Thread: Plan B: Enforce the law

www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi ... 9023.story

chicagotribune.com
Editorial
Plan B: Enforce the law ...
Tribune staff reporter

August 20, 2007

Declaring an end to "30 years of lip service" on immigration law enforcement, the Bush administration has announced a stern crackdown on businesses that hire illegal workers. After failing to sell Congress on a comprehensive immigration package intended to fortify the border while allowing more legal workers, the Bush team says it will vigorously enforce existing law -- including new initiatives designed to ferret out illegal workers and punish their employers. It won't be pretty.

"There will be some unhappy consequences for the economy," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned. That could include labor shortages, pricey produce, jobs lost to other countries and up to $7 billion a year in lost taxes from immigrant workers.

This approach strikes some opponents of a comprehensive law as a Machiavellian effort calculated to backfire: the White House figuring that folks who insist on "enforcement first" might change their tune when they get a bitter taste of what they wanted.

We don't doubt that mischief has crossed Chertoff's mind. But he also knows this crackdown is decades overdue. Americans have made it clear they don't want to talk about a new immigration law because they can't trust their government to enforce the 1986 grand bargain that twinned tougher enforcement (which never happened) with amnesty (which did). Before it restarts that conversation, the administration must rebuild Washington's credibility.

What about those unhappy consequences? Illegal immigrants make up an estimated 5 percent of the U.S. workforce, and the feds aren't equipped to roust all of them overnight. Nor do authorities plan to conduct widespread roundups. But the new rules require employers to fire workers whose Social Security numbers can't be reconciled with government records, and Chertoff promises to come down on violators "like a ton of bricks." That will force employers to demand better documentation from job applicants; those who can't provide it will be discouraged from coming here in the first place. What price will U.S. consumers pay?

Even before the government announced its new rules, employers who depend on seasonal workers were complaining of labor shortages that they attribute to the supercharged immigration debate. Agriculture is the obvious loser, since most itinerant farmworkers are illegal. Nationwide, there are perhaps 35 percent fewer farmworkers for this year's harvests.

Michigan farmers say they lost 20 percent of this spring's asparagus crop because they lacked enough workers to pick it on time. It's the same story for oranges and grapes in California, potatoes in Idaho, apples in Wisconsin.

Some California growers are renting land south of the border to plant -- outsource? -- their lettuce and tomatoes. Others say they'll be forced to switch to crops harvested by machine, meaning that labor-intensive crops such as strawberries and peaches will increasingly come from South America. The bottom line is produce could be harder to come by, and quite likely will be more expensive.

Other industries are feeling the squeeze. There aren't enough crab pickers in Maryland or horse walkers in Saratoga. Tourism bureaus all over the country are fretting about understaffing. Fewer immigrants will mean fewer landscapers, construction workers, dishwashers and pizza delivery drivers. Americans who want to hire a housekeeper or nanny might have to search harder, and pay more.

Will that price be too steep for Americans to tolerate? Or will employers eventually find ways to attract citizens to the jobs that illegal immigrants have held? The former outcome would strengthen the case for giving people here illegally a path to citizenship (and job stability). The latter outcome would suggest that our economy isn't as dependent on illegal workers as pro-immigration advocates insist.

There's only one way to find out: living by the tenets of the 1986 law Congress passed but never intended to enforce. Demonstrating that it can apply the strong remedies that 21-year-old law demands would give the administration a much better case for comprehensive reform.

... and debate the consequences

Sunday afternoon's arrest of immigration activist Elvira Arellano isn't a result of the federal government's new campaign against employers who hire illegal workers. But the abrupt arrival of law-enforcement agents outside a Los Angeles church -- after Arellano had spent a year claiming sanctuary at a church in Chicago -- is one more provocation for accelerating a strikingly divisive national debate.

That debate had dropped by a few decibels this summer as comprehensive immigration legislation flopped in the U.S. Senate. The recent news of the impending workplace crackdown had started to raise the volume anew. After Sunday's arrest of Arellano, expect to hear increasingly louder voices. Proponents of liberalized immigration laws will enshrine Arellano as a martyr singled out because she has defied federal authorities. Much as U.S. citizens who resent Washington's decades of inaction while the number of illegal immigrants has swollen to 12 million will say she's a scofflaw whose arrest was long overdue.

No capture of a mother being separated from her son is a pleasure to behold. But the facts of Elvira Arellano's story make her difficult to view as a victim. She came to the U.S. illegally from Mexico and worked on a cleaning crew at O'Hare International Airport until she was arrested during a post-Sept. 11, 2001, security sweep at this nation's airports.

It turned out she had entered the U.S. illegally once before -- and had been arrested and deported, only to return. She also had used a fake Social Security number.

Arellano sought to avoid another deportation -- and since 2003 has received three stays. Her supporters called for a moratorium on all deportations until Congress passed an immigration reform bill that would help her. That unfortunate request no doubt hurt her cause more than it helped: As this page said a year ago in urging her to abide by U.S. law, this country isn't in the business of suspending the enforcement of a statute while Congress mulls whether to change it. She has gotten numerous breaks, but she remains subject to U.S. law -- as Sunday's arrest affirms.

That arrest does, though, qualify as just the sort of highly visible consequence that stronger enforcement of this country's immigration laws will create. As the top editorial on this page suggests, Americans deserve to see that stronger enforcement -- and to mull whether they do or don't want those consequences.

Both sides of the immigration debate have viewed Elvira Arellano's situation as emblematic of all that's wrong with the system. Her supporters bemoan the legal obstacles to her employment. Her detractors point to how long she flouted the law without being arrested.

For now, though, that law is abundantly clear. And Elvira Arellano made choices that invited the feds to enforce it.

She also had used a fake Social Security number.

I wonder if anyone pays attention to the fact that the real victim here could be the person whos SS# she had been useing! If indeed it did belong to someone, that person may be going through hell trying to get his/her ID back.

This approach strikes some opponents of a comprehensive law as a Machiavellian effort calculated to backfire: the White House figuring that folks who insist on "enforcement first" might change their tune when they get a bitter taste of what they wanted.

This reporter has to be a visitor to Alipac.

That is an exceptionally well-written article; fairly presenting both sides of the issue.

we can no longer aford not to enforce the laws, whatever the consequences. citizens can no longer aford the taxes to keep a large slave labor force for big business.