the bottlenecks.

I think Cecil Trotter made the best suggestion. Severe penalties for providing or possessing false documents would be helpful. If the provider of such documents could expect 20 years to life, and the possessor could expect immediate deportation, one would expect life to become less easy for an illegal immigrant. Which is really the point of it all, to make illegal immigration difficult and unattractive enough that going the legal route becomes attractive (we’ll pretend for the sake of argument that the legal immigration process isn’t the horrendous mess that is)(ask my immigrant wife and relatives).

Posted by Chuck at June 11, 2007 03:10 PM

Immigration hysteria correlates with periods of rapid economic growth, increasing prosperity, and decreasing unemployment (= mid-'80s and mid-'00s). I rather imagine that Brink Lindsey has a good handle on why. Disputes like these happen because we're well-enough off to spend time on them, not out of some putatively dire necessity.

Posted by Jay Manifold at June 11, 2007 03:39 PM

I don't think illegal immigration would be an issue but for the welfare state and those institutions in our society, mainly educational and other local-governmental ones, that promote multiculturalism over assimilation. Given how difficult the welfare state and multiculturalism are proving to be to eliminate, I think the least damaging course of action is to build a fence. I don't like the idea, but I think that it will probably help to alleviate the problem, and the political problem too, and by so doing forestall implementation of more-destructive alternatives.

Posted by Jonathan at June 11, 2007 04:19 PM

Jay Manifold...

Well there went my respect for you and any reason to further read your weblog. The problem isn't "immigration" but illegal immigration, so your "immigration hysteria" slam is nothing but a pointless insult to your fellow citizens who -- for some strange reason I just can't figure out, can anyone help me? -- are tired of seeing their laws -- the laws they -- we created -- made a mockery of.

But you go right on ahead and call us racist xenophobes who are decadently turning to this trivial topic because we're rich and bored. Just don't expect me to applaud.

Posted by Andrea Harris at June 11, 2007 06:15 PM

... later thoughts: if indeed the commenter I referred to as "Jay Manifold" is the real Jay Manifold and not one of the creepy trolls that infest this place like roaches. Sorry, Rand, but you need to get out the Raid -- aka "comment registration." I have never been sorry I put it on my blogs. Consider that my fence against unwanted invaders. (And they said once that it couldn't be done, we'd just have to put up with it or do without certain freedoms, like civilized discourse... See what you can invent when necessity demands?)

Posted by Andrea Harris at June 11, 2007 06:26 PM

Jay is right.

Posted by Nasty Anonymous Troll at June 11, 2007 06:35 PM

Reid recently referred to them as "undocumented Americans."

So, in Reid's eyes someone who sneaks across the border suddenly becomes some kind of an American?

Posted by Norm at June 11, 2007 09:58 PM

Building this fence right along the border and manning it seems like a massive Big government expansion. The Dems should like it for that aspect at least, though any real libertarian should find it repugnant, right? And then if we also have to do as Jay Manifold says and expand the Coast Guard, think how many more gubmint workers we would have. Of course let's make quite sure we don't increase any taxes to implement any of this. So who's for the free flow of capital, ideas and labor? Who's for real freedom even if the labor doesn't look like us? Let's stand up and be counted or deported or stick around and spout gibberish.

Posted by Offside at June 12, 2007 07:46 AM

Immigration laws are not enforced because they are not enforceable. Calling for enforcement is no better than saying that narcotics prohibition could be made to work if we just got serious about it all of a sudden.

If comment registration is imposed, I will register, not being anonymous, and being quite easy to find in any case. The anonymous and pseudonymous trolls on this site are the usual paranoids. I prefer to be more like SM Stirling, who responded to some Truthers recently by posting his address and phone number.

Posted by Jay Manifold at June 12, 2007 07:57 AM

Someone said there ought to be a system you can use to quickly verify an applicant's work eligibility simply by punching in a SSN to a computer.

The system exists - it's called the Basic Employment Verification Pilot System and has been around for 10 years. The only time you hear about it is when the gov't wants you saps, I mean voters, to think it cares about controlling illegal immigration. They usually leave out the part about it being voluntary. Astoundingly, 0.1% of employers actually use it. Not bad for a program that has no up-side whatsoever for employers.

Posted by Artemus at June 12, 2007 10:05 AM

"Immigration laws are not enforced because they are not enforceable."

That is ridiculous, of course they are enforceable. We've just never tried to do so, in the last 30-40 years at least.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at June 12, 2007 10:56 AM

No government can resist market forces long term.
Try illegal drugs, prohibition, the current immigration debate.

We have 4.5% unemployment.

We have 12M illegal workers. (I think the number is probably higher than this)

My solution would be:
1)End birthright citizenship.

2)Allow as many guest workers as want to come to come, but require that they have an employer sponsor, that agrees to pay for medical, housing, etc... and require that they pay taxes etc...

3)Enforce the laws against off the books employment.

I don't really like #3, but it will cause Americans to realize how much our nanny state rules and safety nets cost them on a daily basis.

This leaves one problem..
A bilingual country does not work.
How do you keep this from becoming a two class society? Legals and Guests?
Will this lead to a South Africa like situation
where a rich minority abuses a huge under privileged majority?

Posted by Paul Breed at June 12, 2007 01:26 PM

> "Immigration laws are not enforced because they are not enforceable."

I'm pretty sure that the plaintiffs bar could do the job.

If "qualified" unemployed folks with a legal right to work in the US could sue employers who employed folks who didn't have a legal right to work in the US for 3-5x the wages paid, I'm fairly confident that most employers would become quite good at distingushing the two sets.

Posted by Andy Freeman at June 13, 2007 12:26 AM

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