Pizzo's Simple Solutions To Complicated Problems - Immigration Reform

March 30, 2006

Pizzo's Simple Solutions To Complicated Problems
(No. 2 in an occassional series)

Copyright by News For Real

Immigration Reform

Leave it to politicians to make something simple hopelessly complicated. I am, of course, referring to immigration reform. After listenting to C-Span all week I felt compelled to help these poor souls out. So, senators, representatives, White House folk, print this out and pin it your shirt for quick reference in the weeks ahead.

Important directions: WARNING: These instructions will only work if they are implemented in the exact order listed below. Try to implement them all at once, or in a different order, and they not only won't work, but will make matter worse.

So, by the numbers.

1) Who's Who: Establish an online Social Security data base available employers, police, banks and other recognized entities that already routinely handle Social Security numbers. An employer seeking to verify a number provided by a job applicant would simply log on, enter a person's name then the Social Security number they provided. The data base would come back with a simple answer – they either match or don't match.

2)Employer sanctions: Require employers check all their employees, current and future, against that database which will provide them a confirming printout for each employee who's number and name match. Employers then caught with illegal aliens on their payroll will be fined $500 for each one for a first offense, $1000 for a second offense, and face jail for subsequent offenses.

3)More Cops on the Beat: The Bush administration is already talking about hiring as many as 11,500 additional border control agents. Assign all these new agents to employer inspection duty in the 48 contiguous states. (Note: Only three employers were charged last year with hiring illegals. Until employers know they are going to be regularly audited they will continue to ignoring the law. And, as long as employers continue ignoring the law, so too will illegals. Hey Republicans, remember what your patron saint Ronald Reagan instructed: “Trust, but verify.”)

4)Guest Worker Job Center: Establish a formal guest worker program designed specifically to accommodate non-citizen workers seeking jobs in the US -- think of it as a kind of Monster.com for guest workers. This service would be available both online and at physical offices in each Mexican and US state capitol. Not only would US employers and Mexican workers connect here, but wages, work conditions, transportation and other worker/employer issues could be established and monitored.

5)Secure the border. I mean really secure the border. If I have to take my shoes off at airports to protect the US mainland from terrorists, the least I we can demand is that the same government that makes us do that seal the god damn border across which illegals cross, shoes and all, by the thousands every month. If they can't secure the border we should find someone who can. (Note: Securing the border becomes much easier once employer sanctions and an orderly guest worker program is in place and working. )

6)What to do about the 11 million illegals already here? Normalization? Let them go to the end of the line for citizenship? Okay.. a reluctant okay, but okay. But ONLY after reforms 1 through 5 are in place and operating smoothly. Not before. Not during. After.


Now, was that so hard?

I know, privacy rights folks will complain that establishing a Social Security number database would turn the Social Security card into a defacto national identity card. Well, I have a news flash for them: Too late. It already is. Get over it. Besides, uncontrolled immigration poses a far greater threat to the American way of life than establishing a reliable piece of I.D.

This database would also give police, banks and credit card companies a tool to combat ID theft. They would be able to quickly compare, not just the name and number provided, but the database would also take note of the city where the actual person holding that card was last known to live. Then if someone presents a Social Security card to a bank or employer in, say Arizona, that matches up with a card holder know to be living in Maine, a red flag would go up, even if the names match. The database service would then send up a red flag requiring further inquiry – 800-number provided.

Remember, the person(s) using this database to verify the status of someone would never see the actual information held in the database. They would just get a thumbs up, thumbs down or “call for additional information.”

There you are. Simple as that. Since the IRS never seems to have a problem finding me, even when I moved to different states, I suspect they already have a database something along these lines. The Social Security administration certainly does. So we just need to hire a half-dozen of those talented webby dudes or dudettes, (sporting ear rings in all the wrong places, ) to write a web interface that lets employers and police verify quickly if a person and the Social Security number they provide match.

In a normal, (non-governmental) environment such a task should take less than six months to write, secure and test. Then, since almost every employer in the US now has a web connection all they need to provide them is a URL, a user name and password.

So, what's the hold up?