There are a lot of issues around immigration- what should we do about it, who has the authority to make those calls, and what kind of federal legislation should and will we have to deal with the growing problem in the future. With Arizona just passing their law and it looking to go into effect later this month, the immigration issue has come to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. Everyone seems to have an opinion, and in fact, 59% of everyone seems to agree with the law that Arizona passed. So if there is wide and majority support for deporting people who are undocumented rather than admitting the reality of how our economic and social world actually runs, what is the government really going to do about it?

Apparently they are going to start auditing employers to see whether their employees are documented or not. Rather than raiding the workplaces themselves, the government is now going to raid the work history records instead. I have to wonder, though, how many companies that hire and employ large numbers of undocumented workers have extensive records stating that they are employing that may undocumented workers? Isn’t that the kind of thing you would not put down on paper? Wouldn’t you just handshake and pay in cash so that there is no paper trail?

That seems like illegally employing people 101.

So far the Obama administration’s agencies have audited 2,900 companies and imposed $3 million in fines. $3 million in fines? Here’s the math:

Just over $1,000 per business, assuming they all had something wrong going on. That doesn’t seem like much of a punishment. Even if only a quarter of them ended up with some kind of violation, that’s 700 businesses and just over $4,000 per business. Still not much to actually dissuade anyone from going on and doing what they please, as far as hiring undocumented workers. Come on, government, if you’re going to do something, at least make it something that has a chance of making an effect. You’re paying the people who do the audits more than you are making on the fines.

They aren’t deporting the workers who they find to be undocumented, either. They are just asking the companies to fire them. So, what’s the big deal? It may be making it harder for businesses to hire and keep undocumented workers on their employment rosters, but is it really doing much to stem the tide of illegal immigration? I doubt it. It’s a theory that if there are less jobs, then less people will want to immigrate, is what I’m guessing. I can’t imagine this will have much of an effect, as the illegality of hiring undocumented workers in the first place means that there just won’t be the bulk of illegal workers on company records. I think this is a good example of the government wasting money on something that looks like it’s doing something about the problem but really isn’t understanding the larger issue or how to do something real about it.

Photo Credit: Medmoiselle T