John Hawkins:: One of the most disturbing things to me about illegal immigration is that we have government officials, some of them even in the Senate, doing everything in their power to make sure our immigration laws aren't enforced. For example, can you tell people a little bit about Georgia’s Vidalia onion harvest in 1998 or Operation Vanguard which was conducted in 1998-99 in Nebraska?

Mark Krikorian: Sure. In ninety eight, the border patrol noticed that the work force picking onions in the vidalia onion fields of Georgia appeared increasingly to be illegals, so they did some raids, arrested a few dozen illegal aliens, and all the rest of them ran off. So the farmers were there stuck with onions in the ground and no one to pull them out. It was all their own fault, they knew what they were doing, but nonetheless, they were outraged. They called their Congressmen, and by the end of the week, three of Georgia's Congressmen and both Senators, Republicans and Democrats, wrote a joint letter to the Attorney General demanding that the Immigration Service stop enforcing the law. Because they said the INS does not understand the needs of American farmers. Which in ordinary English means, "let them pick the onions, then arrest them. Preferably before we have to pay them". Well, the INS got slapped down and stopped.

So what they tried as an alternative to raids, was something called Operation Vanguard in Nebraska. It was sort of the first effort at something like this to see if it worked. They didn't do raids anywhere, all they did was subpoena personnel records. And they didn't just pick one or two employers, they did all the meatpacking plants in all of Nebraska, so that no one of them would be inconvenienced while the others benefitted. They took the personnel records back to the office, checked the Social Security numbers, and came back with a list of people who seemed to be illegal, who did not have authorization to work. They said "we know some of these people are legit and the records are wrong. We want to fix those people's records and the ones that are illegal, have to leave of course". They came back with four thousand names. One thousand people showed up and got their records fixed and three thousand were never heard from again. They were illegal aliens. It worked really well and it was intended to be repeated every two to three months so as to wean the whole industry off of the use of illegal aliens.

After one effort like this, the political and business elite in Nebraska went insane. The ranchers and the meat packers teamed up with the governor. The governor's predecessor, now Senator Nelson, was hired as a lobbyist to put an end to this initiative. Senator Chuck Hagel made it essentially his mission in life to see that this was never repeated and it wasn't. And the Senior INS official who thought it up in the first place was invited to retire early -- and he did. If you're a bureaucrat and you have kids in college, you're going to take the hint: Congress doesn't want you to enforce the law. So the Immigration Service essentially gave up enforcing the immigration laws inside the country. They focused on the important, but narrow, issues of criminal aliens and smugglers. I'm all for that, criminal aliens and alien smugglers are the scum of the earth, but there's a lot more to the issue than just that. But, going after those parts of the issue doesn't get you in trouble politically. So that's what they did, they gave up because Congress told them to stop doing their jobs. They really haven't changed that much such 9/11.

John Hawkins: Now, a lot of politicians cater to illegal immigrants in hopes pulling in votes from Spanish-Americans. However, from what I've seen in elections across the US, that doesn't seem to work. What's your opinion on the subject? Does it work?

Mark Krikorian: Does it work as a political issue?

John Hawkins: Yeah, does catering to illegal immigrants, does that bring in a much bigger share of Spanish American voters?

Mark Krikorian: Politically, this doesn't work... In a practical sense, tighter immigration control is what's going to win votes....Clearly, a reasoned, sober, well thought out position in favor of effective immigration control, immigration law enforcement, and secure borders, is a political winner. At some point, somebody is going to pick it up. I used to think that the Democrats could take up the opportunity against President Bush, because he is extraordinarily vulnerable on the issue. The problem of course is, the Democrats would much rather lose than call for tough immigration controls and they may end up getting their wish. For them, even electoral victory is less important that embracing multi-culturalism and post-Americanism, so that's not going to happen. But at some point, this is a political opportunity that somebody is going to pick up on.

http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/krikorian.php

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