The brilliantly constructed 1986 federal Immigration Reform and Control Act is in deep trouble because of a welter of dubious political and legal challenges--along with some ludicrous local government moves that make a mockery of the law.
The source of the trouble isn't hard to understand, and Congress can easily devise a solution if it really wants to reach the law's goals of helping millions of illegal immigrants come up from underground while also slowing the flood of more foreigners illegally pouring into the United States.
The law, the most generous immigration law ever passed in any country, has already allowed more than 2.5 million illegal immigrants to live here permanently. To help curb the influx of millions more, Congress decided for the first time that employers who knowingly hire them would be punished by fines and even imprisonment.
Initially, the law worked beautifully. The tide of illegals receded dramatically.
In 1986, before the law went into effect, 1.6 million people were apprehended crossing the border illegally. By 1989, the number was cut by 50%, mostly because of the threat that employers who hired illegals would be severely penalized.
However, by last year, the number rose to 1.05 million. (The government estimates that at least two people enter the United States illegally for each one apprehended.)
Why the increase? Lax enforcement of the law--primarily because of the success of crooks who produce counterfeit documents to falsely show that a foreign worker is legally entitled to a job. The worker usually pays about $350 for the fraudulent papers. The papers allow employers to claim they did not "knowingly" hire an illegal alien.
To block the rampant fraud, Congress is considering legislation requiring counterfeit-resistant work authorization cards for all workers.
Such cards are badly needed to help make sure that job-seekers are here legally. They would also curb discrimination against, say, brown-skinned workers denied jobs by bigoted employers who claim they refuse to hire workers that may be illegals.
One relatively inexpensive way would be to require each state to issue drivers' licenses like those being introduced by California, which are virtually counterfeit-proof. The cards could serve as both a driver's license and work authorization.
Other things are needed though--such as ending the disgraceful "day laborer" programs used by Los Angeles and other cities to help employers and illegal aliens evade the immigration law and mandated worker protections.
