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Enforcement Through Attrition

 

Can we gently compel illegal aliens to leave?

Yes, and that will leave our enforcement personnel free for the harder tasks of removing them when they won't leave on their own. But to do it will require firm, relentless pressure over a period of years, not months.

The very gradualism of enforcement by attrition makes it an attractive optionin a number of ways. It will work to the advantage of society, employers, the alien himself, and the foreign country to which he is returning. American society will avoid the social shocks that would flow from sudden removal. Employers, knowing what is coming, can plan how they will deal with the new labor model. The alien can plan his own departure, more or less in his own time, and there will be no rending of families (which usually happens when an alien is arrested and refuses to say where the rest of his family is). The foreign countries, particularly Mexico, will have time to realize that they must, at last, make reforms to create a country a person can live in reasonably. In short, it will send a message that the party is over.

Illegal aliens now have nearly free access to all the conveniences of modern life in America. Here are the major ones.

  • Jobs (although it's illegal) because as a practical matter, the government does not enforce the laws against employing them in any meaningful numbers.
  • Licenses are freely available to them in most states, from driving to business to fishing.
  • Places to live are readily available.
  • Banking services are unrestricted.
  • Credit, including mortgages, is not only available, it is offered.

We must remove those things from their reach. There are techniques that can be used; here are a few.

  • Begin a real program of employer sanctions, and make the aliens as well as the employers the targets. No administration since the law went into effect in 1986 has directed the proper agencies to make it happen. When INS was reorganized out of existence and the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) assumed its functions the Customs personnel took over most management slots in ICE. Customs personnel have never had any interest in immigration operations and that lack of interest shows now. That must change or it is the single rock upon which this ship of reform will founder.
  • Levy adminstrative fines against aliens who have illegally take employment. Since 1991, that law has been on the books. It has apparently never been used, and certainly not in any meaningful fashion. Take the profit out of illegal employment by levying fines in the amount that they have earned. Even if it is not collected, the judgment remains outstanding should he return after deportation, and any wages earned at that time are forfeit.
  • Encourage states and municipalities to pass laws similar to those that have come into vogue recently to control the presence of illegal aliens. When they are sued over them, remove the case to federal court and defend them there, or reimburse the state governments for defending those cases.
  • No bank (and certainly not one federally chartered) should be able to provide banking services to an alien who cannot prove legal status in the U.S.
  • No federally-insured or chartered institution should extend credit to someone who cannot prove legal status here, nor should any money from a federal source be passed along or insured.

This approach will work if applied comprehensively. As this is written, Oklahoma and Arizona have laws that make those states unattractive to illegal aliens, and the aliens are leaving them by the thousand. The political battles to make it happen will be awesome, and there will be much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth as adjustments are made, but they will be made. People will become accustomed to the new reality and wonder how we had ever let things get so far out of hand. American will benefit in measurable ways from it.


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