“Many migrants have relatives and friends who have lived in this country for years without documentation, yet are able to work and send money back home. It’s understandable they believe all they need to do is get here.
“Blame that on the other broken part of America’s immigration system — the part that is supposed to stop employers from exploiting undocumented migrants by paying them low wages to toil in unhealthy conditions that they dare not complain about in fear of being deported. . . .
“Much worse can be expected if President-elect Donald Trump fulfills a campaign promise to begin mass deportations of anyone without proper authorization to live in the United States. The prohibitive cost of such a project, estimated at from $85 billion to $315 billion a year, may limit what ICE can do, given its current $230 million budget shortfall, but Trump typically does just enough to claim he kept a promise.
“Being left out of the conversation is the need to impose higher sanctions not just on employers but other sections of American society that find profit in taking advantage of the undocumented status of migrants. That includes the landlords of substandard housing who rent to people who again dare not complain to public agencies about poor plumbing or no heat in winter months because they don’t want to call attention to themselves.
“Migrants’ belief that even those aspects of America are preferable to what they left behind is why many won’t willingly go back. Most migrants are good members of their new communities. They’re not taking anyone else’s jobs. Many are doing work their employers argue otherwise would not get done. And undocumented workers do pay taxes—35 billion in 2022, according to the latest census data.
“Twenty years ago, Congress worked on a commonsense path to citizenship that included fines for breaking immigration laws for those who deserve to remain in this country, but politics got in the way.
“Isn’t it time this nation renewed that conversation?” — Immigration Reform, Not Crackdown, Would Help America Thrive, Another View, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/9/25 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: This article is entirely correct to say that we should have a greater enforcement effort directed toward penalizing the employers of illegal aliens. But it is clear, as the article continues, that the author is not sincere. In reality, he doesn’t seem to support any kind of immigration law enforcement, as he portrays illegal aliens as largely beneficial to our society. He repeats the tiresome cliché that illegals do jobs that no American will do. The reality is that American workers are the majority in almost every occupation, with the exception of farm workers and a few other jobs.
We can replace the illegal aliens working here by automating jobs, and by encouraging Americans who are out of the workforce to seek employment. One way to accomplish the latter is to deport illegal aliens, a move which would promote higher wages for U.S. workers.
The author further maintains that illegal aliens are beneficial because they pay taxes. But that isn’t true unless the taxes they pay exceed the tax-paid benefits they receive. The truth is that they get more than they give, so their presence is a fiscal loss.
Finally, the author claims that the solution to illegal immigration is making illegal aliens legal and granting them citizenship. He laments that legislation to do this failed twenty years ago. Yet he is not about to admit that it failed for good reason. Opponents of that measure cited the history of the 1986 immigration act which was supposed to be a compromise. It offered amnesty (legalization) to millions of illegal aliens, with the stipulation that amnesty would never be proposed again. It also had provisions to stop future illegal immigration. But the ink was scarcely dry on the document before illegal alien advocates were pushing new amnesties. At the same time, they effectively sabotaged immigration law enforcement.
The author evidently wants to pull the same scam again. He says we should show compassion to illegals who have lived here for a while by legalizing them. Yet he seems indifferent to steps which might prevent more of them from coming. Amnesty certainly won’t discourage them. Rewarding bad behavior invites more of it, as proven with the continuing flow of illegal immigration.
Illegal alien advocates don’t want illegal migration to stop. They simply don’t care about our country’s rule of law, or even the existence of our country. They will keep up their scams to hide their real convictions.