The Right To Work?

The CS Monitor today carries an innoccuous editorial on illegal immigration. They're correct that the rule of law is too important to skirt, and I would add that an unenforced law is a bad one, even if it is a very important or morally sound statute.

The Monitor specifically addresses the work center in Herndon, Virginia, where 75% of the workers are illegals. The most obvious solution - raiding the shelter, picking up the illegals, and shipping them to their home countries - would be very damaging to the families of a few illegals, and would in any case work only once. But a different trick could be employed by the INS that might severely limit demand for illegal labor. Just as law enforcement officers pose as prostitutes and drug buyers to catch the respective criminals, officers could pose as undocumented laborers to come down hard on employers who don't check papers. This would most hurt illegal employers and new illegal immigrants, who haven't built the relationships to make themselves safe from the caution such tactics might elicit in employers. Sounds like perfect targeting to me.

More importantly, the U.S. needs to allow far more legal workers to enter our country from Mexico and from all over the world. We are an immigrant nation, and the insatiable desire to work that so many immigrants bring with them is one of our great sources of strength. The flood of illegals indicates that we have excess demand for low-skill labor: let's bring in more immigrants, or, as we could better call them, more 'potential Americans'.