And what does the LORD require of you? To do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8b
An unequal application of immigration law to illegal aliens is neither just nor merciful. And it certainly isn’t prudent, as it is facially a violation of the equal protection clause. Such a violation would open the Trump administration up to never-ending lawsuits. We witnessed what happened during President Trump’s first term in office. We do not need a repeat, especially given all the lawfare the federal government is dealing with today.
We’ve got two sets of aliens who should not be here. The first is the 20 million (my estimate) that were here prior to the Biden administration. Two-thirds of them came legally and simply overstayed. The rest snuck across the border. Every one of them is a criminal for being here without a currently valid admission. Every job they’ve done without permission is a violation of the law.
Every time they used a name or social security number not their own was the crime of identity theft. And boy howdy, that can sure mess up one’s records for a long time. Also, every time Social Security, Medicare, and federal income taxes were not paid to the federal government was a crime. They should not be allowed to continue to live criminal lives.
50 USC 3802). That crime has a statute of limitations of five years, and a potential penalty of a $250,000 fine and 5 years in prison. Talk about a dormant law! That will send them running to self-deport faster than the $1,000 fine and 6 months for not having been registered and fingerprinted after the age of 14 (8 USC 1306a). Indeed, such failures, i.e., crimes, could call into question whether the alien is of good moral character when later applying for immigration benefits.
The presence of illegal aliens is not a victimless crime. The hiring of illegals and the failure to deduct mandatory taxes are federal crimes. Anyone housing, feeding, transporting, or assisting them in any way breaks the law, too. So do their friends and relatives who allow them to use their medical insurance or identity to receive care, obtain bank loans, apply for any local, state, or federal benefits, or enter into contracts. This is all fraud.
The presence of illegal aliens is a corrupting influence on the soul of our nation. Eating cheap strawberries at the cost of paying a worker essentially slave wages wounds our society.
The second set is the 20 million (again my estimate) that “surged” to the United States at President Biden’s invitation came in a variety of ways. They crossed the border, some seen and others not. Those who registered at the land border were allowed to apply for asylum, even though they had obviously entered from a country that was not a source of refugees (Canada or Mexico).
The Bidenites also allowed in aliens who, if they truly were asylees, should have applied for refugee status in their country of first asylum. Some came because Temporary Protected Status kept getting extended, not just for initial beneficiaries but for all who were present, illegal or not. Others came because the CPB-1 program accorded them a sort of humanitarian parole that the law was never designed to support.
Except for those with nefarious or terroristic aims, all of these were economic migrants, just wanting a better life than they could acquire at home. We can all understand the impulse; we must decry the method.
To get here, most of them had to pay human traffickers significant sums of money to be transported. Many died along the way, especially in the Darien Gap. Thousands of women and children were abused and sexually assaulted by their traffickers. To the left, this was acceptable as a means to acquire more pocket money. They even managed to lose 350,000 children in their supervision after they arrived.
What shall we do about illegal agricultural workers? The H2A visa program has two basic parts: (1) a petition from the employer demonstrating a lack of currently available workers and the employer’s willingness to provide the benefits (housing, transportation, etc.) and meet the obligations required of him. (2) a legally identified alien with a passport who makes an application abroad in accordance with the petition that has been filed and is then vetted for compliance with applicable law.
The difficulty comes with petitioning for undocumented laborers already in the country who are using a false identity, have never been registered, fingerprinted, or vetted for criminal history, and who are working in areas that legal residents might want to work, for an employer who pays slave wages under the table, who fails to remit federal taxes, and who does not provide all the benefits required.
So, let’s start fresh. An illegal ag worker can be given a couple of months to get his identity and documents in order. At the same time, his employer must meet workplace and housing requirements and file the appropriate petition. The worker then goes abroad, most likely to Mexico, to process his application for legal entry.
Having lived here illegally will raise questions regarding the necessity of having a home to which he intends to return after the job is finished, but that can be addressed through the interview process. USCIS, the Department of Labor, and embassies and consulates abroad must put into place a fast-tracking of these petitions and applications without skipping any steps. Put D.O.G.E. to work on streamlining the process.
It would be just to demand that the employer pay taxes retroactively, once the worker is properly identified and has a proper Social Security number. I heard one employer complain that he had executed the I-9 process on every worker. That system is old and needs fixing, but that’s a topic for another day.
It would be merciful to draw a line and say that coming into compliance, perhaps paying a small fine, and being subject to inspections more often than usual will suffice. Workers and their work will be normalized, We the People will pay more for our strawberries until the work becomes more mechanized, and we begin to heal our country of some of its last vestiges of slave labor. That’s a very good thing.
This can all be accomplished with minor changes to existing procedures. No new laws have to be passed. That lets the 119th off the hook on this issue.
Anony Mee is the nom de blog of a retired public servant who X-tweets at oh_yeahMee.
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