A 'Crackdown' That Wasn't [the immigration arrests last week]

NY Post ^ | April 25, 2006 | JOHN O'SULLIVAN

[John Jorsett]

IT happened last Wednesday, and it was nicely timed.

One week later - about now, in fact - the U.S. Senate was scheduled to reconvene to discuss an immigration bill. The bill proposes to amnesty most of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and to admit millions more legally as guest-workers. The controversial measure is strongly promoted by the White House and both party leaderships in the Senate - but opposed by most Republican congressmen and a large majority of voters.

Something was needed to break the log-jam of opposition.

And last Wednesday federal agents "swooped" on plants in 26 states belonging to IFCO, a U.S. subsidiary of a Dutch firm supplying wood pallets and plastic containers to industry, and arrested 1,187 illegal immigrant workers. Seven former and current IFCO managers were also charged with employing illegal aliens.

[snip]

I recently suggested - wrongly - that there had been little or no enforcement of employer sanctions since the passage of the 1986 amnesty law; that, once an illegal reached a major city such as Los Angeles, Phoenix or Chicago, he was safe from official interest and could work unmolested. That was not quite accurate. The Clinton administration in fact managed some (albeit patchy) "internal" enforcement of employer sanctions. For instance, the period 1995-1997 saw 10,000 to 18,000 worksite arrests of illegals a year. Some 1,000 employers were served notices of fines for employing them.

Under the Bush administration, however, worksite arrests fell to 159 in 2004 - with the princely total of three notices of intent to fine served on employers. Thus, worksite arrests under President Bush have fallen from Clintonian levels by something like 97 per cent - even though 9/11 occurred in the meantime.

[Mike Darancette]

That kinda says it all.

Not quite, work site arrests virtually stopped in 2000 (during Clinton) for some reason, probably some INS rule imposed by the Clinton administration.

[Pessimist]

The common thread is that in both cases our gvt's stance favors the interests of US business over those of US citizens.

[jordan8]

For decades the Republican Party hasn't stood for anything but big business. In the old days they had the cold war to help them get the presidency, today they're trying to make terrorism the new Soviets, a ploy that is bound to fail. They have no real domestic vision (GHWB's "vision thing"), and are completely controlled by the mores pushed by the mass media. (Democracy in the age of television basically means a velvet dictatorship of the media.) They've never really served their voters, only manipulated them, and sooner or later the hollowness of the party will cause a collapse of morale among their supporters which, combined with the importation of millions of Democratic voters, will see the Republicans sent to the wilderness once again, perhaps forever this time.