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We could create this whole totalitarian bureaucratic paperwork nightmare with significant vicarious liability if anyone employed directly or indirectly by you turns out to not have authorization to work. Or we could just go after the people who are primarily responsible in the first place. The latter is better; there's a cost to all that Orwellian shit.
The libertarian idea echoed by Republicans that business owners are too special a class to fill out paperwork or obey laws is what is "primarily responsible" for widespread illegal immigration. Business owners are the original open borders constituency.
Yes, filling out paperwork has a cost. Paying competitive wages that command American adults and/or building one's facilities in a place that people actually live instead of staffing one's factory with migrant children in a rural nowhere county with less than 10K working-age residents is indeed more expensive.
Failing to govern also has costs. Republican politicians have spent the last 20 or so years either lying about being opposed to illegal immigration or being too spineless to actually enforce immigration laws if it meant irritating the Chamber of Commerce. Lying/failure to deliver has expensive consequences like incompetent populists winning primaries and becoming the face of your party. CPB/ICE's budget increase for the sake of deportations exceeds the budget for the entire Department of Labor.
If the right can't tell the Chamber of Commerce types (who, last I checked, are entirely incapable of mobilizing voters, let alone street protests) to take one for the team or try their luck with the Mamdanis of the world they don't stand a chance in Hell of accomplishing any goal that faces any organized opposition.
At this point the Republicans might as well give up and go back to the Reagan/H.W. Bush position of open borders.
Business owners fill out a lot of paperwork. You know what e-verify tells an employer if the employee gives the employer a legitimate name and social security number that doesn't belong to them? It tells the employer they're OK to work.
The whole "punish employers" thing is just a tactic akin to concern trolling; people who don't want immigration laws enforced at all are saying "No, leave sanctuary cities full of your political opponents alone, instead prosecute employers who may be your political allies, otherwise you're a stinky hypocrite." It doesn't really deserve more than an eyeroll and the administration isn't even giving it that.
The point that such indirect enforcement requires a much greater impingement on liberty than going after the people who are actually here illegally in the first place is true, but it isn't the reason it's not being done.
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