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- Apr 20, 2018
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The current penalty structure -- largely civil rather than criminal, and not pricey enough to affect the value proposition of hiring illegals -- combined with folks' reticence to report firms that violate the laws and Congress having appropriated nothing remotely like enough to enable comprehensive enforcement (i.e., enough auditors/examiners to make the likelihood of getting caught having hired unauthorized workers fairly high). And there's no way that such changes in the approach to enforcing extant laws proscribing the employment of undocumented immigrants can or would cost $10B, which, for perspective's sake, is just shy of the total budget of the IRS.
Suggested changes to 8 U.S. Code § 1324a - Unlawful employment of aliens:
Suggested changes to 8 U.S. Code § 1324a - Unlawful employment of aliens:
- Eliminate the "good faith" compliance section and leave decisions of that nature to judges and juries
- This can be removed because in this digital age, there's really no excuse for an employer not to be able to accurately, using positive verification methods, verify an applicant's employment status. I mean, really. I can go online and enter my mother's information and obtain all her and Dad's (now deceased) information, and their records were created long before anything was digital, yet somehow it's in those databases, which means someone transferred it there from ages old hard-copy documents. My "stuff" is no different.
- Increase the penalties, make executives, firms and mid-level managers subject to the penalties, and create a tier structure for penalties.
- Increase --> The value of the civil penalty must make it unprofitable to be caught using unauthorized workers.
- Personal liability shared up the management hierarchy to the top --> If a C-level person and the HR manager and the other managers in between can each be held financially accountable for hiring unauthorized workers, one can be sure that the firm at which those folks work will do what it takes to find a way to confirm that each and every employee is authorized to work there.
- Tier structure --> The point of the penalty isn't to drive a violator out of business, but rather to make sure they feel material financial pain if they get caught as violators. Accordingly, it doesn't make sense to fine a small firm the same sum one'd fine a multibillion dollar firm, nor does it make sense to fine, say, an HR manager or clerk as much as one'd fine an operations EVP or COO/CFO. To mete out pain while not destroying the firm, financial civil penalties need to be matched to the violating organization's/individual's earnings. For instance, the penalty might be defined as 5% of the present value (as of the day judgement/verdict is rendered) of the firm's/person's gross annual earnings/compensation as of some measurement date.
- Criminalize all violations after the first one and make any criminal violation felonious with a mandatory and inescapable minimum sentence of one year.
- Convert the statue to one of strict liability where the government needs to show that a defendant (1) engaged an unauthorized worker to do work for money. (Unauthorized workers' volunteering would not be illegal.)
- Word will get out to illegal immigrants that nobody is going to hire them. They won't come if they know they have no prospect of being hired to work.
- The US is a horrible place to be and have no source of income.
- One can stay where one is an be unemployed; there's neither need nor point in traveling anywhere to do that...unless one has a legitimate reason to seek asylum.
- Nobody wants a felony "rap sheet" for failing to perform administrative due diligence.
- Nobody wants to pay a material sum of money as a fine for failing to perform administrative due diligence.