Our first order of business on immigration policy must be to make sure that our immigration laws can be enforced so we can have an immigration policy worthy of the name. A significant number of illegal immigrants, and a tacit official tolerance for it, is incompatible with that goal.
If we want to make sure that illegal immigration is brought down and kept down — even as the American economy grows stronger — then the most important step we can take is not building a border wall or arresting illegal border crossers, with or without families. Roughly two-fifths of illegal immigrants did not cross the border illegally in the first place. They came here legally and then overstayed their visas.
The most important step is to keep illegal immigrants from having gainful employment, whichever route they took to be here illegally. We must make it possible and mandatory for employers to verify that their new hires are present in the United States legally. After all, it’s the prospect of economic advance, rather than crime or political chaos, that drives almost all illegal immigration. To get control of it — and not just at the border — we have to take away the economic incentive. The knowledge that it will be much more difficult to make money in the U.S. will serve as a humane deterrent against future illegal immigration. Moreover, mandatory verification for new hires will make it harder for existing illegal immigrants to switch jobs, so some of them will leave. In addition, the mandatory implementation of E-Verify would make it easier to prosecute employers who exploit illegal workers and depress wages for lower-income Americans.
Read the rest from the NR editors HERE.
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