La Migra: A Comedy
The Border Patrol is one of our longest running and least funny jokes. A recent survey showed that about 40% of Mexicans would prefer to come to the US. No doubt similar statistics hold for enough countries to run our population up to a billion or so if we just opened the gates. Most Americans find this worrisome enough that Congress and the Executive find it necessaary to pretend to try to prevent illegal immigration. In order to do that they deploy an completely inadequate number of border patrol officers, with insufficient equipment, to patrol a long border.
This doesn't work, of course, and millions cross illegally into the US. It doesn't work, because it isn't intended to work, it's just pretend. The joke is on the hundreds who die trying to cross every year, the hundreds of thousands exploited by coyotes (the smugglers), the border patrol officers doing a thankless and hopeless job, and of course on the American people, who pay for it.
The real joke is that there is a straightforward way to drastically decrease illegal immigration, but Congress and the President refuse to consider it. It has two parts: A difficult to forge Social Security/ID card and stiff fines for those who hire illegal aliens. The government knows, or can easily find out, who hires illegal aliens. Almost all illegals are here to work, and if they can't get jobs they won't come. If employers could readily identify legal work applicants and faced stiff fines and payment of repatriation costs, they would stop hiring illegals.
Absurd policies are usually not totally accidental - they survive and thrive because someone benefits from them. The principal beneficiaries here are employers who get ready access to a vast pool of employees who work cheap, don't join unions, and dare not complain. They have managed to con a lot of immigrant rights supporters into supporting their program, but I can't understand why. Business wants to keep foreign labor cheap, abundant, and illegal. This hurts American workers by denying them jobs and reasonable wages, but it also hurts immigrant workers, because their illegal status makes it impossible to organize to get better pay and benefits.
If we had a system that effectively prevented illegal immigrants from working here, the border patrol could concentrate on stopping smugglers and terrorist infiltrators.
Adopting such a system would require a transition period, but that kind of detail would be simple once a real plan was adopted.
This doesn't work, of course, and millions cross illegally into the US. It doesn't work, because it isn't intended to work, it's just pretend. The joke is on the hundreds who die trying to cross every year, the hundreds of thousands exploited by coyotes (the smugglers), the border patrol officers doing a thankless and hopeless job, and of course on the American people, who pay for it.
The real joke is that there is a straightforward way to drastically decrease illegal immigration, but Congress and the President refuse to consider it. It has two parts: A difficult to forge Social Security/ID card and stiff fines for those who hire illegal aliens. The government knows, or can easily find out, who hires illegal aliens. Almost all illegals are here to work, and if they can't get jobs they won't come. If employers could readily identify legal work applicants and faced stiff fines and payment of repatriation costs, they would stop hiring illegals.
Absurd policies are usually not totally accidental - they survive and thrive because someone benefits from them. The principal beneficiaries here are employers who get ready access to a vast pool of employees who work cheap, don't join unions, and dare not complain. They have managed to con a lot of immigrant rights supporters into supporting their program, but I can't understand why. Business wants to keep foreign labor cheap, abundant, and illegal. This hurts American workers by denying them jobs and reasonable wages, but it also hurts immigrant workers, because their illegal status makes it impossible to organize to get better pay and benefits.
If we had a system that effectively prevented illegal immigrants from working here, the border patrol could concentrate on stopping smugglers and terrorist infiltrators.
Adopting such a system would require a transition period, but that kind of detail would be simple once a real plan was adopted.
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