As the grandson of legal immigrants, I too am finding this debate on illegal immigration most annoying and hypocritical. It is very easy to stop illegal immigration. You simply make it illegal to hire someone without papers, and vigorously enforce the law with fines and prison terms, if necessary. In areas like agriculture, where it may be necessary to have foreign workers, guest worker programs with proper documentation can be set up. The reason we have illegal immigrants in this country is because the people who hire them benefit financially from it. Full stop.

Just think, no fence, no new bureaucracy, no border troops, no exploitation of illegal workers or inconvenience to legal ones, and no new laws. Will it be expensive to administer? Perhaps, but certainly no more than the alternative proposals. Will it be foolproof? Probably not, but once the risk gets high enough, the illegal hiring will stop. And it will require no new legislation, just the enforcement of existing law.

Of course this will be opposed by both the businesses which profit from cheap labor and the activists who make their careers by patronizing desperate and victimized people. So what else is new?

No amnesty for illegal hiring.