[jyl]

I do, but not sure if the pending law matches what I would like to se.

What I want:

1. Severe penalties for employers who hire aliens who are outside of the migrant worker visa system (that I'll describe below). Meaning criminal penalties. Plant managers, company executives go to jail. In addition to large monetary fines, exclusion from future govt work, etc.

2. Aliens currently in the country who want to get on path to citizenship have to sign up for a special visa. Visa gives them ability to work in US. Visa is not issued (and if issued is revoked) if they commit a crime, are deemed security risk, fail to provide current address and other info to INS every so many months, fail to pay taxes, work under table, seek certain govt benefits, etc. Basically they have to be productive workers and squeaky-clean.

4. Quota for new aliens to seek this visa. Determined based on our economic need for that sort of labor, determined by govt (e.g. Labor Dept).

5. After 5 or 10 years, visa holder can apply for green card. Requires documented history of employment, tax-paying, no criminality, etc. Also requires proven English language skills, civics education. After that, the usual track to US citizenship, or not, applies.

6. Alien who enters US outside of this visa system, or who leaves the system once here (visa revoked), is imprisoned then deported. Imprisonment is long enough (1 yr? 2 yrs?) to make it uneconomic for the person to do the enter-work-get deported-enter again thing.

7. Border fence. I think it is both feasible and politically/symbolically necessary.

8. Secure alien ID and visa system. Obviously govt will have to have good systems - biometrics, database, etc - to make this work.

9. Govt costs for this program - visa/ID systems, enforcement, prison, fence, all other costs associated with migrant alien program - to be self-funding, by addtional taxes surcharged on the aliens' income. So if ordinary taxpayer pays, say, 15% effective income tax rate, a migrant alien under this program might end up paying, say, 25% effective rate - anyway, what ever it takes so that other taxpayers don't pay.

Edit: I am not sure how the funding numbers work. Seems to me, if you have 12MM migrant aliens earning $10K-$20K/yr, that's a substantial income base to tax. But maybe 25% effective tax isn't enough, maybe it will have to be higher. One possible effect is that, as the jobs held by migrant aliens are forced to bear their actual cost via this increased taxation, the wages required by those workers increases and/or employers become financially motivated to hire more US citizens. That would be fine. Let different labor sources bear their true cost, and then let the market choose between those different labor sources.