It’s actually very simple.

We talk to the immigrants and ask who hired them. We ask them to provide proof. Proof of residence. It may not be complete. Rent checks in the vicinity, maybe. Light bills. We ask them who they worked for. We ask them for proof–checks, payslips, receipts for job expensed items, written instructions given them to explain or direct a job. Something their employers gave them.

Then we go to that employer, factory manager, housewife, contractor who gets his day laborers from a corner every morning and pay cash–a well financed investigative team should be able to document the hell out of this; any competent private investigator with a camera and a vehicle could do this– we go to that hiring person and explain that, whether or not it had been their intent, when they hired the immigrant without fully understanding his or her immigration status, he or she, the employer, had at the very least added to the pressure for more to immigrate outside the law. The employer had offered an invitation. In many cases, the employer had hired more than one, even more clearly a solicitation to the second he or she hired. The serial employers especially should have known that they were dealing with black market labor, particularly if they were paying a substantially substandard wage.

So we, in the form of a smartly uniformed agent of home bound security, come to these employers and say, more or less, you’ve invited these folks in and have benefited substantially by having them here despite their lack of legal standing. This has created a huge legal problem. These people have issues that have to be dealt with from health problems to educating their children to protecting them from rapacious employers–people and institutions that have already taken the position that they need not follow the rules that lower their bottom line, and all these issues are more difficult and more expensive to deal with because of this lack of documentation that you, Mr. or Mrs. Employer-ess, found it okay to overlook. “We,” we say, in our form of this well-dressed and polite-to-a-fault representative, “are quite displeased by the problems you have had a hand in creating by, at the very least, the sloppiness of your bookwork. You’re in business, you should be able to handle the bookwork for that business, including knowing the status of your employees, even your temporary employees. It is part of being responsible.”

“We’re going to have to insist that you deal with your responsibilities. To leave us to pay for problems you have created is unjust. It won’t stand. So we order you to undertake that expense From one point of view is that you will merely be paying back the unfair advantage you sought in paying substandard wages, an illicit benefit for you. You need to pay the Social Security benefits you skipped, the insurance you would be paying otherwise and other costs you were avoiding illegally. You must find your competitive advantage by some other means.

Well, that’s some of the worst dialogue ever written, but you get the idea. And this is doable. Yes, certain of our citizens might object if there were suddenly a consequence to their already criminal enterprise, ripping off the immigrants with substandard wages. I suppose, again, someone might object that they didn’t hire anybody, I’d say one should only be chargeable if there is proof. I don’t know exactly what expenses these folks should take on or if there are fines they ought to pay–seems like there should be consequences–but at the very least they should become sponsors for their invitees. If you’ve ever been a sponsor for an immigrant and actually read all that paper you have to sign, you know that it’s a serious undertaking, a ten year committment at the very least. That would be a good thing for our erring employers. Committments are good, aren’t they? Recognizing and honoring the committments we’ve made, even the unspoken ones, are good things to do.

When we, as citizens, begin to accept responsibility for the immigration problem and begin to take care of the consequences of our irresponsibility, the immigration problem will no longer be a problem. It’ll be what it always has been, part of the American scene.