-what to do while waiting for Congress to legislate for effective eVerification
-what the cathedral does when eVerification is applied in actual cases.
In other words, the regime has too much invested in the status quo to roll over.
What's happening now is the minimum needed to have even modestly effective deportation. Administrative alternatives depend on impossible conditions being met.
Unless I'm mistaken, the second Trump administration hasn't even proposed a mandatory E-verify law. This suggests it isn't serious about confronting the business lobbies — though I'm open to other interpretations.
The administration almost failed to pass the BBB: I think it is a matter of where to put Trump's political capital. E.g. he had to beg the R-representatives to pass VoterID laws, EVerify is beyond reach imvho.
Honest question from a place of total ignorance: are we sure e-verify would do the trick? How many illegal immigrants are actually working? And in what industries? How many employers would just pay people under the table (if they aren’t already)? I don’t think all the illegal immigrants being picked up in Minneapolis are picking crops, but that’s the one industry that always gets cited.
It wouldn't completely solve the problem — but it would go along way. Illegal immigration is substantially driven by jobs and wages. Illegal immigrants in the US have high employment rates and migration flows correlate with economic conditions:
"Even Bryan Caplan opposes open borders in certain cases, such as for the state of Israel, so he doesn’t believe in them as a matter of principle.1 Practically no one does outside of fringe anarchist circles."
I can't access the linked-to podcast, but did Bryan Caplan specifically say he opposes Open Borders for Israel? Though I have seen this claimed many hundreds of times, it is always as a critique made on the incorrect assumption that Bryan Caplan is Jewish. I would have thought that the obvious answer from his perspective is that both Israel and Palestine should open themselves to unrestricted immigration from around the world to decrease the salience of their ethno-religious dispute.
"I am half-Jewish but I do not "support Israel". I don't support any government ... This is a case where I just think the evidence that open borders would lead to civil war in Israel is very strong".
Thankyou. In that case, I suggest this would be parallel to something like Open Borders for America except Somalians or something similar, and this is what Bryan Caplan would be wise to advocate, but he's correct in the narrow sense that this is not relevant to almost all of American immigration policy.
In general, I don't think that your case that it's obvious that illegal immigration laws should be enforced is very strong. There are many other cases where things that are theoretically illegal are, in practice, decriminalised and probably if the government were to start enforcing the letter of the law many people would oppose that.
AJP Taylor in the introduction to English History 1914 to 1945 that before 1914 there were no passports and people were free to travel wherever they wanted. We need to apply specific conditions for entering the country (1) they have sufficient funds to support themselves or a job that will provide for them; (2) they have the funds to rent or buy a house; (3) they do not have a criminal record; (4) they speak English; (5) they are not allowed any welfare; (6) if they travelled through any other country before arriving here they should have been there legally. The same should apply to us travelling abroad
The issue with raising the "exit bonus" too high is you then give people an incentive to come, or to overstay their visas, purely to collect the payment.
I’m fine with e-verify but this glosses over a couple of important points.
First is that it’s only enforceable with big business. Small and medium sized businesses hire under the table all the time, and acting against this would turn the US into a police state as surely as ICE ever could. In agriculture, even, there’s always been a sort of cultural norm in the Midwest of bringing in young guys to help with the harvest for a couple of months a year, and they don’t always get a W2. I’ve lived in Kansas, and knew a (white) guy who was doing this as recently as 2010.
Second point is very related: the entire point of Trump’s economic nationalism is to get back to a labor situation where domestic businesses have to hire domestic labor, which is why immigration enforcement and the tariffs are - out at least should have been - complimentary policy. And yet, this current situation isn’t being run that way, and it probably can’t be, because we’ve been here before. Big businesses have been through it, they will just keep offshoring unless specific manufacturing requirements incentivize domestic labor very heavily. The tariffs haven’t raised prices as much as suspected largely because the exceptions have been numerous. We know why, of course: real enforcement of both illegal immigration and tariffs would genuinely hurt the right with inflation, and rebuilding the manufacturing base takes too long, so the optics are rough either way.
That said, I’m hoping there is a plan. If I were in the Trump White House, I’d be pushing hard for high-value-added businesses to repatriate (which will take time) and slacking on industrial and agricultural immigration enforcement (to buy time), and eventually working towards legislation that remakes the American labor system into something with more balance.
It is, really, still possible to fix this, to shift labor norms and get back to managing the Phillips curve internally instead of cheating with third world labor, but it’s not going to happen overnight. We got ourselves into it over the course of fifty years, Ross Perot warned us about it, and we’ve basically been punting on the important questions the whole time. Whether anything can be done within a democratic framework might even be a stretch, terms don’t last that long and the globalists are probably going to win, but I won’t slag the administration for normalizing the rejection of illegal immigrants en masse.
What if we just shift to a model of higher SS and Medicare taxes for any immigrant (legal or illegal)? These can be paid by the employer and audited by the IRS.
This would make citizens more desirable to employ, contribute to our retirement programs (possibly a lot), and shift the enforcement from jack booted thugs to tie wearing accountants (which work just as well with employers). It wouldn’t really cost employers much, as they would likely just take much of the taxes out of immigrant pay.
> "We know why, of course: real enforcement of both illegal immigration and tariffs would genuinely hurt the right with inflation, and rebuilding the manufacturing base takes too long, so the optics are rough either way."
Yeah, unfortunately the masses are going to have be educated to the reality that long-term solutions to their problems are going to involve significant short-term pain. There are no easy outs here.
“A far more effective policy would be something like mandatory E-verify for all employees, combined with frequent audits “
This I agree will work—for illegals who are willing/desiring to work, but not for criminals and welfare recipients/frauds. Criminals and those gaming the system have no use for legitimate employment, so E-verify does not affect them. These folk are currently the “low hanging fruit” being picked by the current Trump initiative. I also admit that current Trump enforcement efforts against those type of illegals—even if 100% successful—cannot hope but to remove an insignificant fraction of current illegals.
As far as E-verify for “souring the milk” for illegals, we need to give thought to the numbers of “refugees” or “asylum seekers” admitted. These refugees are given work permits pending final determination of their refugee/asylum status. Of course, that final determination (court date) now extends out from 3-5 years. In which case, E-verify is not the answer. The answer is to expand the court system for such determination so that such folks can be adjudicated *even* before being released on parole into this country.
I suspect that the "fringe anarchist circle" thinking you refer to is getting mainstreamed. I think a lot of Americans and Europeans now believe in open borders, not in a rigorous way, more in a "current thing" sort of way.
> "You have to remember that, from the perspective of an employer, illegal immigrants are pretty much the ideal workers: they have little bargaining power (owing to the threat of removal) so will readily accept low wages, long hours and poor working conditions"
I'm a little skeptical that self-interested-capitalism arguments pan out here, since any established business lobby has to notice that the cheap labour of today are going to be the amnesty-recipients who vote to expropriate their incomes tomorrow. (Yes, illegal aliens don't generally vote right now, but they certainly turn into tomorrow's voters, which is why the left wants to import so many.)
I agree with you that we should make E-verify mandatory.
I want to point out, however, that employment of illegal immigrants is highly concentrated in a few sectors: agriculture, meatpacking, hospitality, restaurants, and construction. For those businesses, losing cheap illegal labor would be serious blow to their business model.
And those businesses are typically small businesses, not large corporations.
Outside of these sector, most businesses, particularly large ones, really don’t care about illegal immigration beyond the inconvenience of adding a new step to hiring.
So it is absolutely not true that big corporations are the driving force behind opposition to E-Verify as some claim.
A reasonably fair analysis except
-what to do while waiting for Congress to legislate for effective eVerification
-what the cathedral does when eVerification is applied in actual cases.
In other words, the regime has too much invested in the status quo to roll over.
What's happening now is the minimum needed to have even modestly effective deportation. Administrative alternatives depend on impossible conditions being met.
Unless I'm mistaken, the second Trump administration hasn't even proposed a mandatory E-verify law. This suggests it isn't serious about confronting the business lobbies — though I'm open to other interpretations.
—NC
The administration almost failed to pass the BBB: I think it is a matter of where to put Trump's political capital. E.g. he had to beg the R-representatives to pass VoterID laws, EVerify is beyond reach imvho.
Honest question from a place of total ignorance: are we sure e-verify would do the trick? How many illegal immigrants are actually working? And in what industries? How many employers would just pay people under the table (if they aren’t already)? I don’t think all the illegal immigrants being picked up in Minneapolis are picking crops, but that’s the one industry that always gets cited.
It wouldn't completely solve the problem — but it would go along way. Illegal immigration is substantially driven by jobs and wages. Illegal immigrants in the US have high employment rates and migration flows correlate with economic conditions:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47218
https://www.jstor.org/stable/117062
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41302-025-00313-9
—NC
"Even Bryan Caplan opposes open borders in certain cases, such as for the state of Israel, so he doesn’t believe in them as a matter of principle.1 Practically no one does outside of fringe anarchist circles."
I can't access the linked-to podcast, but did Bryan Caplan specifically say he opposes Open Borders for Israel? Though I have seen this claimed many hundreds of times, it is always as a critique made on the incorrect assumption that Bryan Caplan is Jewish. I would have thought that the obvious answer from his perspective is that both Israel and Palestine should open themselves to unrestricted immigration from around the world to decrease the salience of their ethno-religious dispute.
In our (friendly) podcast debate, he stated:
"I am half-Jewish but I do not "support Israel". I don't support any government ... This is a case where I just think the evidence that open borders would lead to civil war in Israel is very strong".
—NC
Thankyou. In that case, I suggest this would be parallel to something like Open Borders for America except Somalians or something similar, and this is what Bryan Caplan would be wise to advocate, but he's correct in the narrow sense that this is not relevant to almost all of American immigration policy.
In general, I don't think that your case that it's obvious that illegal immigration laws should be enforced is very strong. There are many other cases where things that are theoretically illegal are, in practice, decriminalised and probably if the government were to start enforcing the letter of the law many people would oppose that.
AJP Taylor in the introduction to English History 1914 to 1945 that before 1914 there were no passports and people were free to travel wherever they wanted. We need to apply specific conditions for entering the country (1) they have sufficient funds to support themselves or a job that will provide for them; (2) they have the funds to rent or buy a house; (3) they do not have a criminal record; (4) they speak English; (5) they are not allowed any welfare; (6) if they travelled through any other country before arriving here they should have been there legally. The same should apply to us travelling abroad
The amount offered to illegal aliens who self deport should be increased to 5 or $10,000. That in conjunction with e-verify would be very effective.
The issue with raising the "exit bonus" too high is you then give people an incentive to come, or to overstay their visas, purely to collect the payment.
—NC
My assumption is that the ICE operation is theatre designed to deter would-be irregular arrivals.
I’m fine with e-verify but this glosses over a couple of important points.
First is that it’s only enforceable with big business. Small and medium sized businesses hire under the table all the time, and acting against this would turn the US into a police state as surely as ICE ever could. In agriculture, even, there’s always been a sort of cultural norm in the Midwest of bringing in young guys to help with the harvest for a couple of months a year, and they don’t always get a W2. I’ve lived in Kansas, and knew a (white) guy who was doing this as recently as 2010.
Second point is very related: the entire point of Trump’s economic nationalism is to get back to a labor situation where domestic businesses have to hire domestic labor, which is why immigration enforcement and the tariffs are - out at least should have been - complimentary policy. And yet, this current situation isn’t being run that way, and it probably can’t be, because we’ve been here before. Big businesses have been through it, they will just keep offshoring unless specific manufacturing requirements incentivize domestic labor very heavily. The tariffs haven’t raised prices as much as suspected largely because the exceptions have been numerous. We know why, of course: real enforcement of both illegal immigration and tariffs would genuinely hurt the right with inflation, and rebuilding the manufacturing base takes too long, so the optics are rough either way.
That said, I’m hoping there is a plan. If I were in the Trump White House, I’d be pushing hard for high-value-added businesses to repatriate (which will take time) and slacking on industrial and agricultural immigration enforcement (to buy time), and eventually working towards legislation that remakes the American labor system into something with more balance.
It is, really, still possible to fix this, to shift labor norms and get back to managing the Phillips curve internally instead of cheating with third world labor, but it’s not going to happen overnight. We got ourselves into it over the course of fifty years, Ross Perot warned us about it, and we’ve basically been punting on the important questions the whole time. Whether anything can be done within a democratic framework might even be a stretch, terms don’t last that long and the globalists are probably going to win, but I won’t slag the administration for normalizing the rejection of illegal immigrants en masse.
What if we just shift to a model of higher SS and Medicare taxes for any immigrant (legal or illegal)? These can be paid by the employer and audited by the IRS.
This would make citizens more desirable to employ, contribute to our retirement programs (possibly a lot), and shift the enforcement from jack booted thugs to tie wearing accountants (which work just as well with employers). It wouldn’t really cost employers much, as they would likely just take much of the taxes out of immigrant pay.
Win/win.
> "We know why, of course: real enforcement of both illegal immigration and tariffs would genuinely hurt the right with inflation, and rebuilding the manufacturing base takes too long, so the optics are rough either way."
Yeah, unfortunately the masses are going to have be educated to the reality that long-term solutions to their problems are going to involve significant short-term pain. There are no easy outs here.
“A far more effective policy would be something like mandatory E-verify for all employees, combined with frequent audits “
This I agree will work—for illegals who are willing/desiring to work, but not for criminals and welfare recipients/frauds. Criminals and those gaming the system have no use for legitimate employment, so E-verify does not affect them. These folk are currently the “low hanging fruit” being picked by the current Trump initiative. I also admit that current Trump enforcement efforts against those type of illegals—even if 100% successful—cannot hope but to remove an insignificant fraction of current illegals.
As far as E-verify for “souring the milk” for illegals, we need to give thought to the numbers of “refugees” or “asylum seekers” admitted. These refugees are given work permits pending final determination of their refugee/asylum status. Of course, that final determination (court date) now extends out from 3-5 years. In which case, E-verify is not the answer. The answer is to expand the court system for such determination so that such folks can be adjudicated *even* before being released on parole into this country.
I suspect that the "fringe anarchist circle" thinking you refer to is getting mainstreamed. I think a lot of Americans and Europeans now believe in open borders, not in a rigorous way, more in a "current thing" sort of way.
> "You have to remember that, from the perspective of an employer, illegal immigrants are pretty much the ideal workers: they have little bargaining power (owing to the threat of removal) so will readily accept low wages, long hours and poor working conditions"
I'm a little skeptical that self-interested-capitalism arguments pan out here, since any established business lobby has to notice that the cheap labour of today are going to be the amnesty-recipients who vote to expropriate their incomes tomorrow. (Yes, illegal aliens don't generally vote right now, but they certainly turn into tomorrow's voters, which is why the left wants to import so many.)
I agree with you that we should make E-verify mandatory.
I want to point out, however, that employment of illegal immigrants is highly concentrated in a few sectors: agriculture, meatpacking, hospitality, restaurants, and construction. For those businesses, losing cheap illegal labor would be serious blow to their business model.
And those businesses are typically small businesses, not large corporations.
Outside of these sector, most businesses, particularly large ones, really don’t care about illegal immigration beyond the inconvenience of adding a new step to hiring.
So it is absolutely not true that big corporations are the driving force behind opposition to E-Verify as some claim.