Immigration's Long Song

Word comes that the current administration is fining employers for employing illegal aliens at a greater rate than that of their predecessor administration. But, they are deporting fewer of the illegal alien workers than did their predecessor. So much for a comprehensive approach to the illegal alien worker problem.

To be clear, I applaud the increased pressure put upon the employer, for they need to be a part of the solution, but not just as a revenue stream for the government. Which, when one considers that the illegal alien is permitted to go down the street and find another job while his former employer is charged for giving him his last job, it is hard to take the government's efforts seriously, and easy for the jaded observer to see it as a scam.

Cue up Marvin Hamlisch's theme from the movie The Sting, and listen to this scenario.

Here's the plan fellows. We'll use our rhetoric as leverage to make the illegals sympathetic figures in the public arena. This will allow us to keep them in the country even after we have identified who they are. Next, we find out who is giving them work and we'll use the law to shake those trees for money. Of course, in order to keep our supply of illegal workers at its present level we'll just turn them loose to find another sucker who buys into our associates claims that hiring illegals is the only way the country's businesses can provide the people with food at affordable rates. It is a perfect Catch 22 for the employer, he is still compelled to hire the worker to for economic reasons, the supply of workers remains high, and we get our cut when we put the squeeze on the entrepreneurial employer trying to keep his company afloat. Oh, and one more thing, we'll need to make it seem unfair for people to ask if someone is legal, just to confuse and frustrate those who think it best to comply with the law as employers. KaChing!

Whereas, a serious attempt to enforce the laws would include doing both enforcement of the employer's obligation to ensure that the employer is legal, and documentation into the system as a criminal, followed by immediate deportation, of the illegal as a disincentive for them to repeat their violation of our sovereignty.

And, then, once these basic steps are being met we can establish a guest worker program, which prefers those who have shown themselves to be good citizens in the past, for temporary entry in our labor market. Then, and this is imperative, we must ensure that the guest worker program is correctly and consistently applied, thereby putting an end to illegal incursion by those only seeking a paycheck. Once all of this has been in place and working correctly, consistently, and, for as much as possible, glitch free; it will time to consider what criteria fits for allowing the guest worker to apply for a permanent place within our society; (these standards should be a high bar to cross with the burden of proof being upon the applicant not our nation and its citizens and governments).

In the present political environment it seems that getting to a resolution to the illegal alien situation is a long way off, the present state of capitulation endures without enough threat to its existence, too often we are just repeating the same stanza in a song that remains the same.