How to Deport 10 Million Illegal Aliens

Perhaps the most recurrent question in debates over illegal immigration is: What do we do with the 10 million or more illegal aliens already here?

Needless to say, many of those who ask that question do so for purely rhetorical effect, to point out the supposed impossibility of sending the illegal aliens home. And in his Monday night address, the president repeated his earlier contention that mass deportation is neither practical nor realistic.

Rhetorical reference to mass deportation is a red herring to divert attention from what caused the current illegal immigration crisis in the first place—the government’s abysmal failure to enforce immigration laws.

It appears that this president, who predicated the Iraq war on exiguous evidence of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and found none, now thinks many conservatives are spreading a different sort of WMD—Word of Mass Deportation, that is.

But the truth is that no one is seriously talking about mass deportation, for anyone with a modicum of common sense knows we could not round up all the illegal aliens at once.

However, we can round them up in smaller numbers, and over time, the cumulative effect of round-ups will have an undeniably deterrent effect.

Consider, for example, highway speed enforcement. Even the most stern, jackbooted cop knows he could not stop all speeders at once. So what does he do? Of course, he makes public examples of some speeders. The mere sight of someone being pulled over gives sufficient reason for the rest of us to slow down. This is enforcement by example. And it is precisely what we need in immigration enforcement.

As a legal immigrant and naturalized American who waited years for a green card, I mince no words when I say I have no sympathy whatsoever for illegal aliens. They have no right to be here, and their claim that their marches are the latest struggle in civil rights is poppycock. At this rate, a burglar who invades your house will have an equal claim of ownership to your house merely because he is inside the house.

In any case, no conservative worth his salt should accept the sequacious stance, held by the president and others, that legalizing those already here is the only practical solution. That is the same expedient the pro-amnesty crowd used in 1986. As everyone knows, that amnesty only made matters worse.

Since illegal aliens came here on their own, they should be made to leave here on their own. Call this self-repatriation. In effect, it is deporting them without having to formally deport them en masse. And it would be infinitely cheaper for the American taxpayers.

So, if we are to compel illegal aliens towards self-repatriation, then we must demagnetize the magnets that attracted them in the first place.

Hence, attention is needed in several key areas. Herewith some of them.

Worksite Enforcement

Under the Bush Administration, immigration enforcement at worksites has been virtually nil. For instance, in all of 2004, the latest year of available statistics, only three employers were fined for employing illegal aliens. Yes, just three. With over ten million illegal aliens and thousands of unscrupulous employers hiring them, are we to believe the government could only fine three? Where is Eliot Ness when we need him?

(In case you were taught history by gun-bashing feminized liberals and therefore you never heard of Eliot Ness, he was the 1930s Chicago cop who relentlessly raided gangster establishments such as those run by Al Capone and others. When he was not raiding them, he would use creative ways to harass them.)

Immigration agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently raided facilities owned by IFCO, a maker of wooden pallets etc. The DHS claimed it arrested almost 1,200 illegal aliens at IFCO. But soon after the raid, many of them were released, and told to appear at deportation hearings at a future date. How naïve!

Indeed, the raid hardly impressed conservative critics, who justifiably suspected that it was a politically timed event to give the appearance that immigration laws were being enforced so that it would mollify opposition to the president’s so-called guest-worker plan.

During the protests held on May 1, many establishments that employed illegal aliens closed due to the absence of their employees. In fact, most newspaper reports actually named many of the local and regional establishments that had to close for the day. One would think that such widely available information would have been sufficient evidence for the DHS to raid at least a few of these establishments the very next day. But not this Administration. If a local sheriff ran affairs the way this Administration runs immigration enforcement, he would not even be considered for assistant dog-catcher in the next election.

Nevertheless, the IFCO raid indicates that the government is indeed capable of rounding up a thousand illegal aliens in one day. Thus there is reason to think that, given enough public pressure, such raids can become the rule rather than the exception.

However, to round up a thousand a day, every day, is asking too much. Instead, a thousand every month, well publicized, will do. And the raids should include both large companies and small. After all, illegal hiring is illegal hiring, whether you hire five people or five hundred.

When corralling illegal aliens, the Feds do not need to go it alone. There are some 675,000 local and state law enforcement officers in America. The Feds could easily use such local resources when raiding employers in a given locality.

The House immigration bill that passed in December would require, for instance, that the work-eligibility of every employee be checked against a federal database. And it would impose stiff penalties against non-compliant employers. But the pro-amnesty crowd, always looking for excuses to condone the alien invasion, claims that employers should not be immigration cops.

That is hogwash. Employers are not tax cops either, yet liberals expect them to withhold taxes from everyone’s paycheck. Employers are not environment cops either, yet liberals expect them to abide by a myriad of EPA regulations. Employers are not diversity cops either, yet liberals expect them to have racially diverse workplaces.

Traffic Stops

Since thousands of illegal aliens have driver’s licenses (thanks to liberal license rules in several states) and many others simply drive without a license, traffic stops are the most appropriate place for immigration enforcement after worksites. In many cases, even when the driver is legal, the passengers are illegal, which makes on-the-road immigration enforcement a good countermeasure against aiding and abetting illegal aliens.

Police officers make about 17 million traffic stops a year. No one knows how many of those who are stopped are illegal aliens because it has been naively assumed that immigration status verification should be a federal responsibility. Thus, we waste about 17 million opportunities a year for discovering and apprehending illegal aliens.

Nevertheless, liberals vociferously decry such immigration status checks, claiming that such actions would lead to a “police state.” Where are these “police state” fears when liberal politicians gleefully authorize cameras at traffic lights, for instance? Apparently, a “police state” is palatable to liberals only when it allows them to issue tickets and raise more money for their socialist programs.

Citizen Involvement

If you have ever allowed someone whom you suspected was an illegal alien to work around your house, then you are part of the problem.

Home building/remodeling is a thriving business for contractors. And many contractors now routinely hire illegal aliens. It thus behooves every American homeowner who is a voter who opposes illegal immigration to ask about the legal status of people that contractors bring in.

Despite liberal shenanigans to the contrary, you have every right to discriminate against suspected illegal aliens on your property. The Constitution does not say that you must welcome every Tom, Dick, and Harry (or Jose) to your house with open arms. As a voter and a homeowner, I always ask contractors if they employ illegal aliens when I talk to them about projects. Asking such questions is citizen involvement at a basic level, and yet it has a force-multiplier effect. After all, if most of us ask such questions from contractors, the message we send will be loud and clear.

To recapitulate, strict worksite enforcement, status checks during traffic stops, and citizen involvement would create a milieu where life for illegal aliens would be incessantly difficult. In such a milieu, they would be compelled towards self-repatriation. After all, they came here to make money, and once that is no longer feasible, they will realize that returning home and waiting in line to come here legally is better than living here in incessant fear. And that is what we must create in them—incessant fear. Our leniency is what has emboldened them to protest in our streets.

Most of the illegal aliens have come in the last 10 years. Hence, the condign response is an enforcement regime that would make them repatriate themselves over the next five or 10 years.

For those who doubt that a strict enforcement regime will induce self-repatriation, consider what happened in the wake of the Special Registration program set up after 9/11. Under that program, foreigners from some countries were told they must register with the nearest immigration office or risk certain deportation if caught. Among Pakistanis, for instance, about 1,500 who were here illegally (on expired visas etc.) were caught and deported. Word spread. Before long, some 15,000 illegal Pakistanis hightailed out of the country on their own. They knew that formal deportation would decapitate their ability to obtain a visa in the future.

Needless to say, if illegal Pakistanis could self-repatriate to far-away Pakistan, it makes no sense to say that illegal Mexicans could not self-repatriate to next-door Mexico. The lesson here is that when you enforce the law against a thousand illegal aliens, word spreads, and 10,000 others begin packing their bags on their own.