Puerto Rico recently enacted a drastic plan to combat the black market for birth certificates issued by this protectorate: every birth certificate they have ever issued has now been declared invalid and will have to be replaced with a new one. This could actually make the problem worse!
The birth certificate will be redesigned so that the massive amount of void ones truly will be useless. This brings the quantity of usable illegal certificates to zero. This will make a mad scramble among document forgers to be the first to produce new fakes. The attached article says that the old forged documents could be sold for $5,000; these new forged papers will at first be worth even more, providing incentive for even more people to enter this black market. Unless Puerto Rico makes the punishment for and likeliness of being caught in the trade significantly high, it stands a real chance of actually seeing even more unlawful documents floating around (Naturally, the price of the documents would decrease again until profits disappear, causing some forgers will leave the market).
What do you propose Puerto Rico do to put an end to the illegal birth certificate trade? Our classes have taught us to increase either the penalty, chances of incurring the penalty, or a combination of both, but I want you to think outside the box. Should they even try to destroy the market? Comment with your ideas.
Here's the link to the original article.
-Brandon
