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Serious about illegal immigration
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, May 7, 2005

Illegal immigration is bad for the United States. It lowers the wages of low-skilled workers. It burdens state and local governments, which provide services to people who pay little, if anything, in taxes. It creates border chaos through which terrorists can slip into the country. Polls show that over 80 percent of Americans want illegal immigration stopped. Yet nothing serious is ever done about it.

Immigration is a federal responsibility. The failure to control it is a federal failure. Neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have grappled with the problem. But the inaction of the Bush administration is particularly unsettling.

The TV cameras now point at the Minutemen, volunteers scouting for illegal immigrants in southern Arizona. President Bush has called them "vigilantes." But he clearly recognizes the rising anger about illegal immigration; to appease a fuming public, he has sent 500 more U.S. Border Patrol agents to Arizona. This is a theatrical gesture. The agents were merely reassigned from other border areas.

The real work for Washington is enforcing the laws that forbid employers to hire illegal aliens. U.S. jobs are the magnet that draws undocumented workers to this country -- and that reduce pressure in Latin America to raise wages there. Without the U.S. jobs, the border crashers wouldn't come -- and the Border Patrol could concentrate on terrorists. Yet the Bush administration has refused to stand between U.S. employers and illegal cheap labor.

The numbers tell the story. An estimated 11 million illegal aliens live in the United States, but in 2003 the federal government fined only 124 employers for hiring them!

If Mr. Bush and Congress really want to deal with the problem, there are things they can do. One is to require employers to electronically check the Social Security numbers of the people they hire; this is already done on a voluntary basis. And the Internal Revenue Service can report suspicious tax returns.

Illegal immigrants often present fake or stolen Social Security cards to employers. When they file their tax forms, the taxpayer ID number often does not match the Social Security number on the W-2. The IRS computers catch such mismatches all the time.

Mr. Bush should make clear that a new open-door policy is not in effect. His proposed temporary-worker program -- really, a big amnesty plan -- recklessly sent the wrong message to would-be immigrants. Observers at the border blame it for the recent upsurge in illegal traffic.

Congress, meanwhile, should refuse to consider Mr. Bush's proposal until his administration starts seriously punishing employers of illegal immigrants. The president has hinted that he might enforce the law, but only after he gets the temporary-worker program.

No civilian should be monitoring America's borders. That's a job for the Border Patrol, which has paramilitary training. And in any case, the immigrants are not the villains; they are mostly poor, and one can't blame them if they have the wrong impression about their right to be here.

The problem of illegal immigration is not made at the Mexican border. It is made in Washington. Either the federal government starts punishing employers for hiring undocumented workers, or it doesn't. The American public should not be distracted by the show being put on at the border.