In a Becker-Posner blog, Gary Becker objected to amnesty and instead proposed that illegal immigrants should be allowed to buy their legality by paying say a $10,000 fine. This is trumpeted as the Chicago principle of markets as the answer to many problems.
Instead of asking illegal immigrants to buy the right to stay, why not ask their employers to buy the right to keep them in the country? Doing so could free employers from any legal action against them for employing illegals.
Markets are wonderful, but the question is always who is the buyer and who the seller.
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The US is in a very interesting position. There seems to be an anti-immigration wave being stoked in the media. There also seems to be an anti-foreign trade sentiment brewing. It seems to me that in the short term you cant pursue both. Consumers must ask the financial price they are willing to bear to have goods produced both in the US and by higher cost labor. Keep in mind that apples in a store do not carry a label of where the person who picked them came from. They do however, carry a price tag that details how much they cost.
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