by: Geoff Ficke
In the 1980’s the Reagan Administration supported passage of the Simpson-Mazzoli Act as a way to, once and for all, to end the vexing cauldron of problems created by illegal immigration. Obviously Simpson-Mazzoli was not successful. In fact, the law, and it’s particularly fuzzy enforcement mechanisms only served to accelerate and fuel the problem.
Today we have a mess. Rational solutions are paralyzed by our politically cancerous left versus right cat fighting. Even reasoned discussions of potential solutions to a problem that all parties agree must be settled are reduced to sloganeering and name calling. Let me propose a simple set of solutions that could, really should, settle the matter to a high degree of satisfaction benefitting all sides in this crucial, heated debate.
We really have three sets of distinct interest groups involved: the illegal immigrants (mostly Hispanic and Mexican) and the Mexican government, the American business community that requires a massive supply of labor and the citizens of the United States who are being exposed to the costs and liabilities inherent in supporting public services for millions of people that have entered the country illegally and are forced to live in the shadows.
First let’s address the business community. Any employer that needs field workers, gardeners, restaurant workers, whatever, would have to advertise the positions in local print media two times, stating pay, benefits, location of employment and a description of labor to be performed. This will also prove or disprove the theory that Americans will not perform menial jobs.
If the positions are not filled with local, legal American job seekers, then the employer would have the option to address their labor requirements through a labor co-operative. This would NOT be a new government bureaucracy, but would be under the jurisdiction of the Dept. of Labor. Private staffing firms like Manpower, companies with experience in the field of matching employee and employer needs, would be contracted to act as clearing houses. They would staff offices along the Mexican border, and in countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala.
The employers would pay a small fee to the government for each person hired and to the contracted human resource, Manpower-type firms for their time, expenses, background checks and matching applicants to positions. The employer, by participating in such a labor co-operative, would no longer be committing a crime and risk serious fines and legal jeopardy that can occur when hiring illegal workers. The employer would provide the co-operative with an order for a specific number of workers, copies of the print advertisements run locally seeking American workers, clearly post pay, locations of employment, benefits, housing and the length of the work engagement. There would be time limits on service, not to exceed one year. After a minimum return period of three months to their home country, a foreign worker can re-sign for another tour of employment.
The employer would be required to handle any medical costs incurred by the co-operative provided worker and provide travel to, and from, the point of embarkation at the beginning and end of the contract. The employer would pay a significant fine if the worker does not return to the embarkation point, on time and sign-out on their way out of the country. A small tax would be withheld from the workers pay to support the program and it’s policing. A card dated and signed by the employer and the worker, and describing job particulars would be used for identification.
This would provide American farms and businesses a simple, affordable, easily negotiated system of filling labor needs.
Now let’s address the illegal immigrants and their government’s interests.
The first duty of any sovereign government is to protect their citizens. And yet, illegal immigrants are the targets of the most corrupt, dangerous and cynical forms of abuse enabled by the very governments that encourage this form of immigration from Latin America. Crooked police and border patrols shake down poor, frightened, confused travelers. Dangerously hopping trains in the night, co-mingling with drug couriers, rape, murder, robbery and kidnapping of illegal immigrants is widespread and tolerated.
Under a labor co-operative system these abuses would be virtually stopped. Job seekers could visit their town hall or a labor co-operative office and use a computer to apply and peruse job listings. They could review online, conduct a search of positions listed by job description and location and then apply. If for instance, a farmer in Earlington, KY is seeking 8 laborers for 9 months, the deal can be cut and travel organized without ever having to risk one’s life dodging snakes in Central American jungles or crossing bleak deserts and being dumped in an arroyo by extorting “coyotes”. The thousands of dollars in fees paid to the illegal human transporters would be far better utilized by the very poor who so desperately seek work in the United States.
Latin American governments, the very governments that do not recognize the rule of law, property rights and the importance of free markets, callously encourage illegal immigration. This black movement of their citizens acts as a pressure release valve on their societies. The billions of dollars in remittances that are returned to family back home by illegal immigrants to America serves as a lubricant to quieting social tensions and financially supporting populations locked in poverty and despair by the incompetence and corruption of the governments under which they must live.
Under a labor co-operative system these bureaucratic ogres would still enjoy the benefits of billions in annual remittances returning to their countries. Families could continue to subsist, albeit in grinding hopelessness and poverty. Government’s duty to protect its citizens would at least be celebrated a bit less cynically.
Finally, how would the American citizen benefit from an organized labor co-operative system? Labor would finally be organized, free to come for a set period of time, return home and pay a small tax to cover the minor cost of the services they would consume. This would over time lighten the burdens on social services, hospitals, police forces, school systems, local, state and the federal government. As long as immigrants commit a crime the first time they step foot into the country illegally there will be a parallel universe inside our society of crime, evasion and a lack of integration into society.
Cities would be safer. Businesses would be able to provide the goods and services that the society has come to expect. The millions of illegal immigrants currently here in the country would be able to participate in the labor co-operative system, but they would be granted no benefits beyond what any other applicant would receive. Anchor babies would no longer be given the rights of an American citizen.
Any employer who is caught employing illegal workers after the labor co-operative system is functional would be subject to exponentially larger fines and seizure of all business assets.
Finally, the border must be sealed. No country can survive the causal entry and exit of its border by millions of people at will. Our border is a particularly enticing target for illegal crossing because it separates a wealthy country with a too-generous welfare state, from a group of countries with dysfunctional economies where poverty is the rule, not the exception for the masses. Understandably, it is a magnet, but it is long past the time when we must close the border while responding to the needs of illegal immigrants to work, businesses to have employees to do manual labor and citizens to be relieved of the burden of supporting a stupefying drain on the public purse caused by this solvable problem.
Politicians seeking to curry favor with a new group of voters or see their populations rid of a mass of mostly young, hungry laborers seeking what they cannot provide, will not like this plan. They prefer to keep the issue and not find a solution. If the government will only allow a private enterprise solution, one where markets rule, not bureaucrats, we can finally settle these problems. It is time for a little common sense.
