Posted on 08/13/2007 1:34:22 PM PDT by Delacon
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
This Mencken sentiment appears to be the guiding idea behind the administration’s announcement Friday of stepped-up immigration enforcement. After its relentless six-year campaign for amnesty crashed and burned in June at the hands of the common people, the White House has come up with a new plan: to start enforcing some of the laws they should have been enforcing all along, and so thoroughly scare the public with the consequences that there will be a popular groundswell for amnesty that will finally vindicate the administration position. You can almost hear the president thinking, “be careful what you wish for.”
Or as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff put it, “There will be some unhappy consequences for the economy out of doing this.”
But just as the administration completely misread public sentiment on immigration — the president appears to have genuinely believed his “I’ll see you at the bill signing” bravado — they’re now misreading the likely reaction to increased enforcement. Because despite the hysterical exaggerations we can look forward to from some farmers and other employers of illegal aliens, the produce department of your local supermarket won’t be shutting down any time soon.
The only reason the White House thinks this gamble might pay off is that some of the measures announced last week really can make a difference. The complete fact sheet is here, and since it’s a p.r. document, it should come as no surprise that there’s a good deal of padding. Some of the measures included are just continuations of current policy (completion of about half the border fencing by the end of next year, for instance) or not likely to have major impacts (expanding the number of foreign criminal gangs whose members are ineligible for visas). These efforts are welcome, but should be routine.
However, there are several novel elements (well, not so novel, since you could have read about them in NR), that must be part of any comprehensive attrition strategy to reduce the illegal population. Most important is the final rule on Social Security “no-match” letters. These are letters sent by the Social Security Administration to employers who’ve submitted W-2 forms for employees whose names and numbers don’t match the agency’s records. Some instances, of course, are the result of clerical mistakes or unreported name changes, but the majority are illegal aliens using fake or stolen Social Security numbers to gain employment.
This matters because more than half of illegal immigrants with jobs aren’t living “in the shadows” but instead are working on the books. In the past, no-match letters were sent only to employers with the largest number of problem files, and created no obligation to follow up. In fact, one version of the letter advised employers that “You should not use this letter to take any adverse action against an employee just because his or her Social Security number appears on the list, such as laying off, suspending, firing, or discriminating against that individual. Doing so could, in fact, violate state or federal law and subject you to legal consequences.”
As you can imagine, after that caveat most letters were just thrown away.
The new rule sets out common-sense steps an employer must take upon receiving a no-match letter to ensure that he won’t be held liable if the worker turns out to be an illegal alien. Social Security is now sending out these letters to employers with more than ten mismatches that make up more than one half of one percent of its workforce — covering about 80 percent of all mismatches. Most employers are likely to follow through the process and, if necessary, fire those workers who turn out to be illegals (most of whom will likely have left anyway by that point); while some may re-hire the workers off the books, “An employer who does that,” as Secretary Chertoff points out, “is making a deliberate decision to compound their legal difficulties by committing tax crimes as well as immigration crimes.” (In other words, “You may not think much of my department, but the IRS isn’t fooling around.”)
The underlying rationale for ensuring that no-match letters are acted on by employers is to turn off the magnet of jobs that attracts — and keeps — illegal aliens here. As it becomes harder to get a job, and as the jobs illegals can get are less stable, sneaking across the border or overstaying a visa will become less and less attractive, and illegals already here — especially those with fewer attachments — will start deporting themselves.
Along the same lines is another, less-noticed measure in last week’s announcement. The administration says it will begin to draft a new rule to require all federal contractors to use the online system, redubbed E-Verify, that enables employers to check if new hires are authorized to work in the United States. This probably won’t identify a large number of illegal workers, but it will change the environment, representing an important step toward internalizing legal status as a labor standard.
Lobbyists for farmers and roofing contractors and others will soon be screaming bloody murder. But Congress and the media would do well not to take at face value the squealing of firms losing their cheap-labor subsidy. When the end of the last big guestworker program was being debated in the early 1960s, California farmers claimed that “the use of braceros [Mexican guestworkers] is absolutely essential to the survival of the tomato industry.” Instead, termination of the program prompted mechanization which caused a quintupling of production for tomatoes grown for processing, an 89-percent drop in demand for harvest labor, and a fall in real prices.
The same sort of thing happened half a century earlier, when the textile industry predicted disaster if child labor were ended. At a Senate hearing in 1916, one mill owner said that limiting child labor would “stop my machines”; another said “investors would never receive another dividend”; while a third said that ending child labor would “paralyze the country.”
We’re going to hear a lot more of this sort of thing — the White House is counting on it. Standing up to the coming lobbyist onslaught will be the final stage of the battle against amnesty. _
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and an NRO contributor.
And before that it had something to do with picking cotton! Pack'em up send'em home.
BTTT!
Bush’s love affair with Mexicans is unseemly. In the immigration debate he actually places the interests of Mexicans above those of American citizens. He should have closed the border on 9/12/2001, regardless of his infatuation with Mexicans.
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All true, but he forgot what country he works for. And he forgot the Presidential oath and the Constitutional obligations he took on as President. If the will and needs of the American people received as much attention from him as foreign countries, foreign trade pacts, Afghans, Iraqis and Mexicans....he would have probably had a good legacy to go down in history. It is symptomatic of an inbred culture of arrogance, elitism and globalism all mixed together.
America is on the brink. Serious trouble. If this country has degraded enough to put a power-mad Marxist in the White House, we are in for a rough ride until America finally wakes up, cleans up Washington and state governments, and restores our Constitutional Republic that Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, et al, intended....at all costs, the Constitution must be protected and we must have officials that support it, protect it, and live by the letter of its laws to ensure the liberties and rights of all REAL Americans.
I agree with your post.
Since Bush and Chertoff think we can’t live without the illegals, I suggest one more cut off for Mexico. We don’t need 50 Mexican consulates, so lets get rid of them. We can place American businesses in the buildings and collect taxes on the property.
So you are basically saying that we need a few hundred million more illegals to keep the growth going. What a dumb argument.
If the US had an adequate immigration policy, there would be no, or very few, illegals. You can let them in as legal immigrants, guest workers, illegal immigrants, or any combination there-of.
Then there is the medium age. Overall, the US has a medium age of 36.6 years. The US medium age of the native born is over 40 while the medium age of the foreign born is about 27. As the population ages, there are fewer workers to do the hot, hard, and dirty jobs.
As the illegals are deported and/or self-deport, you better find someone to replace them.
bttt
Exactly! Me too!
Yes, it is not over. There will be a push for the Dream Act.
I agree. Bush’s obsession with Mexico and its illegal aliens is bizarre.
We need to deport illegal aliens directly or indirectly and build a wall. If we need labor we can admit temporary workers - without their families, no anchor babies, no right to welfare.
another BTTT!
..and yet congress has not approved the actuall construction of the fence.
There might be “some money” set aside. The president may have “approved” the construction HOWEVER congress reserved final approval as to design and location for themselves.
This enforcement is a hollow nothing.
Punshiment to the sheep for rising against the wolf.
Despite having been heavy involved in this issue for years I still had mixed theories on the level of responsibility. That is, until the Presidents remark that spoke volumes about his level of personal agenda for amnesty.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19149972/
June 11, 2007 “I believe we can get it done,” Bush said of the immigration bill that has run into deep trouble on Capitol Hill. “I’ll see you at the bill signing.”
That is all I needed to realize that despite other entities having various levels of responsibility, this push for amnesty is primarily being encouraged and enabled by the President. This is the result of his personal agenda.
We now have a situation in which The President of The United States of America is not serving the nation and is insisting others in government to engage in government "by the elite" and NOT "from the consent of the Governed."
The question to be answered is, as I see it, what are the options of the President and his "inner sanctum" to continue to rule by elitism and not from the consent of the governed?
It is a question that everyone needs to answer for themselves as it is becoming very clear that as long as the OBL/Amnesty crew are within reach of the DC swamp they will continue their course of subverting this nation to the point of it’s insignificance.
If it is found to be the case that this is occurring, there are clear instructions from the Founding Fathers of this Republic as to our response as American Citizens. It is clear to me that the Founding Fathers did not intend to allow future American Citizens to inherent the Republic for free after it cost them so much, it does have a price and occasional we would be called upon to pay up.
Every week there's more bad news ,like the Massachusetts communist health care laws that will close small business’s and put mid income people in the street . WHY ? So they can pay for the ‘poor’ to get it free [ Mitt Romney ].
It’s not one democrat or one republican, it’s all of them . I have voted for lessor of two evils for past few decades, never again .Evil is still evil .
Give back the farms to the native Americans and stop the mafia of huge agri business’s. I am native American, not an immigrant , my ancestor's immigrated here centuries ago . Most of the new immigrants are first and second generation at best. We re not a immigrant nation ,we are a melting pot American nation , not salad bowl.The anglo-saxons and the blacks built this nation the hard way . No body gave us a damn thing .
Just like nations ruled by other tyrants , we will be complacent till we no longer have a choice . They are building their army against us inside our own homeland and to add insult to injury with our own money .
There it is. The primary difference and it will not change nor will the people that really built this nation "adjust" to the invaders. The vast numbers involved will surely result in a fragmentation, a Balkanization of this nation.
The entire concept of an amnesty is NOTHING but a match to the fuze leading to war. And that will be war right here in the good old USA. We will be resupplying at WalMart and the local K-Clinic will be handling simple gunshot wounds to the arms and legs.
We are fundamentally different from the hordes that are giving our laws a “one gun salute” by jumping the fence or swimming the river, then prancing down our streets demanding “their rights.” If "our" government gives 30 million of them a free pass and tries to tell real American Citizens that the criminal illegal alien border law violators are now also “citizens” there will be a full blown war. American Citizens are NOT going to accept that level of treason. They know that doing so will destroy the united States of America and what will be left will be a corporate slave farm on a gigantic scale.
Who do we have left to fight ? Senior citizens and lazy spoiled kids ? Our fighting men are somewhere else defending another nations ‘democracy’. What size army will we have most people don’t even read the news,unless a new Harry Potter book comes out , Brittany or Paris shaves their head or has another arrest. I have 11 grandkids most teenagers and early 20s and only a couple get exercise .I guess they have strong fingers from video games and remotes though .
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