A Southern Reader Has A Modest Proposal: Tax EMPLOYERS To Pay For Illegals
04/19/2014
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF
A Reader In Mississippi [Email him]

Given the federal government's wholesale collaboration in the colonization of our country by illegal immigrants, and its determination to prevent the states themselves from clamping down on illegal settlement, it occurs to me that a way of dealing with the problem is for states to tax the employment of undocumented workers.

A crippling annual tax for each undocumented worker, say $50,000, could be assessed to each employer. Collection of the tax would become the responsibility of the state tax authority, not the police. A high enough tax would thoroughly dissuade employers from hiring them. With no jobs and no other means of support, they would have a strong incentive to move on to a more welcoming state—or to move home.

Tactical advantages of this approach include

 1) Avoidance of any action against the illegals themselves, and avoidance thereby of legal action against states attempting to enforce immigration laws;

2) Providing employers a strong incentive to use e-Verify for all employees, all the time;

3) Recasting enforcement as a matter of taxation, which governments and courts have always had a hard time resisting.

Such a tax is entirely justified on the grounds that employment of undocumented workers incurs public costs that must be recouped from those who benefit directly from this kind of employment. It also levels the playing field for American workers, and gives employers an incentive to pay a fitting wage for American workers to do unpleasant jobs.

The reader, a professional man in Mississippi, offered to let us use his name.  We don't think it's safe.

Print Friendly and PDF