Today’s “It’s Not Fair” Moment
US farmers are apparently whining mightily because there are some relatively minor crackdowns on employers who hire illegal immigrants.
Facing the prospect of major layoffs of farmworkers during harvest season, growers and lawmakers from agricultural states spoke in dire terms yesterday about new measures by the Bush administration to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants.
“This is not just painful, this is death to the American farmer,” Maureen Torrey, who runs a family dairy and vegetable farm in Elba, N. Y., said in a telephone interview.
“We’ve tried everything we can do,” Ms. Torrey said. “But they are leaving us with no options.”
At a news conference in Washington yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Carlos M. Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce, formally unveiled the measures, which had been disclosed in general terms earlier, to reinforce border security and drive illegal immigrants out of the labor force.
The "draconian" measure?
Under the new rules, employers will have 90 days to resolve discrepancies between Social Security numbers provided by their workers and the records of the Social Security Administration.
If the employers cannot obtain valid Social Security information for an employee within three months after receiving a notice of any discrepancies, they must fire the worker. Illegal immigrants often present false Social Security numbers on job applications.
Fines levied on companies for knowingly hiring illegal workers — currently $2,200 for a first offense and up to $10,000 for repeat offenses — will increase by 25 percent, officials said.
Mr. Chertoff said the “real hammer” would be more frequent use by the immigration authorities of criminal felony charges against employers and illegal immigrant workers. He said the authorities had made 742 criminal arrests so far this year in illegal employment cases, compared with 716 such arrests in all of last year, which was a record.
I dunno that the term "real hammer" is appropriate here. More like foam rubber mallet, but it is at least a start. But the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the farmers is simply ridiculous. They know it, the administration knows it and the whining politicians know it. This is, at best, political theater. There is an enormous problem with illegal immigrants to this country. Something has got to be done. One of the people charged in the execution style murders of three teenagers in Newark, New Jersey is an illegal immigrant from Peru. He happened to be free on bond from child molestation charges when the killings occurred. The Feds had done nothing to get this man out of the country despite having several chance to do something about him.
The arrest came hours after the man suspected of being the ringleader in the crime pleaded not guilty. The authorities revealed that he is an illegal immigrant from Peru who could have been detained by federal authorities after one of his two previous arrests in the past year. Instead, the immigrant, Jose Lachira Carranza, a 28-year-old construction worker, was free on $150,000 bail at the time of the killings last week, despite pending felony charges of aggravated assault and sexual abuse of a child.
“The system is overwhelmed from top to bottom,” said Armando B. Fontoura, the Essex County sheriff, whose office discovered Mr. Carranza was in the country illegally, and reported it to the federal government, after he turned himself in on Thursday. “This guy got through the cracks.”
Cracks you could drive a blimp through. Its time to fix this. Hell, its past time. Let the farmers whine, just crack down on this mess.
Crime, Immigration Reform | Gaius Saturday, 11 August , 2007
