Immigration: Putting the core of the problem up front

It's good to see a news article straightforwardly stating the core of the immigration problem. From Employers risk little in hiring illegal labor by Faye Bowers Christian Science Monitor 04/18/06:

It's a topic often lost in the heated battle over whether to add more border patrol agents, build a bigger fence, or deploy the US military along the border with Mexico. But in the end, most analysts agree, the United States can't stem the flow of illegal immigrants until it resolves to do one thing: punish employers who hire them. (my emphasis)

I wish every article on the current immigration debate would open with some kind of a statement of that fact. That would go a long way toward taking the wind out of our Republican nativists' sails. Because this is the one thing that the Republicans in the end will go to the wall to prevent:

The [proposed] tougher provisions are not lost on companies here in Arizona, which now has more illegal immigrants crossing its border than any other state and which owes its decades-long growth spurt in part to a huge workforce - at least 12 percent - of undocumented laborers.

But federal enforcement has long been so weak, and employer fines so few and far between, that many here still laugh off the prospect of serious sanctions - though the laughs are a little more nervous now.

"There's a pretty universal consensus that this is the single largest missing point of our enforcement regime," says Marc Rosenblum, a visiting scholar at the Migration Policy Institute, an independent think tank in Washington that tracks the worldwide movement of people. "But there's never been enough commitment or resources thrown at it. The bills being considered now would go a long way toward addressing that problem." (my emphasis)

But the Halliburton Republicans will insist in the end that no such employer sanctions get enacted.

| +Save/Share | |