Immigration Reform

During the Civil War, Union Gen. U.S. Grant employed an old and proven military strategy by surrounding the enemy as he did at Vicksburg and Richmond until the inhabitants were starving and eating rats and drinking fouled water before they were advanced upon and defeated.

The Soviet army used the same strategy to defeat the German army at Stalingrad in World War II.

Applied in a more humane spirit but using the same strategy, this is the path that Congress must take to end the illegal immigrant problem once and for all. It requires two things Congress does not have the will to do.

The first is a national identification card, or passport, or visa to enter, visit and work in the United States.

The second is a law for those that hire people without  I.D.s given comparable penalties as those applied to people without proper legal papers.

If the government spent as much time, money and effort going after the magnet drawing illegal workers into the country as they now do chasing them down, like Vicksburg, the "enemy" will be choked off in due time.

Except for the small percentage of drug and human smugglers and possibly fewer terrorists, those seeking work and cannot find it will have no recourse but return to their homelands.

Those arguing against a national I.D. are misguided. Although we do not carry a birth certificate around with us all the time, we do need it to enroll our children in school, Pop Warner Football, Little League, Social Security, most states for drivers' licenses and entering as volunteers for our military branches.

We think nothing of applying for passports and visas to travel to foreign countries.

The Obama administration is putting the Bush era to shame in raiding large businesses hiring illegal immigrants and fining employers. It is an ugly process with families separated and employers continuing business as usual.

The "Three Strikes" rule should apply to employers as it does to criminals. Multiple offenders should receive automatic jail sentences. If that doesn't get their attention, nothing will. The same would apply to homeowners  driving by the local Home Depot to hire illegal workers to mow their lawns and clean their houses.

But, no, we can't do that because the price of tomatoes would soar to $5 a pound and hotels and restaurants would be broke paying wages to their cleaning crew and busboys.

Housewives willing pay illegal immigrant women $20/hr.cleaning their homes without recognizing the most industrialist ones with four clients a day six days a week is pulling in $960 in cash per week tax free. The argument of exploiting the poor doesn't wash.

This is America's dirty little secret it refuses to face head on. Why politicians insist on securing the border a priority when it cannot track the people it issues visas to? If the government spent half its resources on beefing up the process of issuing visas and work permits as it does on securing the border those long lines would diminish to weeks rather than months and years.

And the feds then can spend their valuable man hours tracking down the smugglers who more than likely commit the shootings, burglaries, robberies and kidnappings than the poor soul from a dirt poor village in the interior of Mexico whose only purpose is to find work for his family.

Just as in the "Field of Dreams," if a market exists, they will come.