The American Spectator

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Sensible Solutions

6.11.07 @ 12:01AM

COMMON SENSE, NOT COMPREHENSIVE
Re: David Hogberg's Up From Amnesty:

Leave it to a guy from Iowa to come up with a common sense solution to the problem. I, too, grew up in Iowa and I believe it is something in the water -- except that wouldn't explain Senator Harkin, would it?

Mr. Hogberg has the right idea except I think the border enforcement should go on for at least five years before we start a guest worker program. Our bureaucrats can fake it for two years. It would be much more difficult to fabricate numbers and fences for five years.

During that five years, we can start enforcing the employer sanctions on those who hire illegals. With employer sanctions in place fewer illegals would be able to get jobs and would start disappearing back into their own country. When that happens, then start a guest worker program.

Just some thoughts from a former Iowan...
-- Judy Beumler
Louisville, Kentucky

The words that David Hogberg would put in President Bush's mouth on the matter of illegal immigration are not the words that I would put in President Bush's mouth. So here goes:

"Every time an American gives a merchant a MasterCard or Visa or Amex, the merchant performs an immediate and instantaneous electronic check on the validity of the card. This simple, inexpensive and painless process has been in place for decades. It is now time for American employers to have an analogous capability to validate the social security number of an employment applicant. By Presidential directive, I hereby create a program, administered by the Treasury Department, that enables employers to call in their employer ID number and the employment applicant's name, address and social security number. That information is instantly validated. If validation fails, because the social security number does not exist, or is not registered to the named individual, or the named individual does not reside at the address provided, or the social security number has been used more than once for employment validation in a specified time period, that social security number is blocked and the employment applicant is refused employment.

"The Treasury Department will begin intensive audits of companies known to have disregarded existing laws prohibiting the employment of individuals who are neither citizens nor have work visas. Companies found to have demonstrated such disregard will be fined to a sufficient extent to make it too expensive to continue to disregard the law. It is my hope that those same companies will then offer the same employment to citizens or individuals with work visas."

As a practical matter, shortly after the above becomes effective policy, the twelve million will emigrate back to their native lands, solving America's illegal immigration problem, and solving the problem of family unification, since the unification will be re-established upon re-entry of the illegal immigrants to their native lands.

A fence would become superfluous, except to bribe the construction trades to support the above policy.

The end.
-- Frank Natoli
Newton, New Jersey

In your article; "Up From Amnesty" the only thing I don't agree with is the guest worker part. It's not that I'm against guest workers, it's that we have many guest worker programs already and that is the problem for those who demand guest worker programs -- they really want cheap labor so they don't have to pay a living wage. They don't want all the hassle that comes with the current guest worker provisions as they cost money, yes money! You see we blue collars SEE our jobs taken, and we are not fooled, that "Guest Worker" really means "Displacement Workers"!!!

I won't vote for anyone who advocates displacing Americans from their Job's. The only way I would ever consider this, would be when we have no Americans getting unemployment or any government assistance and we don't have enough workers after that, then we could, but only under much supervision and proof that there is no citizen to fill the position, consider another additional guest worker program or just expand the ones in place.
-- Jon Healy

OH YES, that is the message I want to hear, not the one Bush has been using, give America to Mexico. We have already fought this battle once, REMEMBER THE ALAMO, and finally won. Now they want that land back and our Government wants to give it to them.
-- Elaine Kyle

NO PAPER TIGERS
Re: Michael Fumento's Afghanistan: The Winnable War:

Letter to the Editor

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