- Jun 6, 2007
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It is great that the government in Washington is moving to pass comprehension immigration reform legislation, this has been a terrible festering problem for the America people and it sure would be really nice if we could put it behind us! The wisest remarks in the debate on this issue which has gone on intensely now for six plus years is that the American people will never stop illegal immigration as long as there is a job in this country for that illegal immigrant to get, it will never stop unless the job spigot for illegals is turned off, no fence, no camera, no group of soldiers and no group of law enforcement officers will stop them from coming when there is that benefit for them. Just think of this situation from the illegal immigrant's perspective even a minimum wage job in America is often five times or more than the wages that immigrant could get in their home country this income differential makes a huge difference in the quality of life for that immigrant and their family in short it is worth the risk as long as there is a plentiful supply of jobs here for illegals!
The country has heard a lot recently about making sure there is enough border security resources on the border to stop the influx of illegal immigrants and make sure there is a computer based tracking system at the country's ports of entry and exit to facilitate the identification of foreigners who overstay their visa and try to apprehend them and deport them. Members of Congress and the federal government having grappled with the border security issue for many years now and realizing the limitations of the country's economic resources should be able to come to a reasonable compromise on what actual resources must be on the border to meet the country's security needs and personally I don't see how any elected official in the 21st century in America is not willing to agree that the country should have a computer based tracking system at all our country's ports how can a government claim excellent security when they have no record of who is coming in or leaving the country and affordable technology could fix the problem. Many Republicans demands on this issue are unreasonable as long as the immigration legislation mandates this tracking system be built and mandates the money to pay for it and operate it for say five years be appropriated why do you have to wait for it to be built to give seven plus million people already in the country legal status in this country it is completely unnecessary if these mandates are in the bill it will definitely be built in a timely manner and that is their only legitimate concern here!
The public discussion on this legislation isn't focusing enough on the critical issue of shutting off the job spigot for illegals. A big part of the silver bullet on this specific problem is fully using the information of the Social Security Administration. What I mean is that even mischievous employers of illegal immigrants who know or essentially know their worker or workers is illegal pay those workers social security taxes because they know in America many people go to jail for tax evasion and it isn't worth it to not pay the SS tax and of course "unwitting about illegal" immigration status employers pay these worker social security taxes. This fact that social security taxes is being paid on many illegal workers is critically important because these illegal workers are fraudulently using other peoples' social security number so when their employer sends the social security tax with the fraudulent social security number to the Social Security Administration this Federal agency can, if so directed, easily pick-up on this and give this information to the Immigration and Custom Enforcement Office and ICE can then take steps to shut this illegal job down. In fact, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff back in 2008 started to use this idea it was called the "no match letter program" from the Social Security Administration and it showed a lot of promise and the American people heard a lot of rationales for why this effort was stopped but I suspect the truth of the matter is that this tool if allowed to be used to its fullest potential would have been too effective at turning off the job spigot for illegals and the American people collectively don't want that effective of a tool being used currently because they know from a justice standpoint we should be legalizing a lot of these illegals because the country has used their labor for many many years and it isn't right to just throw them out of the country because it now suits our interest but if the country legalizes most of the illegal immigrants as this legislation promises it is a whole new ballgame and this tool should be used to its maximum effectiveness. Congress in this legislation should mandate that the Social Security Administration continually mine their records for workers either using other people's SS#, phony SS# or deceased people's SS# and turn this information over to ICE who should notify these workers' employers that there is this problem and the employer should re-check their workers credentials but in any event unless the worker in question files an application to correct the Social Security Administration records and has the record corrected or the application is under review/consideration the worker must be terminated within sixty days. In order to stop illegal workers from wrongly filing applications to stay their termination the legislation should make it a crime to fraudulently file this application and make it a mandatory six months sentence that must run consecutively to any other sentence the person receives in federal court, moreover, the legislation should mandate that the social security administration must videotape every application to fix the SS Administration record here with the SSA official mandated on the video to ask the applicant the key questions like your name and your social security number, etc. so that the criminal prosecution of these cases is a cake walk the videotape is like a breathalyzer test in a DUI case. The media reports are that the group in Congress working on this issue are talking about making mandatory on all employers that they use E-Verify for all their employees to verify they have legal status, that is great but that system can be skirted by illegal workers in some circumstances where this SS# tool will screen tighter than E-Verify and identify more illegal workers, both tools should be used by the Federal Government.
For the problem that the Federal government often doesn't provide enough resources to solve illegal immigration in individual states the solution to this is quite straightforward in the legislation give the Governors of each state the power to sue the Federal Government in Federal Court to provide the shortfall in resources in that Governor's respective state, have the law give Federal Judges the authority to order the Federal government to spend the money to correct the shortfalls and the Congress and/or President shouldn't be able to obstruct this order. So that this isn't a completely subjective determination for courts the law should have objective mandates ICE should have enough resources to check each employer in a state for immigration compliance at least once every two years, at least ninety percent of illegals identified by ICE should be deported within one year of identification and if an illegal person is released from custody from ICE and does not show up for a scheduled appearance the next time ICE apprehends that person that person should be permanently held in custody until deported, the Federal government must be serious here, there should be at least a certain percentage of ICE and/or border officers within a state based on how many illegal immigrants in a state based on expert analysis, etc.. The law really needs to have this court assistance option because one can be rest assured that several years down the road after the law is passed when the spotlight is off this issue Washington will cut immigration enforcement spending in favor of more popular federal spending and the country will be back on course to have another crisis like America currently has with illegal immigration!
From the media reports it seems like there is a gathering consensus among politicians in Washington to legalize and provide a path for citizenship to illegal immigrants in this country. Both benefits are the right thing to do if Washington leaves five, six, seven million people in this limbo status of legalized but having no path to citizenship where they can't do important and fundamental things like vote this wound on the nation involving illegal immigration won't heal and this causes an insidious and ugly divisive harm in America it paints a lot of Americans as anti-Hispanic and we aren't the reality of illegal immigration causes a multitude of harms and one could substitute any ethnic group for the Hispanic illegal immigrants and it would still cause this multitude of harms and bring out the same concerns among us! Though, the thing that I think the American people strongly want on this whole issue is Congress with this legislation to really send the message to really tell foreigners throughout the world inclined to come to this country illegally that you really offend and really violate the rights of and generate great anger in the American people doing this. At minimum to achieve this goal the legislation should limit this legalization benefit to illegal immigrants that have been in the US and have been working for at least three years prior to enactment of this law. These matters of immigration aren't a game there is no race to make it to this country before passage of this law this message must be sent clearly. This immigration problem has been at a crisis level now for at least since 2007/2008 when the country tried prior to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation and couldn't, when the authorities in America largely reocgnized their is no hope of deporting all the illegal immigrants in America and the Bush Administration increased the size of the border patrol by like seventy-five percent to try to stem the problem, foreigners have been on notice now for these five years that illegal immigrants are not welcome in America making a three year cut-off for legalization is overwhelmingly fair to illegals. Further, with this legislation there should be a surge of funding on enforcement and the like for the first five years after enactment of this law with a real effort to get this problem completlely under control in that time fram with a real effort on enmasse deportations with annual major congressional hearings during this period to report on the status of the problem. One last point, the media reports participants involved in the Congressional negotiations are looking at giving legal foreign workers the benefit in this legislation that if they work in this country for say twenty years they can earn their green card. This is an excellent idea, it is fair and it gives these foreign workers an incentive to abide by America's immigration laws and it will help foster good will between the foreign workers and the American people!
The country has heard a lot recently about making sure there is enough border security resources on the border to stop the influx of illegal immigrants and make sure there is a computer based tracking system at the country's ports of entry and exit to facilitate the identification of foreigners who overstay their visa and try to apprehend them and deport them. Members of Congress and the federal government having grappled with the border security issue for many years now and realizing the limitations of the country's economic resources should be able to come to a reasonable compromise on what actual resources must be on the border to meet the country's security needs and personally I don't see how any elected official in the 21st century in America is not willing to agree that the country should have a computer based tracking system at all our country's ports how can a government claim excellent security when they have no record of who is coming in or leaving the country and affordable technology could fix the problem. Many Republicans demands on this issue are unreasonable as long as the immigration legislation mandates this tracking system be built and mandates the money to pay for it and operate it for say five years be appropriated why do you have to wait for it to be built to give seven plus million people already in the country legal status in this country it is completely unnecessary if these mandates are in the bill it will definitely be built in a timely manner and that is their only legitimate concern here!
The public discussion on this legislation isn't focusing enough on the critical issue of shutting off the job spigot for illegals. A big part of the silver bullet on this specific problem is fully using the information of the Social Security Administration. What I mean is that even mischievous employers of illegal immigrants who know or essentially know their worker or workers is illegal pay those workers social security taxes because they know in America many people go to jail for tax evasion and it isn't worth it to not pay the SS tax and of course "unwitting about illegal" immigration status employers pay these worker social security taxes. This fact that social security taxes is being paid on many illegal workers is critically important because these illegal workers are fraudulently using other peoples' social security number so when their employer sends the social security tax with the fraudulent social security number to the Social Security Administration this Federal agency can, if so directed, easily pick-up on this and give this information to the Immigration and Custom Enforcement Office and ICE can then take steps to shut this illegal job down. In fact, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff back in 2008 started to use this idea it was called the "no match letter program" from the Social Security Administration and it showed a lot of promise and the American people heard a lot of rationales for why this effort was stopped but I suspect the truth of the matter is that this tool if allowed to be used to its fullest potential would have been too effective at turning off the job spigot for illegals and the American people collectively don't want that effective of a tool being used currently because they know from a justice standpoint we should be legalizing a lot of these illegals because the country has used their labor for many many years and it isn't right to just throw them out of the country because it now suits our interest but if the country legalizes most of the illegal immigrants as this legislation promises it is a whole new ballgame and this tool should be used to its maximum effectiveness. Congress in this legislation should mandate that the Social Security Administration continually mine their records for workers either using other people's SS#, phony SS# or deceased people's SS# and turn this information over to ICE who should notify these workers' employers that there is this problem and the employer should re-check their workers credentials but in any event unless the worker in question files an application to correct the Social Security Administration records and has the record corrected or the application is under review/consideration the worker must be terminated within sixty days. In order to stop illegal workers from wrongly filing applications to stay their termination the legislation should make it a crime to fraudulently file this application and make it a mandatory six months sentence that must run consecutively to any other sentence the person receives in federal court, moreover, the legislation should mandate that the social security administration must videotape every application to fix the SS Administration record here with the SSA official mandated on the video to ask the applicant the key questions like your name and your social security number, etc. so that the criminal prosecution of these cases is a cake walk the videotape is like a breathalyzer test in a DUI case. The media reports are that the group in Congress working on this issue are talking about making mandatory on all employers that they use E-Verify for all their employees to verify they have legal status, that is great but that system can be skirted by illegal workers in some circumstances where this SS# tool will screen tighter than E-Verify and identify more illegal workers, both tools should be used by the Federal Government.
For the problem that the Federal government often doesn't provide enough resources to solve illegal immigration in individual states the solution to this is quite straightforward in the legislation give the Governors of each state the power to sue the Federal Government in Federal Court to provide the shortfall in resources in that Governor's respective state, have the law give Federal Judges the authority to order the Federal government to spend the money to correct the shortfalls and the Congress and/or President shouldn't be able to obstruct this order. So that this isn't a completely subjective determination for courts the law should have objective mandates ICE should have enough resources to check each employer in a state for immigration compliance at least once every two years, at least ninety percent of illegals identified by ICE should be deported within one year of identification and if an illegal person is released from custody from ICE and does not show up for a scheduled appearance the next time ICE apprehends that person that person should be permanently held in custody until deported, the Federal government must be serious here, there should be at least a certain percentage of ICE and/or border officers within a state based on how many illegal immigrants in a state based on expert analysis, etc.. The law really needs to have this court assistance option because one can be rest assured that several years down the road after the law is passed when the spotlight is off this issue Washington will cut immigration enforcement spending in favor of more popular federal spending and the country will be back on course to have another crisis like America currently has with illegal immigration!
From the media reports it seems like there is a gathering consensus among politicians in Washington to legalize and provide a path for citizenship to illegal immigrants in this country. Both benefits are the right thing to do if Washington leaves five, six, seven million people in this limbo status of legalized but having no path to citizenship where they can't do important and fundamental things like vote this wound on the nation involving illegal immigration won't heal and this causes an insidious and ugly divisive harm in America it paints a lot of Americans as anti-Hispanic and we aren't the reality of illegal immigration causes a multitude of harms and one could substitute any ethnic group for the Hispanic illegal immigrants and it would still cause this multitude of harms and bring out the same concerns among us! Though, the thing that I think the American people strongly want on this whole issue is Congress with this legislation to really send the message to really tell foreigners throughout the world inclined to come to this country illegally that you really offend and really violate the rights of and generate great anger in the American people doing this. At minimum to achieve this goal the legislation should limit this legalization benefit to illegal immigrants that have been in the US and have been working for at least three years prior to enactment of this law. These matters of immigration aren't a game there is no race to make it to this country before passage of this law this message must be sent clearly. This immigration problem has been at a crisis level now for at least since 2007/2008 when the country tried prior to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation and couldn't, when the authorities in America largely reocgnized their is no hope of deporting all the illegal immigrants in America and the Bush Administration increased the size of the border patrol by like seventy-five percent to try to stem the problem, foreigners have been on notice now for these five years that illegal immigrants are not welcome in America making a three year cut-off for legalization is overwhelmingly fair to illegals. Further, with this legislation there should be a surge of funding on enforcement and the like for the first five years after enactment of this law with a real effort to get this problem completlely under control in that time fram with a real effort on enmasse deportations with annual major congressional hearings during this period to report on the status of the problem. One last point, the media reports participants involved in the Congressional negotiations are looking at giving legal foreign workers the benefit in this legislation that if they work in this country for say twenty years they can earn their green card. This is an excellent idea, it is fair and it gives these foreign workers an incentive to abide by America's immigration laws and it will help foster good will between the foreign workers and the American people!
