The goal, he said, is to create “a truly national deterrent” to hiring unauthorized labor that would “change the practices of American employers as a class.”

I could not agree more with this goal.  If employers were very clearly facing stiff fines and jail-time penalties for hiring illegal immigrants, they would never hire them.  Immigrants would then have no motivation, or much, much less motivation, to enter illegally and look for work.

The Bush administration’s dramatic roundups of illegals in workplaces was shameful grandstanding.  It put unfair blame and penury on illegals and let employers off scott free.

Hopefully this more enlightened policy will only continue, get stronger and more widespread, and prove truly effective at vastly reducing illegal immigration, and illegal employment.

Employers should also be more widely encouraged, or mandated, to use E-Verify to validate employee’s residency/citizenship credentials.

Illegal immigrants are, in the great majority, hard working people who just want to provide for themselves and their families.  If they risk their lives and freedom, and forsake their family ties back home, to try to work here in the United States, we can only imagine how bad working conditions must be in the places they left behind.

An effective anti-illegal immigrant policy will have two fronts:

1. maximally deter employers here in the US from hiring illegals, thereby removing the motivation for illegal immigration.
2. pressure – or help – the countries from which illegal immigrants come to improve their own socio-economic environment, thereby, again, removing the motivation for emigrating.