Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[tinner]

The core idea of IRCA was that it should be against the law to hire people illegally in the country and that employers who do so should be subject to penalties. Employer penalties were first proposed in the 1950s by Paul Douglas of Illinois, a liberal economist who became a great U.S. senator. In 1972, Peter Rodino, then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sponsored employer-sanctions legislation that died. In 1977, the Carter administration drafted an employer-sanctions bill. But the Judiciary Committee chair, Mississippi's James Eastland, a champion of agricultural interests that opposed restrictions to cheap labor, refused even to hold hearings on it.

But hey.........why would the Reps. vote making a strong bill when their buddies feel the need for all that cheap labor!