Deporting Illegals
It Definitely Can Be Done
By Daniel Muniz

It is easy in theory but definitely not in practice. John Hawkins of Right Wing News often explains that too many people, even immigration reformers, have accepted as a fact that there is no possible way to deport the 8-12 million illegal aliens already in this country even though such an assertion is purely a myth. Of course it can be done but a lot of things have to interlock into place in order for the process to become efficient and effective. And that involves an enormous amount of cooperation between governmental agencies that are currently apathetic about it.

As Hawkins suggests, an effective method to halt illegal immigration is to stop it right at its source.

However, recognizing the source is actually a problem for many immigration reformers. Some like to repeat the falsehood that America is being invaded by illegal aliens. That is such a dishonest proclamation but it has been repeated so often that many reformers have been misled into believing it.

First of all, there is absolutely no invasion taking place. The people who are here in this country illegally did not invade America but were invited. There are tens of thousands of employers, big and small, who want illegal aliens because they represent cheap labor. Because of this enormous demand, there is an equally enormous supply to satisfy the appetite of the private sector. And since employers want to continue using illegal immigrants to provide this cheap labor for their bottom line, they have been very effective in influencing our elected officials.

The simple answer would be to either slap huge fines on employers that hire illegal aliens or imprison the managers and owners of such companies. However, that cannot be done. Many big firms, like homebuilders, simply use subcontractors to perform a lot of their labor. They can wash their hands from any wrongdoing because they can honestly claim that they do not hire any illegal aliens. That is true because it is their subcontractors that do the work.

Other companies claim that they follow the letter of the law. That is true too because they ask for valid identification for employment and when that is presented to them, they too can wash their hands of any wrongdoing. It is irrelevant to employers that millions of illegal aliens are already engaging in identity theft to assume someone else’s identity to secure employment. After all, it is the federal government’s job to detect and deal with illegal immigrants.

As a result, hardly any employers have been penalized for using illegal aliens. They can legally escape scrutiny because they are indeed following the law even though they know full well that they are using illegal labor.

So the federal government has to have an effective methodology to spot people using bogus identification and then they must actually do something about it. At any one time there can be dozens of people using the same social security number resulting in working a couple hundred hours a week under that identity and our federal government really doesn’t care. And even if the IRS, SSA, and ICE are informed about such a situation, they are still not going to do much about it unless it becomes part of an investigative task force.

As a result, a process to issue an authentic identification to a citizen or a legal worker has to be established throughout the country. What is problematic is that many immigration reformers are conservatives who also have a Libertarian streak. They despise the notion of a national ID yet they cannot have it both ways because valid identification is needed to thwart the bogus identities that are currently being used by illegal aliens to gain employment.

Although a national ID is not necessary, a uniform standard has to be established by our federal government so that a state cannot arbitrarily issue out driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, which has already happened in several states. New legislation is already in place that accomplishes part of that but it needs to be strengthened so that identity theft for employment purposes can immediately be detected.

In addition, an immigration enforcement agency such as ICE has to have the mandate and manpower to pursue illegal workers when identity theft is detected. With the right software, it should be a simple process to identify illegal aliens who are using a false identity at the workplace, especially when a social security number simultaneously shows up at multiple work sites. However, the weak link in the chain is that several governmental agencies must cooperate and share information in order to crack down on illegal immigrants.

On a practical sense, it is not an employer’s job to find illegal aliens; that role belongs to the federal government because our bureaucracy can access personal data on a national level. Yet, we don’t have the apparatus to do so which results in illegal immigrants flouting our laws for decades. They are also able to stay at a job site indefinitely because no one is going to challenge their work status since they already have what appears to be valid identification. Consequently, employers have also been exploiting this weakness for decades.

If we could implement such an infrastructure on a federal level and staff it with the appropriate manpower, then it would indeed be easy to identify the illegal workers so that they can be deported.

And if you can take away the illegal alien’s ability to work, then you can take away the sole purpose of being in this country illegally. Without money and the ability to find a job, they would be forced to return to their place of origin or do something truly radical like actually follow the law and obtain permission to legally stay in our country.

So yes, deporting millions of illegal aliens or having them self-deport can indeed be systematic by diligently focusing on the workplace. But in order for that to happen, we need a determined president as well as a resolute congressional majority in order to accomplish that.

Any opinions or views expressed herein belong solely to the author and does not represent any employer, organization, political party, governmental agency, or any other entity and do not necessarily reflect the views of the site owner or its participants.