Rule Of Illegals
Ibd
Thu Oct 11, 7:00 PM ET



Immigration: A federal judge has decreed the U.S. cannot enforce its own laws to prevent the illegal employment of illegal aliens. With border control already inadequate, judicial tyranny makes a bad situation worse.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's kid brother, San Francisco U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, issued an order Wednesday blocking the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration from sending letters telling employers who have illegally hired illegal immigrants that they have 90 days to end the illegals' employment before facing punishment.

Breyer declared that the government's plans to mail 140,000 such notices would cause "irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers." But what of the irreparable harm the country is suffering because of the almost complete lack of a rule of law regarding illegal immigration?

Any member of a sleeper cell within our borders planning a future 9/11 knows not to fear being caught in a general roundup of illegals by immigration authorities.

There are scarcely any such roundups, because illegal entry and employment are so out of control -- at least 12 million people are here in defiance of our laws -- that we have no intention of even beginning to detain and deport that vast population.

In 1986, we were assured that a federal law making it an offense for a business to knowingly hire illegal aliens would solve our immigration problems.

Yet when the Government Accountability Office took a look at immigration enforcement, it found that the government filed a mere three notices threatening to fine companies in 2004, down dramatically from an already-scant 417 notices in 1999.

For all practical purposes, the 1986 law has been a joke.

Illegals now make up 5% of the U.S. work force, and as many as 8.7 million workers may be using phony Social Security numbers. The rationale of Breyer's ruling to block some long-awaited enforcement of current immigration law is that mistakes in the Social Security database will lead to the unjust firing of legal immigrants.

The case's strange coalition of plaintiffs includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So the defense of illegals ranges from the left's charges that their civil rights are being violated to business claiming that the U.S. economy would collapse without their labor.

But for two decades now, those who employ illegals have been flouting the law. Is it really too much to demand -- finally -- that they start obeying it? Since terrorists can use our lax immigration enforcement to attack the U.S. homeland, it has actually become employers' patriotic duty to do so.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was quick to call the ruling "yet another reminder of why we need Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform."

But all the laws in the world will be ineffective when judges such as the Bill Clinton-appointed Breyer refuse to permit their enforcement. This incident is another example of the need for judges who realize their job is to judge, not legislate.


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