Even the paper from San Antonio, with its surfeit of illegal immigrants, is willing and able to see why we need something more done to secure the border against border-jumping immigration criminals.

Imagine the folly of passing a law without the mechanism or the will to enforce it. Imagine if there were no penalties, no fines or jail sentences, for crimes like robbery.

People might get the notion that, despite the official ban, it was all right to steal.

This analogy applies to illegal immigration.

In 1986, President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, granting amnesty to almost 3 million people who were in this country illegally.

The legislation, while showing compassion to the immigrants already here, was not intended to create an open border, and to balance the amnesty, lawmakers included several provisions to strengthen the enforcement of immigration laws:

Sanctions for employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

Increased border controls.

Programs to verify the immigration status of workers applying for welfare benefits.

Except for sporadic raids of employers who hired illegal immigrants, however, little changed. The immigrants lived in the shadows, but the lack of enforcement emboldened the workers and their employers. And, as a result, the illegal immigration population has swelled to 12 million.

Either we control our borders, or those illegally crossing our borders control us. We must have an immigration bill this year, with sanctions against both employers and border-jumpers.

Posted by: Greg at 10:10 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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