My wife and I are sponsoring a doctor to migrate here from Russia in the fall. We had to sign some papers that make us fully responsible for her. If she ends up on welfare, we have to pay it back. If she commits a crime, she gets deported and we pay whatever costs and fines are involve and possibly face jail time. Our responsibility lasts until she acheives full citizenship in between 5 and 7 years.
It's pretty sad that a person who comes here illegally has an easier ride than someone who does the same legally.
It's worse than sad.
It's bowing to the unlawful.
If direct consumers of illegal immigrant labour were forced to make these same guarantees, rather than hang them on society at large, I'd have no objection to a sane and enforceable guest worker program. I'd suspect such a program would attract the cream of the crop especially since they would have to be treated the same as legal immigrants and American workers-- including minimum wage and labor laws.
I also suspect the demand for such workers would be highly specialized since the employer is actually taking a bigger risk with such workers. Foreigners who work legally in Japan (or almost any other country with a sane immigration policy) are actually paid a wage premium over local workers. As such, the number of local workers they replace is near zero.
The 13th amendment is still the law of the land. Those who wish to circumvent it should pay the societal costs of doing so.
When legal immigrants are given preference over illegal immigrants, the overall quality of thw workforce will improve as well as respect for the law. Unfortunately, we have the reverse situation where any logical-thinking legal immigrant will question why they went to the trouble to come and stay here legally.