New York Times Editorial

The Misery Strategy

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/opini ... u1.html?hp
Published: August 9, 2007

The path the country has set on since the defeat of immigration reform in the Senate in June enshrines enforcement and punishment above all else. It is narrow, shortsighted, disruptive and self-defeating. On top of that, it won’t work.

What it will do is unleash a flood of misery upon millions of illegal immigrants. For the ideologues who have pushed the nation into this position, that is more than enough reason to plunge ahead.

The latest phase of the crackdown, expected to be announced this week, would require employers to resolve discrepancies between their employee records and those of the Social Security Administration. If the data don’t match, presumably because a worker is an illegal immigrant using a false number, the worker must be fired. There are millions of people in thousands of workplaces who could be caught in that net, and the government is promising to start dragging it zealously, with stepped-up raids around the country. “We are tough, and we are going to be even tougher,â€