This article from the National Review Online starts out with a nice premise, and then doesn't do much with it. The premise is that the President is mad at us for torpedoing his amnesty-for-illegal-immigrants bill and plans to get even with us by actually enforcing the immigration laws we now have. Much of the rest of the article is a kind of boring recitation of what can be done to enforce existing laws.
However, I think author Mark Krikorian is correct that the President believes we will be inconvenienced by a lack of illegal workers in our fields and factories. He thinks we will balk at higher prices driven by the need to get the job done with legal workers. My guess is that he is wrong.
With the exception of some meat packers and vegetable growers, who will be in a bind at least temporarily, most of us will look at enforcement efforts and say "it is about time." If workers' Social Security Numbers don't match up, and the workers can't get the problems corrected within a reasonable period, fire them. If the only jobs illegal immigrants can hold in this country are casual day labor jobs, paid off the books, most will return home or stay home.
Then the next task is to really get serious about rounding up visitors who have overstayed their visas and sending them home. We need to know who is in our country, why, where they are located, and for how long. Once we get control of illegal immigration, then a streamlined legal immigration policy that focuses on engineers, nurses and others with in-demand education and skills makes sense. But only then....
