Enforce the laws on immigration
Published: 9/15/2007 7:08 AM
Your Daily Herald opinion on the deportation of Elvira Arellano misses the point entirely.

As a magician waves a red silk scarf in one hand to distract (the Elvira situation on the front pages), it is the other hand (which is our government doing nothing) that we must keep focused on.

Our federal government and news media focus our attention on Elvira as it fails to round up and deport the other 12 to 20 million illegals in the U.S. It also fails to prosecute the employers of illegals. It also fails to issue new high-tech Social Security cards. It also fails to even deport those illegals who are caught. The ICE (immigration enforcement arm) runs a catch-and-release program.

This is not an accident. Our federal government executive (Bush) branch has absolutely no intention of hindering U.S. businesses from continuing to use illegal alien slave labor.

Why do I say slave labor? Because illegals are paid less, can't complain about hours, overtime, dangerous workplaces, being cheated by employers, etc. Read the Kennedy/McCain defeated bill. It stated clearly that illegals staying here must have a job. In short if they, for any reason, lost their job they could be turned in by their employer and deported. Illegals were working in that mine in Utah with other miners.

Our government also fails to run employer-supplied Social Security numbers through a database against other names and other employers' collected Social Security numbers to see how many people in different states are using that same Social Security number. Often the same Social Security number is used for several different workers working in several different states.

I've contacted our officials in Schaumburg and in Hoffman Estates asking them to follow the Carpentersville example, to no avail. Let them know how you feel about it. It's your taxes and your kid who can't get an alien's job back to earn money for college.

Jim Peterson

Hoffman Estates

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