As one of the favorite destinations for would-be immigrants, the USA needs strong controls. As a business and vacation hub, it needs flexibility on who can visit. Trump’s solution — a multibillion-dollar southern wall — is woefully inadequate because an estimated 50 percent of illegal immigrants came in on visitor visas and never left.
I was recruited by an American oil company 50 years ago, and the visa process wasn’t onerous. I simply had to show that I had a job offer and wait a week or two while the embassy did a criminal background check in my home country, the U.K. I was then given a visa, which today could easily be in the form of an ID card in addition to the stamp in my passport.
Like all leading economies, the USA needs to attract extremely highly skilled workers — but not at the expense of locals. Trump’s recent proposal doesn’t do that. It’s actually standard operating procedure to Silicon Valley, which annually recruits many thousands of relatively cheap Indian programmers when they could easily meet their needs by recruiting American graduates and then putting them through a short and intensive “boot camp” (and final exam) on any special skills required. I designed such a course for a highly successful American-based international software company 30 years ago.
How do you control illegal immigration? A simple solution was proposed several years ago but was killed by Republicans in Congress. Namely, an immigrant picture ID card similar to a driver license and a database of authorized jobs. Employment history could be maintained in a government database and easily checked online by potential employers, workplace inspectors, police or immigration officials as needed. The proposal was killed by Republicans ostensibly because they objected to employers having to check the legal status of applicants and were very reluctant to legislate penalties on the many thousands of businesses — large and small — who cheated and still cheat and exploit the undocumented. With today’s technology, such excuses are no longer valid.
Frank Fish
Park City