Adam's Apple
Senior Member
- Apr 25, 2004
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Joke on America: Hiring Illegals
Editorial from Christian Science Monitor
March 28, 2005
Ha ha ha. That's a good one. Wal-Mart, a company with $285 billion in sales, gets fined a mere $11 million earlier this month for having hundreds of illegal immigrants clean its stores.
The federal government boasts it's the largest fine of its kind. But for Wal-Mart, it amounts to a rounding error - and no admittance of wrongdoing since it claims it didn't know its contractors hired the illegals.
If it weren't so easy for illegals and employers to skirt worker ID verification, the settlement's requirement that Wal-Mart also improve hiring controls might have a ripple effect in corporate America. But the piddling fine will hardly deter businesses from hiring cheap labor from a pool of illegals that's surged by 23 percent since 2000.
It's commonly argued that Americans don't want the jobs illegals take. But a workforce of perhaps 7 million undocumented workers depresses wages. Those wages would readjust upward, and be attractive to Americans and legal immigrants, if the stream of illegals significantly abated. Promise of work in the US encourages illegal (and dangerous) border crossing. That's why the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 provided for sanctions against businesses that hire the undocumented.
But enforcement is pathetically inadequate, especially since 9/11. Facing limited resources, immigration officials have necessarily redirected priorities to protecting critical infrastructure. For instance, more than 1,100 unauthorized alien workers with access to sensitive areas at airports have been arrested.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0328/p08s01-comv.html
Editorial from Christian Science Monitor
March 28, 2005
Ha ha ha. That's a good one. Wal-Mart, a company with $285 billion in sales, gets fined a mere $11 million earlier this month for having hundreds of illegal immigrants clean its stores.
The federal government boasts it's the largest fine of its kind. But for Wal-Mart, it amounts to a rounding error - and no admittance of wrongdoing since it claims it didn't know its contractors hired the illegals.
If it weren't so easy for illegals and employers to skirt worker ID verification, the settlement's requirement that Wal-Mart also improve hiring controls might have a ripple effect in corporate America. But the piddling fine will hardly deter businesses from hiring cheap labor from a pool of illegals that's surged by 23 percent since 2000.
It's commonly argued that Americans don't want the jobs illegals take. But a workforce of perhaps 7 million undocumented workers depresses wages. Those wages would readjust upward, and be attractive to Americans and legal immigrants, if the stream of illegals significantly abated. Promise of work in the US encourages illegal (and dangerous) border crossing. That's why the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 provided for sanctions against businesses that hire the undocumented.
But enforcement is pathetically inadequate, especially since 9/11. Facing limited resources, immigration officials have necessarily redirected priorities to protecting critical infrastructure. For instance, more than 1,100 unauthorized alien workers with access to sensitive areas at airports have been arrested.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0328/p08s01-comv.html
