Or, in other words, to make my point a bit more explicit, the requirement to get an SSN before you start a job, whatever its merits or demerits, would not impose a “more involved process” on “coming into the US to work.” It would only be imposing a requirement on immigrants to work, after they had already come into the United States.

That may seem like splitting hairs. But it’s significant that the point at which the requirement would be imposed need not be the point at which the immigrant enters the U.S. And that the penalties for failing to do so need not have anything to do with the right to remain in the U.S.

I go to New York most summers to take a temporary teaching job, and when I do I have to fill out the requisite paperwork for New York state tax withholding. But I don’t have to fill out those papers ahead of time in order to enter or to stay in New York. And if I took a job off the books in New York without filling out those forms, then the penalty, if I got caught, would be the usual fines. Not being exiled from the state of New York and sent back to my old home state.

cfrost:

Is a lifeboat mentality ethical? Probably not, but that’s inevitably what you’re going to get with a sinking ship. With a world population of 6.5 billion and growing by the second, you’ll have a hard time convincing those who live in the few islands of prosperity to let the masses in.

This argument presupposes that the most privileged people in the world have some kind of business supporting themselves in the style to which they have become accustomed by forcibly interfering with the peaceful migration of the poorest and most vulnerable, and to use force to stop them from taking jobs for willing employers, or to live on property onto which the owners have welcomed them. The comfort of American natives is not worth more than the well-being of people from other countries, and Americans do not gain the right to maintain a particular standard of living on the backs of pauperized foreigners simply in virtue of being Americans.

Nativism is the progressivism of fools. Besides the fact that it’s a disgusting sentiment, it also has no basis in anything that could possibly be recognized as liberal values.

Lindsay,

A more substantive reply to your points will have to wait a little while due to other work, and it may be worth a post of its own at my blog. For the time being, though:

Yes, coming into the US to work should be a more involved process than crossing a state line. At the very least, people who want to work in the US need to be issued Social Security Numbers or some functional alternative so that we can keep track of their payroll taxes and the legally-mandated contributions of their employers on their behalf.

I don’t think that anybody, whether native or immigrant, should be forced to contribute to Social Security in order to get a job. If they don’t intend to draw benefits that they didn’t pay in for, then it’s none of the government’s business. But if you think that it is necessary to issue new SSNs and subject immigrants to withholding taxes, then go ahead and issue those SSNs. But all that takes is one more sheet of paperwork to do at the point of employment, probably at the same time as the W-2. It has nothing in particular to do with imposing any kind of special restrictions or special ex ante screening for immigrants at the point of the border crossing, or as a condition for establishing long-term residency, and there’s no reason why enforcement should be considered a matter for immigration law, or punished by deportation, rather than merely considered a matter for tax law, as it would be considered if the person working off the books were an American citizen.

There’s no intrinsic connection between being an undocumented immigrant and working under the table. It is only because of the existing government restrictions on immigration, and the need to avoid government detection, that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately likely to work under the table.