That's the "easy" solution. It's only failing is that it won't work, as long as the economic incentives for hiring illegals outweigh the disincentives. Them nasty old Big Businesses will pass on the cost to the consumer.
Yep. That's exactly what I'm saying. It is hypocritical to blame the worker when it is Big Business that is reaping the rewards.
Well, how about a real life example? We had some work done on our house this week. Low bidder was a guy from Guatemala who I'm sure is legal, since he advertises on the web, is insured, bonded, has all the licenses, all that stuff. His bid was about half what the next higher contractor bid, so we hired him. He had two assistants working with him, neither of whom spoke more than a few words of English, and we have little doubt they were illegals.
Did this bother you? Are you knowingly (or strongly suspectingly) hiring illegals? Your example seems to indicate that you are, so how can you criticize the illegals who do the work when people like you let them do so with a nod and a wink.
Multiply this contractor by thousands, even tens of thousands, all over the country. Who's going to report them? Do you think Mrs. BPSCG and I called ICE to tell them we suspected our contractor had illegals? Is the government going to hire tens of thousands of new inspectors to harry small contractors doing one-day jobs (and raise taxes accordingly to pay the inspectors' salaries)?
Are you starting to get the picture yet? It would be outrageously expensive to end illegal labor. You know it. The GOP knows it. EVERYBODY knows it. But they refuse to come out and say it, instead, they rant against illegals who are just doing what we are asking them to do.
Except that ACLU would scream bloody murder the minute you tried to "invade people's privacy" by allowing employers to key in on someone's SSN.
Now you're just being stupid. Since when has the ACLU ever said "employers have no right to ask for a social security number?" How the hell do you expect them to pay taxes? Of all the arguments I've heard, this is the dumbest.
Don't misunderstand; I think it would be a good idea - would certainly make prosecution of companies hiring illegals a lot easier ("Don't give us that nonsense that you didn't know Diego was illegal...") - but the devil, as always, is in the details.
What I misunderstand is why you think this would be difficult. I can fill my taxes out on-line. Don't tell me that the US doesn't have a database of legal employees. Just check the damn thing before you hire somebody.
Oh, please, stop with the "nasty Big Business Conspiracy Guys who secretly control the gummint are screwing the country" meme.
That is not actually my argument. I think that "nasty Big Business"
should hire foreign workers and the gummint
should acknowledge that they do. The conspiracy is that they want to
pretend that they don't know how illegals help our economy so they can win votes with angry anti-immigrant voters.
The big companies would just figure out how much they expect it would cost them per year in fines, and work that into their cost structures. Then deduct those expenses from their net income reported to the IRS at the end of the year. It would cause a small uptick in the nationwide cost of living, and a small drop in their profits. It would not solve the illegal immigrants problem.
It is entirely possible to make the fines so great that companies could not afford to hire illegals. It is in fact
easy to do, given the mood of the country. Problem is, politicians would lose a lot of contributions from Big Business if they did so. They don't want to "solve" this problem. They just want somebody to blame. Preferably they want to blame somebody who is poor and powerless, because they can't hit back.
The problem is as Puggy stated: Corrupt Mexican government. Because it's not that Mexicans don't want to work - they're all over here because they want to work. In America, even if you have little education and don't speak the language, as long as you work hard, you can be better off than if you stay in Mexico. It stinks, but the long-term solution lies south of the border, not north of it.
You're right. It would be nice if Mexico had the robust economy of the US. Then we wouldn't have this problem at all, just like we don't have much of a problem with illegal Canadian immigrants. The difficult comes in figuring out how to make their economy robust. You want to export more of our jobs there? It's not all about corruption, BP. Mexico and much of Latin America really
is poor. Poor people look for solutions. To them, the US is the solution.
I've explained how easy it would be to stop illegal labor, and I've explained what it would cost. In my opinion, the cost is too high. Obviously, that is the opinion of the politicians too, since they refuse to pass simple laws to eliminate it. They
want illegal labor, and they
want somebody for scapegoats so they can continue to win the votes of people who have lost their jobs to cheap labor.
It shouldn't surprise you that politicians are hypocrites, but that doesn't mean you have to buy into their smoke and mirrors act.
