Mexican Migrant Workers: The So Called ‘Illegals’ (Polemic) by Edwin L. Young, PhD

Mexican Migrant Workers: The So Called ‘Illegals’
by Edwin L. Young, PhD

The following is a suggestion for how to deal with the migrant worker and illegal alien border-crossing problem.

Part I: What to Do About Illegal Immigration/Aliens

American businesses should be required to transport Mexican nationals to their US workplaces and back across the border. American businesses should have to pay for the costs of all public services that are incurred by their immigrant workers and their families such as medical care and education. American businesses should be authorized to provide temporary, conditional drivers licenses as needed to these workers. American businesses should be liable for any acts these workers commit against US law. American businesses should have to pay these workers a minimum wage and withdraw taxes from their paycheck. American businesses should have the responsibility to register these workers, keep records on them, and electronically post these records to the immigration authority (INS), IRS, DMV, Departments of Human Services, Health Service, Education, and other relevant agencies.

American citizens should not have to pay for the cost of illegal immigrant workers being imported to the US while businesses reap the benefits of their cheap labor. This is actually making citizens subsidize US employers of illegal aliens. Mexican citizens should not have to suffer the lethal results of dying in the desert or in the vans of the Mexican Coyotes who illegally transport immigrant workers to the border or into the US to work for American businesses. American citizens should not have to suffer the results of the Mexican drug dealers or their ‘mules’ illegally crossing the border carrying illegal drugs into the US. With this approach only a very few Mexican nationals would be coming through customs who were not being legitimately transported by registered American business vehicles. With only a few drug dealers coming through immigration checkpoints, the Border Patrol and Customs Officers would have a much better chance of catching the drug smugglers.

Would this hurt small businesses who currently hire illegal alien workers? I do not think so. They would have much greater control over this usually, highly transient work force. The stability and reliability of this work force would improve hugely. Having the same workers year after year would mean that they would be retaining an increasingly more skilled group of workers. The demands made by the new paperwork would quickly ease. Employers would be free from worry over being fined and arrested by INS agents. This new kind of work force would be healthier, more skilled, more educated, more reliable, and more grateful and loyal workers.

Since incarcerating and deporting illegal aliens is also very costly to states, this approach should also greatly alleviate this side effect of our current laws and most of the proposed legislation.

As to the Amnesty question, it would be irrelevant and unnecessary. Those workers who were regulars over the years eventually could be sponsored by their employers for Naturalization if they got themselves prepared by meeting the requirements. However, making paying a fine of $5,000 a requirement for naturalization is, to my mind, preposterous and mean-spirited. Only the rich cloistered in bureaucratic or high-rise business offices could dream up something as unfair as this. Most of the migrant workers barely make enough money to survive and send a few dollars back to their starving families in Mexico. Children born to them under this program could be naturalized only if their parents were. This would remove the final contentious issue over immigrant workers.




Author bio:

Edwin is a 76 year old, retired, psychotherapist/institution reformer. His greatest satisfaction came from reforming many juvenile correctional institutions, a maximum security prison, a West Texas mental hospital, and the huge Job Corps in San Marcos, Texas. All in all there were thirteen institutions that he successfully reformed. In the last year of his PhD program, Edwin was one of the two PhD graduate students to be awarded the annual University Research Institute grant. His dissertation committee said his was the longest, best, and most complex in the history of the department. Since retiring, Edwin spends his time writing. His site is: The Natural Systems Institute.