Finally, there is the allied question: How do you treat illegals once they have got into the country? This is not by any means disposed of by saying simply that illegals are non-persons. You run into moral-philosophical questions: If the pregnant lady coming to term is an illegal, is there a computer mechanism by which that petitioner can be ignored, or shipped quickly to a Mexican-bound airline? If the child is hungry, is he fed?
Now these complications are arresting, when thus stated. The increase in the Mexican-illegal school population in California is marked, and getting the child and parent aboard a southbound bus is a doable thing, but it is also a work-intensive bureaucratic proceeding, involving lawyers, immigration police, transportation requisitions. A slightly removed way of putting on that kind of pressure is to harass the illegals. That is happening in California by use of the supreme sanction in the civilized world. Withholding a driver's license comes just this side of dumping the offender into a pit of hissing cobras.
The primary use of the driver's license, obviously, is to permit that which almost all Americans absolutely require. But that license does not bring only mobility; it is a key instrument for banks, credits cards, insurance and voter registration. Governor-elect Schwarznegger is committed to withdrawing driver's licenses from illegals. What will they do? Return to Mexico? That is unlikely. And if pressures mount, sufficient to repatriate a half-million Mexicans, can we simultaneously keep another half-million from seeping in?
A market pressure not mentioned among possible sanctions is the tax. Suppose an employer were taxed $5 for every hour an illegal put in? If enforced, that would hugely change the economic picture, requiring employers of illegals to pay much more -- and to charge more for their services.
Would the U.S. public then vote to repeal such a tax? We'd see how far the rectifications of the market would actually take us.