Employers must be prosecuted to end the flow of illegal immigrants
By Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor — 06/08/19 10:00 AM EDT
President Trump has long defined his immigration policies as simply a matter of toughness. Indeed, making the border crossing tougher has been the overriding thrust of his deterrence effort. He has complained to border agents that he would love to see them get “a little rough†but that “when you do all of these things that we have to do, they end up arresting Border Patrol people.†He even threatened a 25 percent tariff on Mexico for failing to prevent people from crossing the border.
Yet, no hardship has deterred millions on this dangerous journey because of what waits on the other side of the border, which is jobs. To remove that attraction, the government would have to get tough not on migrants but on those who hire them. That is a tad too tough, it seems, for most immigration hawks. According to a recent study, the Justice Department prosecuted only 11 employers in the entire nation last year. That is right, with the Pew Research Center estimating that about 11 million undocumented persons are living and working in the United States, the Justice Department is prosecuting at a rate of one employer for every one million undocumented persons.
Immigration, it seems, is an offense committed solely by undocumented persons. While the president has charged that undocumented workers take away jobs from citizens, neither party is eager to deal with those who give away those jobs, despite the undocumented making up an estimated 5 percent of the workforce. In California, Nevada, and Texas, they make up almost 10 percent of the workforce.
more
https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/447561-employers-must-be-prosecuted-to-end-the-flow-of-illegal-immigrants