Employers must fix illegal immigration

Deseret Morning News readers continue to call for a reformed immigration code to provide for temporary worker visas. The paper's own editorial writer repeated this call on Dec. 17. May one suggest that readers and editorial writers read the current immigration law before asking for what already exists?

For 37 years I was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer with much experience in visa issuance. I was in charge of setting up the station in northern Mexico to process temporary worker visas after the reforms of 1987. Employers in the United States who cannot find temporary workers for virtually any occupation from farmworkers to restaurant or hotel workers to construction can contract such workers abroad. Upon approval by the Department of Labor, such workers will be granted the appropriate form of H-visa.

But we soon found Mexicans in search of work found it easier to just walk across the border, saving the $50 visa cost and a day's time in processing, while being able to work for the highest paying job they could find without being bound to one employer and not having to return to Mexico at the end of their labor contract.

No matter what new kind of innovative "temporary worker visa" Congress might come up with, I can assure you the same considerations will apply.

If the problem of illegal immigration is to be solved, it must be solved at the employer end. The present law imposes a wrist-slap fine on employers and then only if they cannot show Immigration and Customs Enforcement a photocopy record of some evidence of legal residence — which the employer is not even required to make the least good-faith effort to verify.

Congress must make giving employment to an illegal a felony and impose a realistic fine, say $25,000 per offense. We should also deny all privileges to illegals such as drivers' licenses, free medical care and free education. Without jobs, medical care or education for their children, illegals would stream home en masse without any repatriation costs to U.S. taxpayers.

It would also be well for the courts to apply the same rules for the acquisition of citizenship within the United States as is applied to children born abroad to U.S. citizen parents, i.e., at least one parent must be a U.S. citizen with at least six years continuous residence in the United States between the ages of 12 and 21. This would take care of virtually all cases of families broken up by reason of a "legacy child."

I would add one more item in my ideal reform law: that those wishing to transfer money abroad be required to show evidence of legal residence. This would curtail the flow of millions of U.S. dollars to the detriment of our balance of payments and might even make drug trafficking a less remunerative profession.

---

David B. Timmins is a retired United States Foreign Service Officer living in Salt Lake City.