Illegal Immigration Has an American Enabler

A guy came to work on my roof recently. I didn’t ask where he was born, how he came to the United States, or whether he had legal status. I didn’t ask to see immigration papers. Frankly, none of that occurred to me. I needed some work done on my roof, and he was there to do it. Then, during a conversation, he volunteered that he was in the United States illegally.

I have no interest in becoming an amateur immigration enforcement officer, and I don’t think Americans should start demanding immigration papers from everyone who speaks with an accent or looks like they might have been born somewhere else. But I can’t hire him again. Legally, an independent contractor is not generally my “employee” under federal immigration rules. That’s an important distinction. But federal law separately provides that a person who knowingly uses a contract to obtain the labor of an unauthorized alien is considered to have hired that person for purposes of federal immigration employment law. Morally and economically, however, it doesn’t change something much simpler: if I now knowingly pay someone who has told me he is here illegally to work for me, I am helping make his illegal presence in the United States economically viable. I’m enabling it.

And that’s a part of America’s illegal immigration problem that we don’t talk about nearly enough.

There Are Two Sides to a Labor Market

The immigration debate overwhelmingly concentrates on the person entering or remaining in the country illegally. How did he get here? Why wasn’t he stopped? Why wasn’t he deported? Should we build more barriers, hire more Border Patrol agents, increase workplace enforcement, restrict asylum, expand detention, or change the laws? Those are legitimate questions, but there is another question that ought to be asked alongside them: Who’s paying him?

A labor market requires two participants. Someone offers labor and someone purchases it. If unauthorized immigrants can reasonably expect to find work after arriving in the United States, then employment becomes one of the incentives supporting illegal immigration. That doesn’t mean employment is the only reason people come here illegally. People migrate for family, safety, political conditions, and countless other reasons. But denying the importance of employment would require denying basic economics.

If there were virtually no opportunity to earn money in the United States without legal authorization to work, illegal immigration wouldn’t disappear. But the economic incentive for a significant portion of it would certainly be reduced. Yet we devote enormous political attention to the supply side of unauthorized labor while frequently ignoring the American demand for it.

Federal Law Already Recognizes the Problem

This isn’t some newly discovered concept. Federal law already prohibits employers from knowingly hiring workers who aren’t authorized to work in the United States. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1324a, employers can face civil penalties for knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized workers, and employers engaged in a “pattern or practice” of knowingly violating those provisions can also face federal criminal penalties.

There are additional federal criminal provisions covering certain more serious conduct. For example, federal law separately addresses knowingly employing at least 10 unauthorized immigrants during a 12-month period when the person knows those workers were brought into the United States illegally. The distinction matters because it would be inaccurate to say that every American who knowingly pays an illegal immigrant to perform some work has automatically committed a federal crime. A single knowing transaction by a homeowner isn’t legally equivalent to a corporation engaging in a pattern or practice of knowingly employing hundreds of unauthorized workers.

But that’s also where we need to distinguish between what is illegal and what is enabling. Something doesn’t have to result in your arrest to contribute to a problem. Federal employment law establishes the legal boundary for employers; personal responsibility extends beyond the minimum conduct necessary to avoid prosecution.

I’m Not Asking the Roofer for His Papers

There is another distinction that needs to be made, because otherwise this argument can quickly go somewhere it shouldn’t. I don’t believe ordinary Americans should determine someone’s immigration status based on his appearance, surname, accent, or occupation. A Hispanic guy who shows up to repair my roof isn’t presumptively an illegal immigrant. Neither is the guy cutting grass, framing a house, working in a restaurant kitchen, picking vegetables, or pouring concrete.

He may have been born in Texas. He may be a naturalized American citizen, a lawful permanent resident, or someone with valid authorization to work. Or he may be here illegally. Unless I have some actual reason to know otherwise, I’m not going to interrogate him about it. That’s exactly what happened with my roofer: I didn’t ask. He told me.

Once someone tells you, however, the ethical equation changes. I don’t have to report him, dislike him, or believe he’s a bad person. But I also don’t get to pretend I don’t know what he just told me. If I hire him again, I’m making a conscious decision to provide an economic benefit to someone I know is living in the country illegally. Economically, I would be enabling the very thing our immigration laws are intended to discourage. Additionally, I may be ignoring the law for my own economic benefit if he is the cheapest bidder.

Now Multiply My Roof by Millions

My roof isn’t going to determine American immigration policy. But multiply transactions like that across an economy of more than 300 million people and the picture changes dramatically. Roofing, landscaping, agriculture, construction, hospitality, restaurants, housekeeping, food processing, manufacturing, and domestic work all create demand for labor. Then move beyond individual homeowners and consider businesses that don’t accidentally encounter unauthorized labor but deliberately depend upon it.

That’s where the argument becomes much more consequential. Some American businesses benefit economically from having a population of people willing to work despite lacking legal authorization. And unlike the citizen complaining about illegal immigration, those companies may not be complaining about it at all. Why would they? The existing arrangement may benefit them. If a company can obtain the labor it needs at a price it likes, there’s little economic incentive for that company to demand a system that makes that labor disappear.

That doesn’t mean every business employing immigrants is doing anything wrong. Millions of immigrants work legally in the United States, and employers have established processes for verifying employment eligibility. We’re talking specifically about employers who knowingly employ people who aren’t authorized to work. Those employers aren’t innocent bystanders in the illegal immigration system. They are creating demand for the labor the system supposedly doesn’t permit.

Follow the Incentive

Anyone who has spent enough time troubleshooting machinery learns something pretty quickly: repeatedly repairing the symptom without addressing what causes it isn’t troubleshooting. If a hydraulic line repeatedly bursts, replacing the line every time isn’t solving the problem. Eventually somebody needs to figure out why the pressure is too high.

The same principle applies here. We can spend billions of dollars securing the border. We can install sensors, build barriers, hire agents, fly surveillance aircraft, and increase detention capacity. There may be perfectly legitimate reasons for doing all of those things. But suppose the person who successfully gets through that barrier knows that an American employer will have a job waiting for him. We have addressed the obstacle without addressing the incentive.

Imagine applying that logic to a military installation. Suppose unauthorized people continually penetrate the perimeter, so Security Forces increases patrols, installs more cameras, reinforces the fence, and inspects more vehicles. Then we discover somebody inside the installation has been paying the unauthorized entrants to show up every morning. Nobody would respond by concentrating exclusively on improving the fence. We’d also want to know who was paying them and why we were allowing the incentive for penetrating the perimeter to continue.

Yet something remarkably similar happens in our national immigration debate. We talk endlessly about the people attempting to get in while giving considerably less attention to the Americans who make successfully getting in economically worthwhile.

Cheap Labor Isn’t Free

There’s another uncomfortable part of this equation: consumers can benefit from unauthorized labor too. Maybe the roof costs less. Maybe landscaping costs less, produce costs less, restaurant meals cost less, or construction costs less. We like inexpensive things. What we don’t always like is examining why they’re inexpensive.

If one contractor employs workers legally, pays the required taxes, carries appropriate insurance, follows labor laws, and pays the wage necessary to attract a lawful workforce, his labor costs reflect those requirements. If another contractor knowingly builds his workforce around unauthorized labor and gains a cost advantage from doing so, the law-abiding contractor may find himself bidding against someone playing by different rules. Then we consumers reward the lower bid.

That creates incentives throughout the transaction. The employer has an incentive to obtain cheaper labor. The consumer has an incentive to buy the cheaper product or service. The unauthorized worker has an incentive to come or remain because employment is available. Everyone in the transaction may receive something he wants, and then the country acts mystified that the system continues.

“Americans Won’t Do Those Jobs”

We’ve all heard the claim that “Americans won’t do those jobs.” Sometimes that’s probably true at the wage and under the working conditions being offered, but that’s not quite the same statement. Labor has a price like anything else. If I offer someone $25 to spend eight hours roofing my house in the summer heat and nobody accepts the job, I could announce that “Americans won’t roof houses.” Or I could offer more money. Eventually, someone is probably getting on that roof.

If an industry genuinely cannot obtain sufficient workers legally, then let’s have that policy discussion openly. Perhaps America needs additional temporary-worker visas. Perhaps immigration quotas should change. Perhaps seasonal-worker programs should be expanded or modernized. Perhaps the legal immigration process is unnecessarily cumbersome. Those are legitimate subjects for Congress to debate.

But “we need these workers” shouldn’t quietly become “therefore we’ll ignore their immigration status.” If the American economy needs additional immigrant labor, then America should create lawful mechanisms for that labor. A labor shortage is an argument for reconsidering immigration and guest-worker policy; it isn’t an argument for maintaining an unofficial underground labor system.

Responsibility Doesn’t Stop at the Border

None of this absolves someone of responsibility for entering or remaining in a country illegally. Adults are responsible for their own decisions. But responsibility isn’t a finite resource, and assigning responsibility to one participant doesn’t require pretending the other participant doesn’t exist.

The immigrant who knowingly violates immigration law bears responsibility for that decision. The employer who knowingly violates employment law bears responsibility for that decision. And the individual American who knowingly pays someone he knows is here illegally, even outside a conventional employer-employee relationship, should at least acknowledge that he is helping sustain the economic system that makes illegal immigration workable.

That’s where my roofer left me. I don’t dislike the man. I’m not angry with him, and I’m not reporting him. But I can’t unknow what he told me. If he calls next year and asks whether I need more work done, my answer has to be no, not because I suddenly became an immigration officer, but because I don’t think I can reasonably oppose a problem while knowingly helping sustain it.

The Demand Side Matters

America has spent decades arguing about illegal immigration as though it were almost entirely a border-management problem. It isn’t. It’s also a labor-market problem. As long as someone arriving illegally reasonably believes there will be an American willing to pay him once he gets here, we have created an incentive that no wall, fence, patrol, or deportation policy can completely eliminate.

That American might be the owner of a corporation employing hundreds of unauthorized workers. It might be a contractor paying people cash, a farmer, a restaurant owner, or, on a much smaller scale, somebody like me who needs his roof repaired. The legal responsibilities aren’t necessarily identical, but the economic principle is. Someone is writing the check.

If we’re serious about reducing illegal immigration, we need to stop pretending that the person receiving that money is the only participant in the transaction. We need secure borders, workable legal immigration, employment verification that doesn’t turn ordinary employers into federal investigators, lawful pathways for industries that genuinely require immigrant labor, and meaningful enforcement against businesses that knowingly build their business models around unauthorized workers.

But there’s something else we need that doesn’t require an act of Congress: personal responsibility. We don’t need to assume, profile, or interrogate every guy who shows up with a ladder. But when someone voluntarily tells us he is here illegally, we no longer have the luxury of pretending we don’t know. Once we know, we have a choice between continuing to provide an economic incentive that helps sustain illegal immigration or deciding that we aren’t going to enable it.

I’m not calling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on my roofer. But I’m not hiring him again either.

Enforce the Law Against the People Doing the Hiring

If we’re serious about reducing illegal immigration, enforcement cannot stop with the immigrant. It also has to reach the American employer who knowingly provides the job. Federal law already makes it unlawful to knowingly hire someone who isn’t authorized to work in the United States, and it provides both civil penalties and, for a pattern or practice of violations, criminal penalties. The problem isn’t that Congress has never recognized the demand side of illegal immigration. The problem is that we need to be willing to enforce that side of the law seriously.

That means putting substantially more enforcement attention on businesses that knowingly employ unauthorized workers, particularly companies that make unauthorized labor part of their normal business model. An employer who makes a good-faith effort to comply with employment-verification requirements and is fooled by fraudulent documents is one thing. A business owner who knows exactly what is going on and continues doing it because unauthorized workers are plentiful, vulnerable, or cheaper is something entirely different. Enforcement should recognize that difference and concentrate on deliberate and repeated violations.

There also needs to be enough consequence to change the economic calculation. If knowingly employing unauthorized workers saves a company more money than it realistically expects to lose through enforcement, we’ve created a business incentive to violate the law. Penalties and enforcement have to be credible enough that hiring unauthorized labor is a bad business decision rather than a calculated risk. Repeat and deliberate offenders deserve especially serious attention.

This isn’t an argument for punishing employers who are genuinely deceived, nor is it an argument for discriminating against immigrant workers. It’s an argument for enforcing a law based on knowledge and conduct. If an employer follows the rules in good faith, that should matter. If an employer knowingly circumvents them, that should matter too.

We spend enormous resources trying to intercept unauthorized immigrants at the border and remove some of those already here. If we’re willing to spend that money attacking the supply of unauthorized labor, it makes little sense to neglect the Americans creating demand for it. Every business that knowingly provides unauthorized employment makes the economic incentive for illegal immigration stronger.

Border enforcement and employer enforcement therefore aren’t competing approaches. They’re two halves of the same strategy. Reduce the ability to enter illegally, but also reduce the economic reward for successfully doing so. If we’re unwilling to hold Americans accountable for knowingly creating that reward, we’re trying to solve a two-sided problem from only one side.

Indiana Is Going After the Demand Side

Indiana has recently taken an approach that deserves considerably more attention in the national immigration debate. Under the state’s 2026 FAIRNESS Act, Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office gained new authority to pursue businesses that knowingly employ people who are not legally authorized to work in the United States. Rather than treating illegal immigration solely as a problem of finding and removing the immigrant, Indiana is putting consequences on the other participant in the transaction: the business providing the job.

Those consequences have some teeth. Under the new law, a court can suspend a company’s operating authorization at the affected location for five business days for a single first violation, with escalating penalties for additional or repeat violations and permanent revocation possible for certain willful and repeat violators. At the same time, the law provides a reasonable-diligence safe harbor that includes good-faith use of E-Verify, protecting businesses that make a good-faith effort to ensure the people they hire are legally authorized to work.

That combination makes sense to me. The objective shouldn’t be to punish an employer who did everything reasonably required of him and was fooled by convincing fraudulent documents. Nor should government assume that a company is violating immigration law simply because it employs immigrants. The target should be the employer who knows he is hiring unauthorized workers and does it anyway. If a company deliberately makes illegal labor part of its business model, the consequences should be substantial enough to change that business model.

A five-day shutdown at a business location would get the attention of almost any business owner. Permanent loss of the ability to operate would get everyone’s attention. More importantly, those penalties attack the economic incentive rather than merely dealing with its consequences. If knowingly employing unauthorized workers carries a genuine risk of putting a company out of business, knowingly hiring them suddenly becomes a very poor financial decision.

Indiana’s approach also recognizes something that ought to be obvious: immigration enforcement doesn’t have to end at the border. The federal government can enforce the border and immigration laws while states use the lawful authority available to them to enforce business and employment requirements. The point isn’t to replace federal immigration enforcement. It’s to stop pretending that the person who crossed the border is the only participant responsible for an illegal labor market.

Other states should be watching what happens in Indiana. If this approach survives legal challenges and proves effective, it could provide a model for attacking one of the strongest incentives behind illegal immigration. Secure the border, certainly. Remove people who have no legal right to remain when the law requires it. But also make it increasingly difficult and increasingly expensive for American businesses to knowingly provide the employment that makes coming here illegally economically attractive.

For decades, we’ve concentrated heavily on the person looking for the job. Indiana is beginning to put serious consequences on the person knowingly providing it.

That’s the other half of immigration enforcement we’ve been missing.

And for those of you who might say, “You just don’t care about the poor people in impoverished nations!” my response is that we already have a legal way for people to enter the country, and my forebears used it.

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Dave Chamerlin runs a consulting and training company and brings more than 40 years of civilian and military aviation experience to his work. He retired as a Chief Master Sergeant after 38 years as an aircraft crew chief in the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard, and has also worked in technical, instructor, consultant, and leadership roles. He holds an FAA Airframe and Powerplant license and a master’s degree in aeronautical science, and his writing often focuses on military issues, especially those affecting aircraft maintenance personnel.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.