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Why no criminal penalties for hiring illegals?

C

CriticalThought

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There can be fines for hiring illegal workers, but the most an employer would spend in jail for doing it is 6 months, and that is only after having been caught doing it over and over again.

Since immigration is all about "law and order" and "national security" then why not increase the penalty of knowingly hiring an illegal to a mandatory 10 year sentence?
 
CriticalThought said:
There can be fines for hiring illegal workers, but the most an employer would spend in jail for doing it is 6 months, and that is only after having been caught doing it over and over again.

Since immigration is all about "law and order" and "national security" then why not increase the penalty of knowingly hiring an illegal to a mandatory 10 year sentence?
Click to expand...

A more effective method would be to take the business advantage away from those who employ illegal labor by changing the federal income tax code to disallow deduction of direct labor costs for any employees (W2 or 1099) that lack a valid eVerify code. The penalties are already quite severe for tax law violations - especially tax fraud.
 
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CriticalThought said:
There can be fines for hiring illegal workers, but the most an employer would spend in jail for doing it is 6 months, and that is only after having been caught doing it over and over again.

Since immigration is all about "law and order" and "national security" then why not increase the penalty of knowingly hiring an illegal to a mandatory 10 year sentence?
Click to expand...

While I certainly think going after people who hire illegals is a good thing, I don’t think it merits prison time. I generally oppose prison time for nonviolent/victimless crimes.
 
CriticalThought said:
There can be fines for hiring illegal workers, but the most an employer would spend in jail for doing it is 6 months, and that is only after having been caught doing it over and over again.

Since immigration is all about "law and order" and "national security" then why not increase the penalty of knowingly hiring an illegal to a mandatory 10 year sentence?
Click to expand...

Because there are two forces with controlling votes. Those who want cheap labor, and those who want their votes either now or in the future. Neither camp gives a **** about you or your job.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
While I certainly think going after people who hire illegals is a good thing, I don’t think it merits prison time. I generally oppose prison time for nonviolent/victimless crimes.
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Victimless crime? These are all rapists and murderers these folks are hiring. Trump said so himself. These are gang members and real dangerous hombres. If these employers were not hiring them then they would not be able to get a foothold in this country. We should treat these Americans who hire illegals as traitors. Think of the Americans that Trump showed were victims of losing a loved one to an illegal. How many of those illegals were employed by Americans? We should change the law so those families can sue those employers for every penny they have.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
While I certainly think going after people who hire illegals is a good thing, I don’t think it merits prison time. I generally oppose prison time for nonviolent/victimless crimes.
Click to expand...

I like $25,000 fines per employee depending on how weak or strong your legal vetting efforts were. It’s all about the cheap labor.
 
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chuckiechan said:
I like $25,000 vines per employee depending on how weak or strong your legal vetting efforts were. It’s about the cheap labor.
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Meh, fines haven't worked. They are clearly not an effective deterrent. These employers are endangering our national security. Trump has made it clear that we are not safe with these illegals in our communities. We need to hold the people who hire them criminally liable for endangering us all.
 
CriticalThought said:
Victimless crime? These are all rapists and murderers these folks are hiring. Trump said so himself. These are gang members and real dangerous hombres. If these employers were not hiring them then they would not be able to get a foothold in this country. We should treat these Americans who hire illegals as traitors. Think of the Americans that Trump showed were victims of losing a loved one to an illegal. How many of those illegals were employed by Americans? We should change the law so those families can sue those employers for every penny they have.
Click to expand...

Trump is a pathological liar!
He is hardly a good source!
 
Skeptic Bob said:
While I certainly think going after people who hire illegals is a good thing, I don’t think it merits prison time. I generally oppose prison time for nonviolent/victimless crimes.
Click to expand...

Hit them in the wallet
 
Mizzy22 said:
Trump is a pathological liar!
He is hardly a good source!
Click to expand...

60 million Americans believe in him. That being said I think employers who have ever hired illegals should be held civilly liable for anything they do in this country. Hypothetically, a multi billion dollar real estate developer who has hired illegals in the past should be subject to being sued by families of victims of any of those illegals because they enabled them stay in this country.
 
Who made the laws? Who isn't enforcing the laws? Why?
 
CriticalThought said:
60 million Americans believe in him. That being said I think employers who have ever hired illegals should be held civilly liable for anything they do in this country. Hypothetically, a multi billion dollar real estate developer who has hired illegals in the past should be subject to being sued by families of victims of any of those illegals because they enabled them stay in this country.
Click to expand...

60 Million Americans have been taken in by a immoral narcissist,con man
 
chuckiechan said:
I like $25,000 fines per employee depending on how weak or strong your legal vetting efforts were. It’s all about the cheap labor.
Click to expand...

25000 would be to low in my opinion

I would make it a min of $ 50 000 per illegal employee. The only exception is where an attempt at E Verify was made and said the worker was legal
No exceptions for casual labour or temp workers. Multiple offences get higher fines (double for second, triples for third.

Make it a real punishment for employers and the jobs will try up. Leading most illegals to leave.
 
CriticalThought said:
Victimless crime? These are all rapists and murderers these folks are hiring. Trump said so himself. These are gang members and real dangerous hombres. If these employers were not hiring them then they would not be able to get a foothold in this country. We should treat these Americans who hire illegals as traitors. Think of the Americans that Trump showed were victims of losing a loved one to an illegal. How many of those illegals were employed by Americans? We should change the law so those families can sue those employers for every penny they have.
Click to expand...

 
Mizzy22 said:
What makes you think that?
Click to expand...

"... It may be early yet to tell which approach the Trump administration is committing to – the high-profile raids of the Bush administration or the audits favored by Obama. But this month's action suggests that both approaches are on the table.

"What it seems is that they're doing a hybrid of those two investigations," Hahn says, at least so far as the raids at the 7-Elevens, which were carried out at 98 locations in 17 states.

They also seem to indicate that employers, who some believe have long successfully deflected punishment for their hiring practices, are squarely in the crosshairs of immigration enforcement.

... They wanted to make, in a very public way, that the old regime of lax – or what they would call laissez-faire – immigration policy is over, that a new sheriff is in town," says attorney Muzaffar Chishti, who studies workplace enforcement trends as the director of the New York University office for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. "It's consistent with that message." ..."

https://www.usnews.com/news/nationa...inally-targeting-employers-of-illegal-workers
 
Why no criminal penalties for hiring illegals?
Click to expand...
There are criminal penalties for hiring illegal immigrants.

CriticalThought said:
There can be fines for hiring illegal workers, but the most an employer would spend in jail for doing it is 6 months, and that is only after having been caught doing it over and over again.


Since immigration is all about "law and order" and "national security" then why not increase the penalty of knowingly hiring an illegal to a mandatory 10 year sentence?
Click to expand...

Red:

That one is subject to spending six months in jail indicates that there are criminal penalties for hiring illegals.
​

Pink:


  • [*=1]That one is penalized with jail time is a function of a number of things, but not of there being no criminal penalties. The overwhelming majority of reasons why jail time is so infrequently the penalty are found in 8 USC 1324 (linked above).
    [*=1]Another reason is that jurisprudence and sound governance, in general, eschews incarcerating people who are yet contributors to the nation's economic productivity/prosperity, particularly when the laws violated pertain to administrative/procedural misdeeds rather than physical/violent misdeeds. Obviously, there's a limit to how much forbearance jurists accord to "white-collar" offenders.

    Be that as it may, it doesn't make sense to incarcerate
    -- The employer, who is producing something economically useful and demanded, and
    -- The immigrant worker, who is contributing to the production of the employer's goods/services...
    ...when the whole point of the employer hiring the worker is to obtain profits, the more of which the employer earns, the more that are subject to taxation. Additionally, the pecuniary penalties are presumed to adequately diminish the marginal profit bump employers realize by hiring unauthorized-to-work-in-the-U.S. individuals.
​

​
Aside:
Perspicacious observers will note the incongruity of the argument some conservatives make regarding the virtues of lower taxes while also arguing that employers should be penalized (or penalized more harshly than the current code provisions allow/jurists are wont to hand down).
​


  • [*=1]Lowering business/corporate tax rates --> We should lower tax rates because doing so allows businesses to retain more of their earnings which they will, in turn, invest, thereby creating more jobs.
    [*=1]Immigration law hiring violations --> Employers should be made to pay steeper penalties for hiring illegals.
    [*=1]Every little bit helps.
What's unprincipled about that? Well, if it's in the overall interest of the nation for businesses to retain more of their profits, it stands to reason that penalizing them with fines -- or worse, with not being productive, or near as much so by way of being incarcerated -- is antithetical to a business' retaining more of its earnings so it can in turn invest them so as to create more jobs. The thing about being principled is that to be so, one's principles and the actions one advocates as a result of them cannot be contradictory.​
 
Skeptic Bob said:
While I certainly think going after people who hire illegals is a good thing, I don’t think it merits prison time. I generally oppose prison time for nonviolent/victimless crimes.
Click to expand...

Dishonest players in the marketplace have to go to jail
 
CriticalThought said:
There can be fines for hiring illegal workers, but the most an employer would spend in jail for doing it is 6 months, and that is only after having been caught doing it over and over again.

Since immigration is all about "law and order" and "national security" then why not increase the penalty of knowingly hiring an illegal to a mandatory 10 year sentence?
Click to expand...

There actually are penalties of a business intentionally hires a person without proper credentials proving they're legal to work in the U.S.

In many cases the illegal employee submits false credentials. In this case, even if the employer knows the credentials are fake, it's a difficult thing to prove.
 
Mizzy22 said:
Hit them in the wallet
CriticalThought said:
Hasn't worked.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

The fines would work just fine were they indexed to inflation or the COL, but they aren't; they're static.

8 USC 1324 was initially enacted in 1988 and has been variously amended up to and including 2004. I don't know in which of those years the $3K penalty was stipulated, but I do know that $3000 2018 dollars is worth about $1400 1988 dollars, whereas $3000 1988 dollars are worth about $6400 2018 dollars.

Now I don't know how much less employers of unauthorized workers pay as a result of using illegal immigrants, but whatever be the average marginal difference, increased by the difference between the national median wage and total cost of an employee, is what should be the cost of the fine, and the sum should be incremented annually proportionally to some national index and then reviewed each lustrum for "fit."

Calculation of Fine:​
+ Base sum + index increment: Base sum x (1 + inflation rate) = B
+ Absolute value of the difference between national median wage paid and average total cost ("fully burdened" cost) of an employee
​
Total fine per unauthorized worker​

Defining the penalty amount that way removes from convicted employers the financial benefit of hiring unauthorized workers and increases the risk of having to pay more than what one would have paid were one to have hired an authorized worker.
 
Don't underestimate our country's addiction to cheap labor, from slaves to immigrants to braceros. Illegals make lower the price of my food, my hotel bill, my restaurant bill, and perhaps some construction costs if I hire a contractor. They provide a docile workforce. We love it. Been that way since 1619, even before we were a country. If you don't like it, support unions.
 
CriticalThought said:
There can be fines for hiring illegal workers, but the most an employer would spend in jail for doing it is 6 months, and that is only after having been caught doing it over and over again.

Since immigration is all about "law and order" and "national security" then why not increase the penalty of knowingly hiring an illegal to a mandatory 10 year sentence?
Click to expand...
Ask congress

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I467 using Tapatalk
 
CriticalThought said:
There can be fines for hiring illegal workers, but the most an employer would spend in jail for doing it is 6 months, and that is only after having been caught doing it over and over again.

Since immigration is all about "law and order" and "national security" then why not increase the penalty of knowingly hiring an illegal to a mandatory 10 year sentence?
Click to expand...

Well I don't know why we should single out just employers. Why not install the same punishment to anybody renting housing to them, people who register vehicles to them. Cities that issue identification or sanctuary to them. Agencies that show them how to get benefits?
 
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