Thread: Convenient time for immigrant crackdown

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Article published Aug 1, 2006
Convenient time for immigrant crackdown
By Monitor staff


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O
n Aug. 24, the circus will be in town. No, not Ringling Brothers but the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. The committee is holding a series of hearings around the nation this month, ostensibly to hear from citizens. But the real goal is to make passage of a meaningful revision of America's policy on illegal immigration even less likely.

In 2000, the U.S. Immigration Service, which is now part of the Department of Homeland Security, estimated that New Hampshire was one of eight states with fewer than 2,500 illegal immigrants. So that's not why the committee decided to hold a hearing in Concord.

Could the decision mean Congressmen Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley are in danger?

The House hearings will be a repeat of those that surrounded the Senate's version of the immigration bill. It's the bill with the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that enforcement hardliners hate. The House version focuses almost exclusively on enforcement and wall-building.

The hearings are an opportunity to highlight the difference between those who want to deport the nation's 12 million or so illegal aliens and those who want to offer many of them an arduous path to citizenship. The former idea is not just cruel and impractical but also a threat to an economy that has come to rely on cheap illegal workers.

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The Senate bill is a long way from perfect, but it is a humane attempt to deal fairly with those trying to better their lives, with those waiting in line for legal entrance and with Americans at the bottom who may have lost jobs to cheap immigrant labor.
One element in the immigration mix deserves little sympathy: the employers who hire illegal immigrants and the companies that supply them. They have rightly become the target of an enforcement crackdown that has teeth.

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is also launching far more sweeps than previous immigration czars. In 1999, according to the Government Accounting Office, 417 employers were told to expect fines. In 2004, that number fell to three. Employers who once faced fines small enough to be considered a cost of doing business now face the possibility of whopping penalties, the confiscation of property and prison time.

The enforcement effort is causing great fear in the illegal immigrant community, but it is overdue.

In one case cited by The New York Times, one targeted company sent nearly 200 illegal aliens to work at a complicit air freight company.

Last month, 55 illegal immigrants were found doing contract work in a secure part of Washington's Dulles International Airport. Fourteen more undocumented workers were discovered working at Maryland's Naval Surface Warfare Center.

Have agents checked to see who is mowing the White House lawn and making the president's breakfast?

An election season crackdown will just be political theater unless it turns into a sustained effort to take immigration laws seriously. That effort is crucial, but it must be combined with the recognition that many employers, and even whole industries, have come to depend on illegal immigrants.

Enforcement sweeps should result in the deportation of workers who are found to have violated other laws, but what honest illegal immigrants should get is a chance to work here legally on a slow path to citizenship.

Enforcement sweeps should result in the deportation of workers who are found to have violated other laws, but what honest illegal immigrants should get is a chance to work here legally on a slow path to citizenship.

And how do they know which ones are the honest illegal aliens? Do they just ask them? I'm sure those with criminal records will answer honestly. Or maybe they can ask them for one of their 20 or 30 IDs to do background checks.

The hearings are an opportunity to highlight the difference between those who want to deport the nation's 12 million or so illegal aliens and those who want to offer many of them an arduous path to citizenship. The former idea is not just cruel and impractical but also a threat to an economy that has come to rely on cheap illegal workers.

So what you're saying, is that it doesn't matter if it's illegal, as long as someone benefits from the crime?

No such thing as honest illegal alien = oxymoron