Farmer's Branch Out on a Limb

Then why did you state:

The fine would be $10,000 per infraction per week of employment. The money would go directly to the Social Security fund minus a 1% collection bonus for IRS agents. (The agents would get nothing until they had the cash in hand.)

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The Social Security fund would be saved.

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The greediest IRS office couldn't catch that number, but let's say they gigged 500,000 employers (many of them for multiple offenses) -- that's a ver-r-r-r-y big number and plenty enough to save Social Security.


If you think the fine will simply prevent employers from going that route, how exactly are you going to catch 500,000 employers and how does your plan save social security?

 

Major and SF have already pointed out many of the potential problems with this but one more I would like to raise is the idea of turning IRS agents into bounty hunters. While the IRS is inefficient and bureaucratic it still is relatively clean. If we give them bounties on cracking down on businesses that employ illegal aliens we invite corruption and also the potential for a misallocation of resources. I can see IRS agents spending all of their time going after illegal aliens rather than dealing with other tax fraud. Or fudging enforcement numbers to collect higher bounties. Essentially the IRS would end up like towns that become speed traps since that is their most profitable way of generating income or like cops who fudge arrest records to meet arrest quotas.

 

The problem is you're then creating a bigger and more complex bureaucracy than the IRS is now. You're $10K fines are going to go to pay to hiring new IRS agents to track other IRS agents. Not to mention your designated division will have to be almost as big as the IRS is now considering that the normal tax fraud is what the IRS is what the IRS is investigating now along with all the other business of collecting taxes.

 

You're missing the point of why there is illegal immigration. Its not liberal thinking that attracts people to risk their lives to get into this country its the promise of work at rates higher than they get back home. The reason we have illegal immigration isn't because of bleeding heart liberals its because of people like Trader_Jorge who want their lawns mowed, their houses built and their fruit picked for cheaper wages than Americans will do it for.

Its not the bleeding hearts but the cold hearted businesses keeping an eye out on their bottom line.

If you really want to do something about illegal immigration enforcement isn't going to work in the longterm since this is a supply and demand issue but addressing the economic disparity between countries will.

 

This has nothing to do with being liberal or conservative. This is a pure supply/demand question. You have to crush the incentives for businesses and individuals to hire illegals, hence why I would support some type of guest worker program. Most work visas today focus on high tech industries and niche fields that only the highest level graduates in foreign countries can attain. The real issue is filling in labor jobs and low-income positions. The claim that somehow illegals are stealing are jobs is bunked by the fact that despite illegal immigration, we live in a society with near full employment and a low birth rate. Immigration is the main thing keeping this country afloat in terms of steady population growth. SOMETHING has to fill in the void. Currently that's illegal immigration and nothing is going to change that unless you're....

1. Willing to settle for substantially higher prices and settle for less consumer demand since illegals make up a decent portion of our consumption spending. It would be the ultimate economic nightmare. An economic slowdown caused by the virtual elimination of millions of consumers combined with higher input prices for goods and services. That's got stagflation written all over it.

2. Willing to swallow the absurd bureaucratic costs associated with an illegal immigration crackdown. You're asking the IRS to divert resources away from tax fraud to hunt down illegals and on top of that asking them to oversee themselves with more bureaucracy. When anyone criticizes the concept of "big government," these types of solutions are the reason why.

Your sweat shop claims are a good attempt at claiming moral superiority on the issue but the fact is that if you are concerned with the livelihood of illegals, then you have to acknowledge that dividing and tearing up families in an attempt to rid the country of illegals has some serious moral dilemmas attached to it as well since there's no guarantee that life in whatever country they came from is any better.

 

I am not sure how I stand on this issue as I can see both sides have some valid points. However, if you starting sending employers and land lords to jail and/or heavy fines, you will see the number of illegal immigrants in this country reduced dramatically, it is just that simple. Enforcement against illegal immigrants is useless because they have nothing to lose, the worst thing you can do to them is to send them back to where they came from, but the employers and landlords are the people with a lot to lose thus they will follow the law if there are heavy penelties involved.

 

The problem though is the cost involved in effective enforcement and the costs on the economy. The presence of illegal aliens has been a check on inflation but businesses will be forced to raise prices to make up for the loss of that cheaper labor. There will always be that temptation to hire illegal labor by businesses if they feel they can't survive without it and take the risks of fines and other penalties if they feel the alternative is going out of business.

At the sametime what documentation will be used to check immigration status? Already there is a huge business in fake SSI and other documents. Unless you're going to add even more costs to businesses to weed out fake work documents all increased enforcement will do on businesses is to increase the black market on documents.

As I said before the only longterm sustainable solution that works economically for the US is to reduce the economic disparity between us and other countries. As long as people know they can find work here and employers know they can get cheap labor from there will be a huge push for immigration both legal and illegal.

 

I am not debating if illegal immigrants are good for the country or not. I am only saying that the enforcement on the employer side is not as hard as people make it out to be. There could easily be web application where employers could verify the SSN against address and name, if two or more people are using the same ID one of them is a fraud, it is that simple. It should not be that hard with the database capabilities we have today.

 

Correct but it seems like a difficult proposition to implement legislation that would eliminate or reduce the economic disparity between the US and Central/South America. We should pursue that goal for plenty of other reasons besides illegal immigration. The real question is what do we do in the short term?

 

^ The problem is that your solution potentially creates bigger problems than it solves.

My argument is that given the economic disparity there will always be a demand for cheap labor and there is a ready supply. Unless those underlying conditions are met ways will always be found to circumvent enforcement.

 

You are correct it was unfair to drag him into the thread since he hasn't posted in it yet. My apologies.

 

The problem with a public database of SSI numbers is that it potentially could lead to more fraud as counterfitters could then also mine the system for people who don't have SSI's already and then apply for them in their names or use the names of children or disabled who would be difficult to match up the real person with the fake documentation. Businesses have access to verify credit card numbers but that doesn't prevent ID theft of credit card numbers and its likely the same thing could happen with SSI.

As I stated before as long as there is a demand and a supply for cheap labor ways will be found to circumvent the system.

The problem I see with stopping illegal immigration is that it parallels the drug war in many ways. I believe that heavy handed enforcement is ultimately futile but more than that it enriches a criminal black market of coyotes and counterfitters who profit at the expense, and often lives, of people just looking for a better life. The best solution that I would advocate is bringing illegal immigration out of the shadows and accepting the situation. I personally would recommend doing away with minimum wage to leave it to the market to the set the price for everyone both legal and illegal and have a guest worker program. Guest workers can come and work at whatever wage they can but they have to be registered so we can keep track of who is coming in.

Obviously this won't address the paranoia about immigrants taking jobs or using services but at least then we can determine how much of an impact immigrants have on our economy. So far most things are just conjecture. I personally believe that illegal immigrants actually add more to the economy than they take out.

Eventually as immigrants transfer capital back to their countries of origins those economies will have a better shot at developing and hopefully ending the disparity that drives immigration to begin with.

 

This isn't the time of the Vikings. Building up the economies in other countries helps us because they create new markets for our products and services. Why do you think China, Japan and several other export heavy countries are so willing to buy our debt even though its unlikely they will ever get paid back? Its because they know that by helping to grow our economy helps them to grow.

I never said anything about increasing social services but that is a small costs to pay to keep inflation low and productivity up that we get out of having immigrant labor. Increasing bureaucracy for IRS enforcement doesn't help the economy but hurts it as you are spending money with no economic stimulus but instead an economic damper.

Also if you are concerned about social services one of the big problems with illegal immigration is that they can't go back without risking all of the hardship they went through to get here. Considering that many illegals send money back to their homes its obvious that many of them don't want to settle here but are only here for work. A mechanism that allows them to come and go legally will reduce the need for social services as they won't be settling here to benefit from social services. A guest worker program for seasonal work like construction and agriculture will reduce any drag on social services even more as the workers will only be here during the work season rather than year round.

 

Also I don't know what your perception is of labor done by illegal immigrants but most studies have found its not slave labor as most of the work they do they are paid more than minimum wage. While I believe we should repeal the minimum wage as its an artificial floor but in general it doesn't apply to that many people.