In any case, I don't believe you need to build walls or close borders to solve the immigration issue. All you have to do is create a $100,000 fine to every business for every employee or subcontractor (or subcontractor's subcontractor) found to be illegally working for that business. Take the profit out of "cheating". There's already a program for businesses to confirm that their particular employee is legally allowed to work. Put the onus on the employer's, not the employees. Same rule applies to "under the table" jobs.
There already are penalties for businesses that willfully violate employment record requirements. As someone who ran a small business for several years with several unskilled laborers the challenge I see with this kind of solution is that it places the burden and enforcement of employment verification onto the business, which is really not their forté. We used e-verify to check that the name and worker ID number matched, but there was no way of knowing whether the 'Alfonzo' applying for a position was actually the real 'Alfonzo'. And I hated it - I didn't want to be ICE and my major concern was whether I could find someone reliable to do the job. We did everything required of us but it was both a PITA and I knew that a lot of guys cheated. And the kicker was I sympathized with the cheaters, because they were good people who worked hard and were pulling themselves up, so to speak.
Thanks for the reply Nereo.
I understand that putting the responsibility on the employer can be more work, but isn't hiring anyone a great deal of work anyway? Isn't it important for a business to do it's "due diligence" to ensure someone is a good fit, a good long term employee, and a "team player".
I don't buy this argument. I think it's just another reason to blame someone else (i.e. the government) while also happening to benefit by filling a job that needed to be done. It's the path of least resistance.
"We did everything required of us but it was both a PITA and I knew that a lot of guys cheated." --> The solution is not to put your hands up and surrender, saying it was so very hard to hire someone legally. That's not MMM philosophy at all. For me, the solution is to make the system more foolproof, while also insisting that the parties that are currently cheating the system (employers AND undocumented employees) don't continue to do so.
And another thing, I always here this argument that we "don't want government to get even bigger and have more power over us" by business owners. But in your discussion above, here you are saying you'd rather it be someone else's responsibility to handle this since you don't want to be ICE. Please reconcile this for me.
JGS
Ok, good to have a dialog. I'm not sure we're entirely understanding each other here... our goal as employers was always to hire the best candidate we could, and yes that meant people who could legally work. Given that these were low-skill, lower paying jobs we weren't getting a lot of Harvard grads.
In our hiring process we gave the same scrutiny to all applicants, which was that after passing an interview they had to supply us with the mandated documents before they could begin work. As I said before we ran everyone through an employment verification system. We did this for the white, seemingly native-born applicants as well as the hispanic workers who came from away.
But I think your insinuation that we were 'putting our hands up and surrendering' is off-base. To give added scrutiny over applications from one group (e.g. hispanics) over another would be racist. Ultimately though the point I want to make is that as an employer you cannot do any more. Not from a practical or legal standpoint. If an applicant met the requirements and hands me his/her paperwork and nothing seems amiss I can't take that any further, and I'm genuinely curious what more you think employers should do. It would be morally unethical to deny them a job without cause, and I can't interrogate or investigate every applicant.
FWIW the 'cheating' i spoke of wasn't limited to non-citizens. We also had workers who lied about illegal drug use and criminal convictions and problems with previous employers. We ran checks on everyone we hired, but issues weren't always apparent at the time of hire.
I guess my broader point is that as an employer you don't want these issues, and you do what you can and what you are legally allowed to do and what you can afford to do to prevent issues down the road, because no one wants to lose a worker mid-week and be shorthanded. But you very rapidly reach the limit on what you can do/say/ask/require.