Jail Time for Employers Who Hire “Illegal” Immigrants?

There is a bill now going through the Massachusetts state legislature that proposes to give jail time to employers who hire “illegal” immigrants. The bill was filed by freshman state Rep. Ryan Fattman. I wrote about the young sprout from rural Sutton, Massachusetts here. Rep. Fattman’s undergraduate degree is in “government,” and as of a year ago his graduate program is in “public policy.” (Barf!)

Regarding Fattman’s bill to jail innocent employers who hire innocent workers, he stated,

Employment opportunity is a big incentive (for illegal immigrants),” said Rep. Ryan Fattman, R-Sutton, who filed the bill in January. “If there’s an employer out there offering jobs to someone who’s not supposed to be here, that’s a major problem. There should be heavy penalties for it, and that’s what this bill does.”

Hmmm. Employment opportunity is a big incentive. God forbid. Well, as I have written previously, conservative statists just don’t get it, when it come to immigration, labor and employment. Many people are still stuck in this love-the-State mentality, in which we are all owned by the State. I probably received the most negative emails responding to my LewRockwell.com article on immigration and employment, than to any other article I have written. There are many people who must emotionally defend their socialist and communist idea that the State owns all the territory, the property and businesses and the people within the territory, and that the State must control all the personal and economic interests of the people.

Here in Massachusetts, there have been quite a few drunk-driving accidents and deaths caused by “illegal” immigrants. Boston talk radio hosts Michael Graham and Howie Carr do not hesitate to immediately conclude that a new drunk-driving-related death was caused by an “illegal.” Their way to deal with that is to crack down on the “illegals.” But, the emotionalism aside for a moment, it shouldn’t matter what someone’s immigration status is if one is driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. If someone caused an accident and injury or death because of driving irresponsibly, then perhaps we need to banish him from society and deport him to the Gene Burns Island, as I wrote here.

And there are too many emotion-driven acts of legislation that let the government intrude into the lives of workers and employers because of the problems caused by “illegals” in the southern part of America, particularly in Arizona and Texas. One example is Gov. Jan Brewer’s bill to stop and question dark-skinned or Spanish-accented individuals and ask for their papers, regardless of lack of suspicion of any wrongdoing. What you need to do is get rid of the War on Drugs, because that kind of nanny government’s treating the people like babies is what has caused all the violent crime — just as during the alcohol Prohibition era of the 1920s — and all the government and police corruption. You also need to make people take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, such as punishing or banishing people who cause others’ deaths, as I have just mentioned.

But this idea of criminalizing business owners and employers for hiring workers? That comes from just plain ignorance of the ideas of individual rights, private property and contract rights.

All individuals have inherent rights of self-ownership, the right to life and liberty, the right to own one’s own life and one’s person and justly-acquired property, and the right to do with one’s life, person, and labor whatever one wishes, as long as one is peaceful and doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s same right. No matter who you are or what territory you’re from, you have a right to voluntarily trade your labor with anyone who is voluntarily willing to offer you something in exchange for your labor, and it’s no one else’s business, but solely between you and your fellow trader. (More here.)

As I and others, especially Jacob Hornberger, have written plenty of times now, socialist central planning doesn’t work. And it isn’t working and won’t work in immigration as well. It is just impractical to give a government central planning control of the people inside the territory and over the people who want to migrate to that territory. (See here and here.)

Now, if there are readers out there who want to say that someone else does have a right to intrude on that private relationship, that private contract between employer and worker, and that the government has that right or legitimate power of intrusion, then you are a communist, pure and simple. That is because, if you believe that the private contract between two traders, a willing and voluntary laborer and a willing and voluntary employer, really is the business of the neighbors, or the government or the police, then you believe that the neighbors or the community and the State own the business in question, the property, the capital, and the lives of the traders, for that is what communism is: collective and State ownership of industry and the people. And once you say that we share in ownership with our neighbors or the government, then, because the community at large and government officials outnumber the individual businessman and individual worker, then all final decisions will be imposed by the more powerful ones, hence in actuality they are the de facto owners.

Actually, regarding whether or not the community in general has any moral right to exclude others from the territory, no they don’t. Private individuals and businesspeople are the ones with the right of exclusion from their private property, their homes and businesses, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe pointed out.

But I would like to know what actual businesses young Rep. Ryan Fattman (or any other government officials for that matter) has ever owned and how many people he has actually employed, and if the answer is none, then perhaps he ought to give it a try, and then maybe he’ll change his mind about criminalizing businessmen who employ workers, who actually provide other human beings with a job and a paycheck.

Rather than jailing businesspeople for hiring workers, lets jail government officials and police who intrude into other people’s lives, property and businesses, and whose constant actions of aggression do nothing but harm people and society as a whole.