Indeed, it is a sign of the schizophrenia inherent in our system that the 1986 immigration reform actually made it illegal to ask a prospective employee about his legal status prior to hiring. That is considered discriminatory. The Office of Special Council for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices in the Department of Justice is responsible for cracking down on employers too vigilant -- or vigilant in the wrong ways -- about not hiring illegal workers. Given that in 2002 only 13 employers were sanctioned for hiring illegals, the federal government's priorities here are obviously badly skewed.
On the nanny issue, Kerik has his quasi-defenders: "Everyone does it," they say, "everyone is forced to do it." Nonsense. Open-borders advocates make it sound as though there were never any housekeepers or nannies prior to the age of mass illegal immigration. There were. And somehow today, in those large swaths of the country without any illegal immigrants to speak of, people still manage to get their houses cleaned and their children cared for.
The reliance on illegal labor on the coasts and in major urban areas is deeply corrupting. It fosters a casual contempt for the law among those who do the hiring, and it hurts the country's most economically vulnerable citizens. Poorly educated workers who might compete for the kind of jobs taken by illegals are either shoved out of the way entirely or see their wages cut by the unfair competition. Democrats and Republicans both tend to buck popular sentiment to defend this status quo for their own reasons -- Democrats to pander to ethnic lobbies; Republicans to pander to businesses that like cheap labor with no rights.
All of this is why immigration laws should apply much more broadly than just to Bernie Kerik, or the next Cabinet nominee too careless to have observed the law in his own household.