Thread: Immigration policy hurts both sides

http://www.fayettevillenc.com/article?id=243134

Published on Thursday, September 28, 2006

Immigration policy hurts both sides


Myron Pitts

Two employees of City Councilman Wesley Meredith might be illegal immigrants. If the story follows script, the men will be deported and Meredith’s business, Cardinal Landscaping, will glide off as if nothing happened.

This is one problem with our country’s approach to illegal immigration: The workers bear the brunt of enforcement.

The larger issue is that immigration reform must move willing workers into legal jobs. These sweeps are a waste of time and money.

Meredith says he checked that the men held driver’s licenses and Social Security cards, according to law. One of the men even had direct deposit, he says.

They were stopped along with 26 other workers trying to enter Fort Bragg on Tuesday. In July, an ID sweep at the Bragg gates netted 58 people; all but 10 were convicted of illegal entry into the country.

Those taken into custody Tuesday are scheduled to appear this morning in front of a federal judge in Raleigh.

If they are found guilty, they will stew in a detention center in Cary for a while before being sent back to Mexico, back to El Salvador, back to Guatemala. And as I am writing this sentence, there are people crossing the border into the United States to replace them.

The war on undocumented immigrants resembles our war on drugs. Both are failed and failing policies because, in both wars, we can stop neither supply nor demand.

The immigration non-policy nearly wiped out a town in Georgia. In Stillmore, federal agents busted 120 immigrants working at the town’s poultry plant, an action that caused hundreds more to flee into the woods. One mother left her baby, a U.S. citizen, in the arms of a caretaker.

The town of 1,000 residents is devastated, and businesses are on the verge of closing.

“These people come over here to make a better way of life, not to blow us up,” said one town resident.

What was it all for?

We have at least 11 million illegal immigrants living here. Ignoring them is dumb; trying to send them back is unworkable and cruel. That leaves us with a path to citizenship and programs for legal workers.

But because of politics, much of it fueled by anti-Mexican sentiment, Congress is focusing only on border enforcement and ignoring the rest of the equation.

For his part, Meredith wonders if his two guys can come back to work if they are found not guilty.

He says eight or nine of his 30 employees are of Latino descent. He would like to see an expansion of the H-2A program that currently allows immigrants to work legally in certain farming jobs.

That would be a good baby step. But the U.S. needs a comprehensive policy that reverses the present lose-lose arrangement for employers and workers.

Columnist Myron B. Pitts can be reached at pittsm@fayettevillenc.com or 486-3559.

The town of 1,000 residents is devastated, and businesses are on the verge of closing.

Another candy coated innuendo. Most of these businesses didn't exist until they had illegals to cater to.