>Actually I would be very surprised if many of them could repay whatever debt they owe. With the low wages many of them paid, as you pointed out, that would be very difficult.

Well, some of them actually had the tax deducted from their salaries - under fake SSNs. During this whole dispute, I've heard someone say (on NPR, I guess) that about 10% of the Social Security's surplus comes from such payments. I guess in that case they were paying (just without any hope of getting anything out of that), and could be credited for that.

>>How about paying the fee over some time? Nobody can expect these guys to cough up a thousand bucks on the spot. Give them a year, they'll manage. And, knowing the blazing speed of INS (or whatever are they called this week), that year may take about three years to get started.
>
>As I understand it, many of them are just surviving. Make it 100 years, and you still have the same problem.

But then as they were below poverty level, they're also below taxable level. In that case they probably owe close to nothing. And they should be able to muster a thousand over the year. Or their employers could - they surely have made more money on each one of them. "Sponsorship" is not an unknown word.

>>Of course, the best course of action would be to stop the shameless exploitation of their native countries

>I certainly do believe there is shameless exploitation, but I doubt that is the sole cause of their problems.

Not the sole cause, but the most important one. Quote from last Harper's:

"Ratio of the average manufacturing wage in the United States to that in Mexico, before NAFTA took effect in 1994: 6:1
Ratio today: 8:1"

And I somehow hadn't heard that the salaries here have grown 33% over the last dozen years.