ConservativeINC

Using last night’s show on a free market answer to the health care system on 20/20 I got to thinking what else could be solved using the principles of the free market. I think I have the beginnings of a solution to the immigration mess we find ourselves in.

First, the problems, they are many and complex. Having a class of people in this country that works for well below minimum wage, is largely uneducated without the ability to speak English, causes a serious strain on our health care system, changes our culture in exchange for their own, and taxes our penal system is not a good thing. Illegal immigrants, mostly Latinos, are in essence a slave class in America.

And you know what, I have the utmost empathy for most of these people. They are leaving horrible lives South of the border (not only in Mexico) and most just want a something better for their families. Most are religious people and work hard.

Obviously there is a large swath of bad seeds in this group. Gangs are proliferating faster than cheap lettuce in many areas. It goes without saying that illegals who continue to break the law after they enter this country (illegally coming into our country is an offense in my mind) should be deported. Every gang member, rapist, murderer and every other illegal alien felon needs to be deported without a chance of returning.

That is where you and I probably start to part the ways on this issue because I do not believe it is advisable, much less possible, to try and deport all the illegals that are in this country. I also think that this country needs to create a system that makes available an easier path for entry for most immigrants into this country; especially for those immigrants who are skilled workers and/or entrepreneurs. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

What I see as the major problem is that, surprise, the government is way to inefficient and ineffectual in its immigration processing. It needs to take a step back and let the markets take over. By creating simple rules that the different market players could follow I think that this ideas has some legs.

First, we need to lift the limits on immigration significantly if not get rid of them completely (please keep reading, I think this is a good idea). Then we can send the immigrants into one giant pool of applicants. We would need to have some private agencies that rate each immigrant on their merits: skill level, net assets, criminal record, and whatever other metric the business community deems appropriate.

Businesses would be able to pick from this pool of immigrants. I think it would also be advisable that each immigrant needs to find an American citizen that will sponsor them in America (more on this later). All of this sounds like a business owners dream, right? Wrong!

In exchange for these admitably gracious terms there is a giant catch for all of these different market players: the rating agencies, the sponsors, and the business owners especially. By taking in an immigrant worker each business would be punished for every time their employee breaks the law. Penalties could range from small fines for misdemeanors to expulsion from the program or extreme fines for an immigrant employee that commits a felony. And I think it advisable that any employee that turns out to be a terrorist automatically expels companies from hiring immigrants in addition to legal liability for their employee’s terrorist activities.

Sponsors can also be held financially responsible for wrongdoings committed by their wards. I think the possible fines should be smaller but still large enough to hurt the sponsor financially. And the rating agency that gave the immigrant a thumbs up when that immigrant actually had a criminal record should be penalized with fines as well. If the agency is found to do an extremely poor job they should be stripped of their status as a rating agency and forced out of business.

This type of system would be difficult to implement at first but should be able to become efficient in a few years to a decade. Privatizing the immigration admittance function of the United States is probably not something high on anyone’s radar but I think it should merit a seat at the table at least.

Implementing a system like this would make it significantly more politically possible to put up a fence on our Southern border to stop illegal immigration. A system like the one I have proposed, while admitably raw, would increase the number of skilled and unskilled immigrants alike that we need to grow our economy, which is really the heart and brain of the world economy.

By stopping continued illegal immigration and implementing this system we would introduce accountability into the system via the rating agencies, the sponsors, and, most importantly, the businesses. What we are doing now is not working, that is obvious. We need change and going to the free market for this change will allow us to be nimble enough to tweak the system along the way. Our immigration policy needs change and this change would work. BigT

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