By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Vast expenditures of taxpayer funds on border maintenance and fence building are excellent means of delivering pork to supporters in the pubic and private sectors. And they are mildly useful in winning loyalty from reactionary voters. But they are useless when it comes to controlling illegal immigration. 

Over the period that the federal border enforcement budget has increased seven-fold and the number of enforcement agents, more than tripled, undocumented immigrants living here have doubled. Moreover, 40 percent of undocumented immigrants don‚Äôt cross the border illegally; they overstay temporary visas. 

To be effective, immigration policy should focus on why immigrants come here, rather than on how. Overwhelmingly, immigrants come to work. They stay here because the economy employs them. In 2001, undocumented immigrants filled approximately 1.4 million wholesale and retail trade jobs, 1.3 million service industry jobs, 1.2 million jobs each in manufacturing and agriculture, and 620,000 in construction.

Current immigration laws and their feeble enforcement make a mockery of legitimate authority. They nourish an underground sweatshop economy and reward human smuggling. They create an underculture of frightened, disenfranchised, and manipulable people living in the shadows. And they distract attention from the real forces that are making financial survival ever more difficult for working Americans.

Rational immigration policy would regularly adjust quotas based on the economy‚Äôs real needs for labor that cannot be met by American citizens. Its regulations would be transparent, transparently fair, and rigorously enforced. Its effectiveness would not rely on the universal honesty of employers; the incentives of some to make a profit can dominate their incentives to require documents or check their validity. 

Instead, it would require every person working in the U.S., citizen and immigrant, to obtain a federal work authorization “card” and number. Only immigrants who are here legally would receive them. In turn, every employer would be required to confirm the authenticity of each job applicant’s identity. An employer who hired without confirming an employee’s ID number, gender, and birth date with immigration enforcement authorities would be liable for serious penalties.

Now, the overwhelming balance of enforcement effort focuses on border maintenance as opposed to employment. Workers who are her illegally provide those employers who ask for social security numbers with made-up or borrowed ones. The exceptional employer who makes the effort can confirm the validity of the number, and maybe, the name of the person to whom it was issued—not whether that is the job applicant. What I ‘m proposing is requiring workers to establish, and employers to authenticate, an employee’s real identity if the employer is to receive the labor, and the worker, the job, that they both desire.

This idea is neither original, nor particularly novel. Yet its implementation has not been written into proposed legislation. The technology to make this work did not exist when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. Authenticating every worker’s identity would have been too cumbersome to meet the needs of both employers and government. That is no longer the case.

Critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union will object to this plan as “creating a national identity card.” But the IRS has been successful in protecting the privacy of taxpayers, including from other government agencies. The federal authority that manages the worker ID program could and should do the same.

Strict enforcement at the employment nexus, rather than at the border, would yield a much greater return on investment. It would free up border-maintenance resources to focus on those who pose a real security threat, while depriving them of the large illegal flows and smuggling infrastructure that aid their entry. It would reduce the fear, vulnerability, and exploitation of hardworking people who are here honestly. And it would facilitate more effective enforcement of labor laws.

If immigration policy is to be just and ameliorate the serious consequences of its past hypocrisy, it should provide for honestly earned amnesty. But this year‚Äôs failed attempt to enact comprehensive immigration reform demonstrates that passing earned amnesty legislation is politically impossible at this time. 

The forces demanding punitive enforcement and those advocating earned amnesty have their jaws locked on each other’s throats. Each has the ability and intent to hold hostage the other’s legislative initiatives. In the absence of pragmatic reform, the situation on the ground grows worse for all concerned.

But passing effective enforcement-only legislation would, over time, isolate the die-hards who oppose earned amnesty. It would increasingly make their petty injustice clear to the large majority of Americans who oppose illegal immigration but believe in fairness. And it would demonstrate how seriously, and possibly why, the U.S. economy relies on low-skilled immigrant labor.