> hard and complex problems require hard and complex solutions
There's actually a simple solution to illegal immigration: go after the employers. We don't because we want to have our cake and eat it too. (Same reason these raids aren't happening on farms in red states.)
That one is also hard and complex in the sense that it will force the country to come to terms with how much of its economy is based on ignoring its own laws and an incoherent concept of fairness. In a democracy, getting people to accept pain (in this case, higher prices) to write a moral error that they generally experience only in the abstract is known hard; it's one of the reasons America clung to slavery so long, because in addition to unpaid labor propping up the corner of the Southern economy, the northern economy benefited from cheap raw materials.
So, real story, I work in a university in Europe, and we’ve been told by the immigration explicitly that we need to increase at least 50% of rejections to applications from Pakistani students. Apparently they come with a student Visa to take a Master’s degree but after a month or two they get a job and disappear from the university. And this is not desirable.
The fun part is that they are allowed to work with their student Visa, and they pay the tuition fees normally, which is spicy.
So basically we have a huge gang problem right now, but instead of deporting gang criminals, we’re deporting honest Pakistani young people who are actually working legally for the country’s companies. But guess how many companies ever got in trouble for this?
There's actually a simple solution to illegal immigration: go after the employers. We don't because we want to have our cake and eat it too. (Same reason these raids aren't happening on farms in red states.)