I am not anti-immigrant, far from it considering my family hasn't been here for very long itself, but I do agree that we should have some controls and requirements to become a citizen, but that isn't what I want to focus on.

What I would like to address is what seems to me to be the most obvious approach to dealing with those entering or staying in the country illegally.

I feel we are coming at this issue from the opposite approach of what we should be doing and in a semi rambling conversational way, which is my general (lack of) writing style, I will try to explain why.

So lets start it with a few simple questions, the first is a question involving math and numbers, but because I dislike math (There are 3 kinds of people when it comes to math, those that get it and those that don't) I am not going to bother gathering them as I think ultimately they will be self evident and even if my assumptions are off I still feel it doesn't make my proposed solution any less valid.

Which group do you think is lessor in number, the amount of workers illegally here or those companies and individuals that hire them?

I would say obviously the workers are going to be the larger group, so therefor the harder one to "Police" (it's always much easier to deal with the problem actors in a smaller group, just ask any middle school teacher who has seen their student ratios explode).

So, since there are less employers, why are we not fixating our efforts to combat this on the smaller front instead of trying to engage in widespread roundups, building holding facilitates and conducting expensive deportations?

When you want to take over a nation, do you go and take each individual town, village or hamlet, occupy them and throw all the citizenry into cages, or do you take the large centers of industry and the capital and dismantle it's military production and leadership capabilities?

So taking these thoughts into account, wouldn't it make more sense for us to direct our law enforcement/INS efforts towards creating an enforcement arm of the Department of Labor, who's sole goal is to investigate and audit companies to insure that they are not hiring people illegally and if they are caught willfully doing so subjecting them to MASSIVE penalties and sanctions?

Said agents wouldn't even need guns to combat the problem, just calculators.

The sanctions would need to be big enough that it cannot be "Just a cost of doing business" in order to be effective and it could even be on a tiered scale or even just a set flat percentage of gross revenue, not Net as that would be too easy to work around.

These penalties would need to large enough to seriously wound these companies bottom line, but not to the point that it would cause them to be shut down and lead to unemployment of their workforce, just big enough to hurt their shareholders. (Who I am quite sure would then be replacing said CEO.)

After all, we know where EVERY SINGLE COMPANY is located! We don't need to spend massive resources tracking them down, they file papers and do business out of fixed locations largely which makes it much easier to monitor and conduct random inspections of them.

This would HAVE to be cheaper than building a wall and hiring tons of armed INS agents to patrol and guard it. (Leaving aside the obvious fact that the larger portion of those that illegally enter the country do so either via Air or Sea anyway.) Not to mention all the individual states resources that get dedicated to combating the problem.

It is also much more likely to be successful because the biggest reason people come here is for jobs, but if there are no jobs available then there would be less reason to overstay your visa illegally.

If you come here without paperwork and the employers can't write off any fines as a minor cost of doing business than those coming solely looking for employment largely will not come without going through the proper steps to do so, and those that are already here will begin to either self deport or start on a path towards citizenship, creation of which of course would have to go hand in hand with such a strategy.

We could allow a general period of amnesty for those that can establish that they were already here at time of passage and give them the opportunity to apply for a new class of temporary visa that is contingent on them immediately starting the process of becoming citizens and as long as they are doing so their employers can continue to employee them. They could be provided with Temporary Tax ID numbers in lieu of a Social Security number and start paying taxes and receiving services while doing so.

They could also then get Drivers Licenses and therefore also obtain auto and health insurance, seriously reducing the massive numbers of uninsured motorists which is driving up insurance rates in states that have a large illegal population and decreasing already overtaxed emergency rooms.

It just seems like this is such a common sense approach that I cannot fathom why NOBODY in congress on the Right or Left is proposing such. It completely fits in with RW ideology by both cutting down on illegals (I.E. Brown People) and being a more fiscally smart approach and should appeal to "Democrats" as well as it is a smart, compassionate approach to the problem. (Well, the end of that last line just made me sound a bit of a braggart, lol!)

This does not address those that are fleeing here as political refugee's from Destabilized Latin American nations of course, but that is a much smaller percentage of those coming and would in fact free up enough resources that we could properly address them as well but that is a subject for an Essay in and of itself.