A law that means business
Our immigration system is out of control. We can't hold the line at the border. We can't prevent the hiring of unauthorized workers. Despite our tough rhetoric, an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants feed a vast underground economy that makes a mockery of the rule of law.
No wonder the public is hungry for tougher enforcement -- and no wonder politicians from House Republican leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) are responding with promises to crack down.
Enhanced enforcement of immigration law is a key element of the legislation introduced in May by Kennedy and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). And it will surely be part of the more conservative Senate bill expected this month from Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona.
But just because everyone agrees more enforcement is necessary that doesn't mean we are on the verge of a solution. In fact, this only sets up a new battle between those who believe we can solve the immigration problem by appropriating money for enforcement only and those who see enforcement as part of a broader reform package.
It's not that we don't know how to enforce the law. We do. But by itself, enforcement doesn't work. Consider our success on the border in Southern California. Over the last decade, we tripled the manpower and quintupled the budget for policing what used to be the four busiest crossing points in California and Texas. And in each case, we managed to dramatically reduce the number of migrants apprehended in each sector.
The only catch: We didn't actually stop the flow. We just diverted it to other, less populated stretches of frontier -- such as Arizona and New Mexico -- where it will take much more personnel and technology to wrest control.
But the problem goes deeper than that. The truth is that beneath the bluster we're ambivalent about enforcing immigration law because we know that if we were to succeed, it could be disastrous for U.S. businesses and the American workers who depend on them.
Congress and most of the public grasped long ago that for enforcement to work, we need to take control not just on the border but also in the workplace. That's why the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act made it illegal for businesses to hire unauthorized workers. Efforts to enforce this provision culminated in 1998 in an initiative called Operation Vanguard, which targeted meatpacking plants in Nebraska -- a sector known to be highly dependent on illegal labor. Immigration agents compared company records with Social Security databases, then interrogated 4,500 suspect employees.
