10 Steps to Fix America -- #1: Immigration

This is the first in a series of articles about the steps we need to fix our nation. I'd actually planned to make immigration 7 or 8 on the list, but with the Senate again considering immigration reform this seems to be the hot-button issue right now, so here goes:

With the Senate poised to pass what the president calls "a path to citizenship" but most would call amnesty for illegal immigrants, there seems to be a lot of hand-wringing over the immigration issue. Americans seem to be all over the board on this, from those who would round up all the undocumented workers, deport them and build a huge wall on the southern border, manned by thousands of soldiers, to those who would do nothing and keep the status quo.

First, let's look at what won't work. Current estimates are there are at least 12 million undocumented workers and as many as 20 million. We can't round them up a deport them. For one thing, it's logistically impossible. For another, it would be prohibitively expensive; to find and deport one illegal immigrant costs thousands of dollars. To round up 12 million would cost billions of dollars and take at least a decade. Finally, deporting them all would be morally reprehensible; we almost certainly would end up ripping families apart.

At first glance, better border security would seem to be a good place to start. Yet as long as there are jobs for immigrants they will find a way around any measures we incorporate -- the border is just too long. Even if we were to somehow completely seal the border -- again at prohibitive cost -- coyotes would boat them in.

So what do we do? Here is my two-point illegal immigration solution:

1) Call it a "path to citizenship," call it amnesty, call it whatever you want, but give each undocumented worker a tamper-proof and impossible-to-counterfeit card that allows them to legally get a job. Then get them a Social Security card so they can start paying their fair share of taxes. Finally, give them a long, hard, difficult (but not impossible) path to citizenship that involves learning English and staying out of jail.

2) Hit the employers. Hit them hard. Make hiring a worker who isn't a citizen and doesn't hold a tamper-proof card a misdemeanor offense, liable for fines of $20,000 for each person in management at the company, right on up to the CEO. Make hiring illegal immigrants so unpalatable for corporations they simply choose not to do it anymore. When Mr. Agribusiness-owner knows that not only he but all his foremen will have to pay twenty large for each undocumented worker he will change his hiring practices in a hurry.

Despite the rhetoric on the right, people enter this country illegally for only one reason: to work. Dry up the supply of low-paying jobs available to undocumented workers and you stop the influx of illegal immigrants. This will have the desired effect of forcing employers to increase wages for their workers as the labor pool begins to dry up. We should all expect to pay a bit more for that head of lettuce or a hotel room or for our general contractor when we remodel the house. That is the price we pay to see that the guy who picked that lettuce can feed his family. It's the Henry Ford philosophy: pay the workers enough so they can afford to buy what they produce.

The other rhetoric often heard is "illegals do the work Americans won't do." This is pure hogwash. Americans don't want to pick lettuce because Mr. Agribusiness-owner wants to maximize his profits by paying undocumented workers $5.00 under the table, rather than what should be the prevailing wage.

Moreover, let's look at some statistics about employment of undocumented workers. According to Dr. Steven Camarota of the Center For Immigration Studies (page down a ways; table #8) immigrants (both legal and illegal) make up 43.7% of the workforce in farming, fishing and forestry, 34.0% of cleaning and maintenance workers, 25.9% of construction workers and 22.0% of food preparation workers.

Look at those numbers carefully. This means that 56.3% of farming jobs, 66.0% of cleaning and maintenance jobs, 74.1% of construction jobs and 78.0% of food preparation jobs are held by native born Americans. If illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans don't want, why are so many Americans still doing them anyway?

Unfortunately, as things stand my two-point program has little chance of becoming law. That's because Congress is in the pockets of big business, and immigration has always been about big business: a steady supply of low-wage workers to maximize profits. Point number one they could live with, but they'll fight point two to the death. We, as voters, need to ask our representatives if they will support strong sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers. If they won't, they shouldn't get our vote.

Next in this series: National Health Care