On those points, she and the congressman basically agree, but beyond that they have drastic differences in philosophy on the subject of immigration.
Cook said that a uniform, easy-to-use system for verifying the status of employees should be used by companies during the hiring process and those companies should be punished if they hire workers who aren’t here legally.
This type of a method is much more effective and comes with less unwanted side effects than other proposals that have been put forward for constructing barriers along the border with Mexico and implementing more aggressive police tactics, according to Cook.
In her opinion, those types of proposals are often cost prohibitive and can end up counterproductive.
“If I want to put people to work I would rather have them rebuilding American infrastructure. A wall doesn’t stop people who come in on visas and overstay them,” Cook said.
Rohrabacher agrees that employers should be held accountable, but thinks a barrier and increased enforcement measures are also important parts of a solution.
“We basically have most of the laws on the books that we need and if they were enforced we could have had the situation solved a long time ago,” Rohrabacher said.
UCI professor and immigration specialist Louis DeSipio says that the complex nature of immigration into the United States makes proposals like police enforcement and border barriers ineffective.
“We have been increasing enforcement since the 1990s and in that time we’ve had a huge surge in illegal immigration so it would suggest that that strategy is not working,” DeSipio said.
