Higher education, prior to the social spasms of the late 1960s, was a very different entity than it is today. Hardly perfect, having a "college degree" meant something then. It meant that you had undergone a passage, a set of experiences and to some degree had mastered important skills and knowledge. It set one apart. To announce you have a college degree today has all the heft of reporting that you have cable TV.
Under current law, the legal incentives of business and labor point in opposite directions: firms face fines and other sanctions for hiring undocumented workers, while the quickest path to union membership growth is by turning a blind eye to illegal immigration. Sanctioning unions that allow illegal immigrants to join their ranks would harmonize incentives, and give both Big Business and Big Labor the same interest in obeying the law.
“Perhaps we need to rethink all of our immigration laws,” Prof. Vedder told Pajamas Media, noting that he favors more libertarian immigration policy. “But the laws being what they are,” he said, “perhaps we should rethink this mismatch in incentives. If we apply these laws to employers, we should apply them to unions as well.”
