Here’s the latest on the surge of immigrant children from Central America: “DHS releasing illegal immigrant families from Central America into U.S. — but won’t say how many.” And another article: “Child migrants head for US to flee crime, drawn by belief they are allowed to stay,” which continues the storyline that while illegal immigrants are not “allowed” to stay, that is, given legal permission, they are able to live in some semblance of normality under-the-radar, working under-the-table, and this seems to be good enough for them.
And “border security” – in the sense of increased numbers of Border Patrol agents, can’t do anything about this, with the new strategy of overwhelming them in a manner that requires “catch and release.” From all reports, once a person has reached U.S. soil, an agent can’t simply send them back, can’t push the raft back to the other side of the river, but is required to process (and ultimately release) them. And we can’t build the number of new processing centers that would be required to end “catch and release,” and, even if we could, it probably wouldn’t be the right thing to attempt to.
What could we do?
If we’d built that fence, decades ago when first discussed, this wouldn’t be an issue. Oh, sure, everyone says, “but no fence would keep everyone out” but it sure would keep out more people than otherwise.
And beyond that, this simply highlights the need for workplace enforcement. Over and over again, the media report on illegal immigrants working as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Whether this is under-the-table or using a false/stolen ID is never mentioned (except in the sob stories that follow, of individuals injured without worker’s comp coverage and working at employers who don’t follow proper safety precautions), but it matters.
It wouldn’t even be necessary to deport those individuals without valid authorization to work — just mandate e-verify (yes, with proper procedures for individuals who have changed their names or where for whatever other reason the system doesn’t work) and heavily fine employees who don’t follow the mandate (including employers who willingly “fire” and “rehire” the same employee who submits paperwork with an alternate name if the first one doesn’t go through), and crack down on under-the-table work (enforcement of this doesn’t really seem to exist at all, from what I can tell), and require proper work authorization and tax reporting for even such forms of “self-employment” as scavaging for recyclables among the trash at the curb. If illegal immigrants find that they can’t work in the U.S., then the picture changes significantly. Yes, everyone laughed at Romney for “self deportation” but if there are no jobs to be found without proper authorization that would change the equation dramatically.
In a perfect world, Congress and the President would agree on a reallocation of resources from Border Patrol to a “surge” in workplace enforcement, paired with e-verify and some enforcement mechanisms against under-the-table work. In an imperfect world, is there even an opportunity for compromise? Would Obama be happy to abandon Border-Patrolling without actually implementing E-Verify?
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