By TIBOR R. MACHAN

Periodically I go shopping, like many other people. I have hired some folks to do cleaning at my house. There is a handyman in my neighborhood who does extensive work for me.

In none of these cases have I ever asked the people with whom I engage in commerce for any kind of identification, proof of citizenship, nada. If they are well recommended, if I become convinced that their track record is fine, I hire them to work for me and take my chances as we all do in the marketplace. And the last thing I would consider is to get in bed with the government to check up on the citizenship or criminal record of the folks with whom I deal. That is definitely not my business with them, unless I have some reason to be suspicious that our deals will not go through.

Over the last several weeks we’ve been hearing how Bank of America a huge company with which a great many of us in Los Angeles and elsewhere do some business (from checking and savings accounts, CDs, to mortgages, loans, etc.) has not been insisting that its customers prove whether they are American citizens.

The plain fact is that making sure that illegal aliens do not live and work in the country is the job of professionally trained law enforcement officers, not of business professionals who can be at most amateurs about enforcing the law.

Unless these customers are doing something wrong, why should the bank butt in with such detective work? That’s not what banks are supposed to do. They are supposed to attempt to do business profitably and avoid breaking the laws bearing on proper business practices, not take over enforcing immigration laws, something that is the job of the government. Businesses are obligated to reap economic benefits for their owners, investors, and customers. Doing this is what has made Bank of America one of the most successful businesses in the world. It is not doing good business by entering the law-enforcement profession.

Left in peace

In a free country people are innocent unless proven guilty and that is how they are expected to treat one another in all of their various endeavors. The people I bowl with, shoot baskets, play tennis, and do all kinds of other things worship, attend school, travel, and so forth who haven’t done anything untoward to me, will be left in peace by me and I would expect the same treatment from merchants, including Bank of America.

Some argue, not surprisingly, that it is because bank deposits are backed by the FDIC which is another body the government ought never to have established and funded from taxes banks may be coerced to act as snitches. This is bunk; it is also yet another move toward the creeping police state people are “given” another subsidy only to have it accompanied by all sorts of restrictions and demands.

So perhaps all this brouhaha about the bank isn’t really about what it is doing wrong but rather about what doesn’t please those who are eager to catch illegal aliens. OK, I am not in favor of genuine illegal aliens but neither do I believe it is a bank’s or anyone else’s business outside of law enforcement to chase them down.

Maybe if our government didn’t get involved in millions of other tasks, it could concentrate its energies on what it was instituted to do by America’s founders, namely, secure our rights protect us from criminal conduct. But no. It seems to be more and more farming out that job to private citizens and organizations, ones not trained in the proper methods of law enforcement.

But then the business of making employers collect taxes, Social Security and other monies the government extorts from us, has habituated too many of us into thinking that everyone is part of the government, everyone must act like a cop, like an enforcer of the laws.

This reminds me of when back in communist Hungary we were all expected to report on everyone around us who didn’t toe the government’s line about innumerable matters. We were all snitches there. Maybe this is happening in America now, too.

Tibor R. Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics and is a research fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His latest book is “The Morality of Business: A Profession of Wealthcare.” He wrote a version of this column for the Libertarian Perspective.