As all Daily Kos readers know, the conservative media and cynical right-wing politicians are promoting the “Great Replacement” conspiracy to scare the shit out of the MAGA base (yet again). It goes like this. Democrats encourage millions of ‘illegal aliens’ to ‘invade’ America. Once here, they will slowly gain the right to vote — and, because they are not white, the Democrats will reap the benefits. And consequently use their new political power to subjugate white, Christian gun-owners.
This morning on Fox News, Dan Patrick, the Texas Lt.Gov, explained the process to Bill Hemmer,
"This is all about bringing people to this country to take over the country, Bill. It’s very simple. We are on pace in [Biden’s] first term to be over 8 million people here illegally. Not counting the got-aways, just the ones we apprehend. That’s the entire population of New York City coming to America. We’ll be a 15 percent or more of the population, the next 5, 10 years of this country, are people who are here illegally."
"These people in this line that your viewers have looked at this morning: do you want them to have the right to vote? Who are they gonna vote for? This is a plan for the Democrats to take over this country totally, once and for all…If you add 10 to 10 to 15 million people, and you get them citizenship over this time and they get to vote, that swings every election."
I will play along. If the Democrats want to bring people to America, how are they doing it? I spend part of the year in Mexico. I do not see any recruiting material. Nor have I run across American or Mexican agents spreading the word like Mormon missionaries — who do recruit in Mexico. Although they are merely trying to get the good Catholic Mexicans to adopt the LDS explanation for why things are the way they are. There are also gringo Mennonites. But their chief mission is to sell cheese.
I cannot speak of El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras. But proponents of the Replacement Theory have offered no evidence of recruitment drives in Central America either. So I assume that is not why people from the region emigrate to the US. So why do they? The answer is fear and economic opportunity. And I humbly suggest that points to a solution to this supposed, Democratically-enabled invasion.
Regardless of the motive for foreigners coming here, once arrived they need a job. As undocumented aliens, they are not entitled to welfare, food stamps, or any other federal relief program. And I am sure there is only so much family members can do to support them.
The solution then is to make companies not want to hire unqualified foreigners. I realize that the law already prohibits companies from employing the undocumented. But, as we have seen from raids rounding up foreigners working at American businesses such as poultry plants, trailer manufacturers, and technology repair concerns, employers often hire the undocumented. Because there is usually no penalty for doing so. In 2018, ICE arrested a mere 72 managers, with only 49 ultimately convicted of a crime.
In 2021, the Biden administration ordered the discontinuation of workplace raids, a feature of Trump’s immigration policy, because the enforcement penalized workers but left the owners relatively unscathed. Which, in turn, led to many employers abusing immigrant workers with poor safety conditions, long hours, and low pay, because the workers had no recourse.
Further restricting the government was a clause in the law that requires the Feds to prove the employer had "knowingly" broken the law. The way around this is to make it impossible for businesses to not know they are hiring ‘illegal’ workers. The government can achieve this by updating the e-verification system and making it more thorough. To pay for this more robust system the authorities can take the money from CBP and ICE — who will not need as much funding as the flow of immigrants will ebb.
The second part of the solution is to charge the CEOs and HR managers of companies that hire undocumented workers with crimes carrying mandatory jail sentences. For instance, one of the poultry plants raided was Koch Foods (not that Koch). The company's Chairman, CEO, and President is billionaire Joseph C. Grendys. I guarantee that should he face jail-time if his company hired “illegals”, the company would not employ them. But this points to the Republican hypocrisy on the matter.
The GOP wants to use undocumented immigrants as a political club to beat Democrats. But they do not want to do anything about the ‘problem.’ That would cost their corporate backers real money.
Consider what happened in Georgia in 2011. In that year, the state passed HB 87, which allowed cops to check immigration status and increased penalties for the employers of undocumented immigrants. State Rep. Matt Ramsey, one of the bill’s authors, said at the time, “Our goal is … to eliminate incentives for illegal aliens to cross into our state.” And it worked. Farmers faced a shortfall of 5,500 workers and $140 million worth of produce rotted in the fields. The state replaced the missing workers with convicts — but I am sure the productivity of these replacement workers was not high.
In 2013, to the farmers' relief, a Federal Appeals Court issued a permanent injunction against many of the provisions in the Act. The state did not appeal to the Supreme Court, as I suspect many local politicians were equally glad to see the law mostly struck down.
Should the GOP win the presidency and Congress in 2024, they would be able to roll out a law similar to HB87 nationwide. And that would stop the so-called Great Replacement in its tracks. But you know they will not. They will talk about a wall and maneuver to throw more money at border cops. But they will not do the cheap and easy thing to make their bugbear disappear. Mainly because it will hurt their corporate funders — and also because it does not exist.