If you think, as I do, that the #1 problem is the existence of a large undocumented population, then the proposed bill is probably a good solution. Since we're not in fact going to expel 10 million people, the alternative is to give them documents.
Matthew Yglesias on how to stop illegal employers:
all you need to do is establish a hefty incentive for illegal immigrants to rat out people who illegally employ them. Mark Kleiman has proposed a "poetic justice" version of this where an illegal who rats his employer out gets a green card in exchange. More prosaically, a ratter out could get a one-way ticket back to his home country plus a big fat check financed through employer fines. An enforcement system like this would be cheap to administer since you mostly wouldn't need to administer it at all -- illegal immigrants looking for a bonus, and potential employers of illegal immigrants afraid of being caught in a sting, would do the vast majority of the work.
I'm no expert on immigration policy, but it seems like these two comments would form the basis of a pretty damn good policy. There's no way in hell that we're going to expel everybody who isn't a legal resident, nor should we. And going forward, we need to stop illegal employers from their rampant lawlessness.
The focus of the immigration debate has largely been on immigrants and the cultural impact of their presence in the United States. Yet those immigrants moved here because American citizens have offered them jobs.
It's hard to fathom that we forget this obvious fact: without illegal employers, there would be no undocumented workers in the United States.
Illegal employers are the problem -- undocumented workers are the symptom.
So let's figure out a way to document the workers who are here and rationalize the system going forward, beginning with illegal employers.
© Jed Lewison