Industries should pay state tax for hiring foreign workers.

That was one solution for “leveling the playing field” and encouraging the employment of American-born workers suggested by District 5 congressional candidate Mo Brooks when he talked to the Athens Rotary Club Friday about immigration reform.

The Madison County commissioner, who has served twice in the Alabama House of Representatives, will face Congressman Parker Griffith in the Republican Primary Election after Griffith switched parties in late December.

While Brooks lists the main concerns of a District 5 congressman as being: national defense, NASA, roads and TVA, his topic to the Rotarians was the country’s illegal alien problem.

Brooks said the nation’s leaders enacted the earliest immigration policies after realizing the country no longer had room for everyone who wanted to come to the United States. He said a limited supply of resources, such as water, land and energy dictates controlling immigration.

“We don’t want to be another China or India,” said Brooks. “The persons we let in will either be net producers — those more highly educated, such as doctors, lawyers and engineers — or a net consumer.”

Brooks said that as early as the Carter administration the greatest number of immigrants came by foot into the country from south of the border.

“They came in large numbers as unskilled laborers,” said Brooks. “We needed to restrict immigration, but do it ‘warmheartedly.’ We granted amnesty to those who had been here a long time, giving them the opportunity to become citizens. The unintended result was when we legalized illegal immigrants it sent a message that we would grant amnesty again.”

Brooks said as more and more illegal immigrants “short-circuited” the citizenship process, the country is said to now have 8 to 10 million illegal immigrants employed and many more that are part of their families unemployed.

Brooks said one fallout of the influx of immigrants is drivers who do not understand local traffic laws and possibly can’t read traffic signs. He mentioned several fatal accidents that have occurred in recent years where illegal immigrants were at fault.

Other ways that illegal immigrants tax our system is in our prison populations. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner noted in 2003 that there were 56,000 non-citizens in the nation’s prisons.

“They are not in prison because of their illegal alien status but because they have committed felonies,” said Brooks.

Brooks said the daily illegal alien count in the Madison County Jail is from 50-75. “Multiply that by 67 Alabama counties and you will see the impact of illegal aliens,” he said. “In 2005, there were 119 non-citizens on the nation’s death rows.”

But possibly the most immediate effect experienced by the economy is that of the cost of services for immigrant families outstripping the amount of taxes collected. He said the University of Florida Department of Economics’ research found that in Florida public services for each immigrant’s household cost $1,800 more than the state collected in taxes for an overall cost to the state of $18 billion.

Brooks said the flooding of the workforce with illegal immigrants had resulted in wages dropping by an average 7.4 percent among unskilled workers.

He said that according to the 14th Amendment, the U.S. must offer an education — often necessitating the hiring of bilingual teachers — and Aid to Dependent Children to the offspring of illegal immigrants.

“You have to weigh the benefits of to expenses of illegal aliens,” said Brooks.

That’s where Brooks’ idea of taxing employers who hire foreign workers comes in. He says that those who profit most by the low-paid, unskilled foreign workers should help pay the social costs of them living here.

He said that would also eliminate the “loophole” of forged green cards that employers use to say they didn’t know they hired illegal immigrants.