U.S. Border Control

Law without enforcement is a sham

October 19, 2005

Before talking reform, let's talk respect. No law will succeed until employers and workers are convinced that they must obey it or face real penalties.

A significant part of the Republican Party, if not the White House, seems to have grasped an essential truth: Law without enforcement is a sham, and that's exactly what immigration law has been — and what it will continue to be, if the enforcement problem is not solved.

GOP leaders in the House and Senate have said recently that Congress should pass legislation to put new teeth into immigration law before tackling the question of what to do with the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants now here. As Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told The Washington Times last week, enforcement "is a separate issue, but it's one that people understand."

We would go a step further and say that people not only understand the issue but also give it the proper priority.

Even the Bush administration sounds a bit less cuddly toward illegal workers these days. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Tuesday said the government would stop the so-called "catch-and-release" policy of letting non-Mexican illegals go free on their own recognizance rather than sending them to their home countries. (Mexicans apprehended at the border are all sent back).

Meantime, President Bush made a point of listing border-enforcement upgrades in the Homeland Security bill, such as $82 million to improve and expand Border Patrol stations, 100 new immigration enforcement agents and 2,000 new beds in detention centers.

But neither Chertoff nor the president is ready to put first things first. As Chertoff put it: "We're going to need more than just brute enforcement. We're going to need a temporary worker program as well." Or as Bush put it: "Enforcement cannot work unless it is part of a larger comprehensive immigration reform program."

What the administration doesn't want to admit is that enforcement can work in the absence of a "comprehensive" plan. If the government were to make just one serious attempt to enforce the current law against the hiring of illegal aliens in one sizable labor market, and not to back down when employers howled, the flood of illegal immigrants seeking work might start receding rather quickly.

Once employers see that they cannot force Washington to back off (as Nebraska meatpackers did in 1999 when the government tried to crack down on their hiring of illegals), they will be less casual about issues such as false IDs. And once the feds start levying serious fines, they'll get serious compliance for a change.

A bill requiring tamper-proof identification would help, but a change in Washington's attitude is even more crucial. Whatever shape reform takes, it's pointless if workers and employers think they can get around it, as they routinely evade the current law.

Right now, the White House and congressional Republicans seem to be on a collision course on the question of bundling reform and enforcement into one package. But the last time Congress sent the president a stand-alone enforcement bill — the Real ID Act — he signed it.

We suspect he'd do the same with a bill that sets up a fraud-resistant system for checking workers' legal status. Such a bill would strike a chord with the public, and rightly so. Americans want their borders, and their laws, to get some respect.