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$3.7 Billion for E-Verify
President Obama is in desperate need of congressional action on the border crisis. Specifically, he is seeking $3.7 billion in emergency funding to accelerate the care for, and processing of, unaccompanied minors and single mothers with children crossing our southern border illegally from Central America via Mexico. The question that we, as conservatives, as taxpayers, and as Americans should be asking ourselves is this: what should we try to buy with our $3.7 billion? The answer, I think, is breathtakingly clear: we should demand E-Verify.
It is frequently said among our politicians and pundits that our immigration system is “broken.” The claim is especially heard from the left, but even conservatives – who think that the problem is simply that the law is not being enforced – are likely to admit that something is not working correctly. It is a curious fact that little attention seems to be paid to how exactly the immigration system is broken.
By this I don’t even necessarily mean, “how did the immigration system come to be broken?” (though an account of the relevant history could be helpful as well). I merely mean what precisely is not working.
It is in the nature of broken things – like the car in my driveway, for instance – that they are very difficult to fix if you don’t know which part is not functioning properly. By contrast, if you have a clear knowledge of the symptoms, at the very least you tend to waste less time on things that are not entirely germane. Since I know, in the case of my car, that all of the lights except the headlights refuse to turn on, I have not tried to remedy the situation by changing the oil or by looking behind the wheels.
In the immigration problem, as we will see, we are often trying to fix the wrong thing.
The root problem with our immigration system is quite easy to state in detail. The fact that it is not stated more often is clear evidence of the “will to obfuscation” among those with vested interests in keeping the system broken. This is what’s wrong:
The number of illegal aliens in America has been growing since the Reagan amnesty of 1986. At first, these aliens were limited both geographically and, more to the point, by the jobs that they could hold. They necessarily took employment where cash changed hands or where, for other reasons, the authorities were not involved. Over time, certain employers – especially those who could get away with resorting to the black market – found a competitive advantage in hiring illegal aliens.
The “career choice” of illegal aliens (and, at the same time, the geographic range) increased as consequences for failing to obey the law became weaker and weaker. That choice expanded dramatically as illegal aliens began providing fake Social Security cards to obtain employment – despite the fact that the employee’s name and Social Security number did not match.
The Social Security Administration sent out “no-match” letters in these cases and some employers did (and some still do) purge their employee bases of such individuals. These letters, which actually ceased altogether from 2008 until 2011, have been diluted in their legal import to employers by virtue of immigration-related litigation. An interesting discussion on no-match letters can be found here.
At the same time as the legal ramifications for hiring illegal aliens evaporated, the moral consequences of doing so dissolved as well.
First of all, every Man Jack and Woman Jill employer in America who employees illegal aliens knows damn well that they are doing so. Meg Whitman lost her race for governor of California because no one believed that a former eBay CEO who employed a maid in her house for nine years (whom she described as like a member of her family) was so stupid as to not actually know that that employee was here illegally.
So it is with the savvy businessmen across America. The Social Security card that they take does not prove, to them or anyone else, that their employee is legally allowed to work in America. Rather, it merely gives them plausible deniability that they were aware that their employee was illegal.
It is on this sea of plausible deniability that we have floated the illegal alien ark. And the employers, and their dishonest defenders in the Chamber of Commerce, are frankly terrified that the ark might someday sink…that they themselves might yet end up in jail — because they know full well that they are breaking the law and that they are foisting the social and economic costs of their “business practices” onto their neighbors.
Believe me, if you give the average employer a way out — especially one that allows a gradual ratcheting down of his illegal alien worker base — he will grasp at it in a heartbeat.
So the point is this: The 12-20 million illegal aliens in the U.S.; the swamping of our emergency rooms and the invasion of our state parks; the weight on our welfare services and the heart-wrenching unemployment in American ghettos; the countless cases of hit-and-run accidents; the lawlessness that accompanies any criminal underground whose members fear the police more than the drug dealers, rapists and murderers in their midst; the enormously expensive and utterly useless fence; the mad rush of children and pregnant mothers across 1,000 miles of badlands and deserts; and the babies floating in the Rio Grande: they all exist because employers do not have sufficient incentive or morality to proactively determine if the person handing them that Social Security card is legally allowed to work in the United States.
It’s that simple.
But there is an equally simple, technological solution to this problem. It is called E-Verify. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services webpage:
E-Verify is an Internet-based system that allows businesses to determine the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States. E-Verify is fast, free and easy to use – and it’s the best way employers can ensure a legal workforce.
If E-Verify became the law of the land, McDonald’s, Hyatt, Dunkin’ Donuts and dozens of other large companies would simply call in their lawyers and say: “Ok, how do we implement this?” Half of the illegal aliens in America would instantly find themselves unemployable. Gradually, even restaurants, liquor stores, and cleaning services would be purged as well. No other single law would be as devastating to the illegal alien cancer in America.
Of course, it would be ideal if the law were retroactive, but it does not need to be. Over time, the natural turnover of employees will result in illegal aliens going home. And yes, this is nothing more than Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation.” It may take time, but it will work.
Additionally, it will help to stop the flow across the border. Of course, children and mothers who already have a working family member to support them in America will still come. But they will be coming specifically and solely as burdens.
I can prove mathematically that if we do not find a way to send illegal aliens who are here already back to their home countries, then it makes no difference how big a fence we build. Interrupting the illegal work chain is the key to getting illegal aliens to go home.
The whole partisan debate over immigration in Washington has been presented in terms of a “comprehensive” solution to our immigration problem versus the pejoratively-termed “piecemeal” approach, which principally seeks to obtain border security first and foremost. Border security can only be achieved by sending illegal aliens who are already in the country back to their homes. We are at our Rahm Emanuel moment in the immigration fight: the president is now demanding a piecemeal piece of legislation!
I say, let’s give it to him. Give him the money. And attach a clause making E-Verify mandatory for all employers in America.
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What say you, Ricochetti?
Published in General
All of them, man. All of them.
I respectfully submit that a country full of academics is an horrific scenario we are not likely to face.
Mike, please believe that when I’m asking questions I’m actually asking questions. (Not that I am “above” asking rhetorical questions to make a point, but in this case I prefaced my questions by emphasizing that I’m really *asking*)
Regarding “many would be done by people who would be better suited for more productive jobs:” If someone is suited for a more productive (and therefore higher-paying) job, and there is a demand for workers for that higher-paying job, then the person who is suited for the more productive job will take the more productive job. Which will, assuming the labor supply is fixed, increase the price for the less productive job – perhaps even to the point at which the “less productive” job is compensated just as well as the “more productive” job? (we’re not getting specific, here, so in our hypothetical it’s possible, right?)
In a free market, once the labor price for the “less productive” job was equal to the labor price for the “more productive” job … we can’t call one more productive than the other any more, can we?
E-Verify is a terrible idea that won’t solve the problem and just invites further government regulation and intrusion into business. Enforcing immigration is the government’s job, not private business.
Raising a wage does not increase productivity. Productivity is the amount of economic activity you produce based on your inputs. So a menial job does not become more productive based on an inflated salary, it actually becomes less productive because of the increases inputs. If a machine comes by that allows the worker to produce more, then there is an increase in productivity. High wage jobs just tend to contain a lot more inherent productivity.
Do you think that businesses owners should be allowed to hire illegal aliens *knowingly*? Usually harboring a criminal is considered by most people as criminal. Does an employer have a *moral* responsibility (to his neighbors) to not hire illegal aliens?
How much of the economic benefit just goes to the immigrants themselves, and how much to the native population? In other words, what do I get out of this that I would not otherwise have had?
If ICE “knowingly” wont deport illegals when they catch them, why should anyone else follow the law. And we pay ICE, we don’t pay the employers.
I agree with you that raising a wage by fiat does not increase productivity. However, if we depend on the free market to give us the proper “signals” about resource allocation … if the “judgment” of the free market is that two “jobs” are of equal value … see what I’m getting at?
That an employer has a duty to not hire someone who’s obviously here illegally? Or to not hire anyone until he goes out of his way to make sure that person is not here illegally?
Does an employer have a similar duty to investigate potential employee’s lives to discover other crimes?
(Obviously, many employers believe that hiring only employees who’ve passed some sort of background check makes for a more productive workplace. But do employers have a duty to do such screening even when they don’t think it’s necessary for their bottom line?)
I’m having trouble deciphering what you’re implying in your contrived example. I’m not sure what economic relevance it has. The signal seems to be that we’re so desperate to fill a low productivity job that someone needs to give up a more productive job and do this instead. When you restrict immigration you are effectively raising wages by fiat.
Who is forcing anyone to give up a productive job to take a less productive one? Do we have a labor shortage in this country?
Well, I didn;t make it clear, either. Sorry bout that.
I find it more “immoral” to live in a country where the government either refuses or is incapable of enforcing laws or extends benefits to non-citizens but does punish private citizens.
— Feds and many states do little or nothing to ensure illegals are not voting in elections but we should punish businesses for hiring illegals
— In states like California where illegals get the same access to college student financial aid benefits that citizens do but we should punish businesses for hiring illegals
— In States like Nevada, illegals can get a drivers license but we should punish businesses for hiring illegals
— The IRS sent $4.2 billion in child-credit checks to illegals but we should punish businesses for hiring illegals
— Illegals get access to Medicare’s prescription drug program but we should punish businesses for hiring illegals
Why give a government that is already contradictory when dealing with illegal immigrants more power to punish it citizenry?
Madness.
We are not talking about screening. We are talking about suspicion of a crime. If an employer has reason to suspect that someone has robbed a bank, forget hiring or not hiring! aren’t they responsible for telling the police? Wouldn’t you do so even if you weren’t sure? And employers know full well that they are employing illegal aliens when they do so. Entering the country illegally is a crime. Why don’t the employers (and anybody else, for that matter) have a responsibility to report it to the authorities? There *is*, by the way, still an ICE hotline.
The essential reason we have an illegal immigration problem is that employers look the other way. It is that simple.
Now I’m confused. In the hypothetical, people would be pressured by the market to take the less desirable job. I wasn’t implying anything about reality by it, just answering your honest questions. And yes, it does in fact look as if we have a labor shortage.
Because illegal immigration is a statutory crime and not a violation of anyone’s property rights. “Call the police, this person wants to take a job without permission!” It’s childish.
Probably not. As the Good Book says,
I have had many suspicions in my time, but none certain enough to be worth reporting to the police.
In a sense, reporting a suspicion is a risk analysis. You have to weigh the product of the harm your suspicious neighbor might do to others if your suspicions are correct as well as the likelihood that they are correct against the product of the harm that you might do to your neighbor by falsely accusing him and the likelihood that your suspicions are wrong.
Decent people give others the benefit of the doubt, and don’t tattle over mere suspicions.
I don’t understand how people can be pressured by the market to take the less desirable job if a) they are qualified for the more desirable job and b) the more desirable job is available. ?!?
Regarding that link about “labor shortage:”
1) The article starts by saying that the opinion is uncommon. Now, I know as well as you do that uncommon does not mean wrong … but it does mean that the expressed opinion is questioned by other economists. So it’s not a trump card, even though it’s definitely interesting.
2) The article also talks about two-tier labor markets and matches (and mis-matches) between desired skill sets and existing skill sets. This is good fodder for a discussion about overhauling US immigration policy, focusing at least in part on encouraging/streamlining immigration of persons with high-value skill sets. Which is an excellent topic for another post. But I thought that in this conversation we were talking mostly about our current-and-foreseeable-future illegal immigration concerns? Which, to the best of my knowledge, is mostly dealing with “low-skill” (that’s a very awkward term, and not accurate either, please read it “charitably”) persons who would, perforce, be mostly looking for low-paying “low productivity” jobs(?)
Supporting the punishing of private business while the government supports policies that encourage the flow of illegal immigration or deport those here is really just giving the government more tools to punish private business. The Federal bureaucracy has already proven itself unaccountable and selective in its prosecution of business. Why give it more fodder to selectively target businesses it doesn’t like and ignore the violations of those it supports?
Do you not think that people that hire illegal aliens are smart enough to know it? Do you, for example, think Meg Whitman really did not know her maid was an illegal alien. People don’t become successful in business by being that stupid. They have plausible deniability and, more importantly, they have self-interest.
The fact that the law is not being fully enforced to deal with a horrible problem gives me the right to ignore it as well? I, for one, am so disgusted with the invasion of illegal aliens that it would never occur to me to *not* go as far as I need to to be sure I don’t hire one.
There’s a lot of space between knowing something for sure and having no suspicion of it whatsoever, and people can be smart enough not to ask.
A government that openly encourages illegal immigration with no consequences but punishes it citizens for doing the same is unjust government and grossly more troubling than whether people, legally or illegally here, are employed.
I think the idea that household be required by Federal Law to do a background check on someone working in their house is another example of too much government intrusion.
If you really believe your rhetoric you should be for extending E-Verify to anyone using a contractor. Do you want that as well?
Wrong. Emergency rooms are crowded because of the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
So we want federal policy to be that we punish hospitals for not providing medical care to illegals but punish private business for providing illegals employment?
Madness.
Absolutely I want E-Verify for anyone using a contractor. When someone comes in to work in my house and I am suspicious I ask for proof of citizenship. Don’t have it? Send someone who does.
You seem to view the problem entirely in terms of overreach of government. Forget government regulations for the moment. If I find that a friend or neighbor is employing an illegal alien in their business then I am ashamed of them. They are endangering me and my children by supporting a lawless underground. They are costing me money by supporting the import of poverty. They are contributing to potential health problems of all of us. And for what? To put that third Mercedes in the driveway? They should be ashamed of themselves.
No my position is not that government overreach is entirely the problem. I recognize that illegal immigration poses many problems. I live in Central California where there are many problems posed by illegal immigration. My position is that the same government you are relying on for E-Verify is the same one that created much of the problem and is currently actively pursuing all sort of policies that provide other incentives for illegals to stay here.