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By Froma Harrop
I've got news for the Minutemen tracking illegal aliens in southern Arizona. If you really want to control illegal immigration, you are in the wrong place. The place to go is Washington. And the people to confront are President Bush and Congress, not the Mexican peasants sneaking into the United States.
The Bush administration is using you.
The Minutemen are volunteers who patrol the border in search of illegal immigrants. Their work is utterly futile.
Everyone knows that on the first or 10th try, the illegal alien will get past the circus at the border. From there, it's on to Los Angeles, Chicago or Anytown USA, where he's home free.
Illegal immigrants come for jobs. Were it not for the jobs, 98 percent of them would not be here. It also happens to be against federal law to hire illegal aliens.
How well has the Bush administration enforced that law? Here's the simple answer: There are an estimated 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. Only 124 employers were fined in 2003 for hiring them. That number comes from the Department of Homeland Security, and there are no missing zeros.
Illegal aliens depress the wages of low-skilled citizens and legal immigrants. This situation suits Bush just fine. Bush loves nothing more than cheap labor. For all we know, he may regard illegal workers as a kind of tax break for business.
So the cheap-labor crowd finds great value in keeping the immigration system broken. But there's the political problem. Because illegal immigration angers most Americans, Bush must appear to be doing something about it.
Hence, the big show at the border. In response to the Minutemen publicity, he sent 500 additional Border Patrol agents to the Arizona border. (Actually, they're not new agents. He just stripped them from San Diego and other border areas.)
Elsewhere, Bush throws out the welcome mat to illegal immigrants. For example, his proposed temporary-worker program. Everyone correctly read it as a big amnesty plan. Border Patrol agents say the announcement itself set off the recent wave in illegal crossings. They report picking up illegal immigrants who ask where they can sign onto the program.
Despite the new chaos unleashed at the border, the president has said nothing since to clarify his earlier remarks. As far as the world is concerned, the U.S. labor market is open for international business.
Some in Congress demand Bush do something real about illegal immigration. He has a response. It's a Tony Soprano deal: If Congress gives him the big amnesty and guest-worker program, he'll seriously start enforcing the employer sanctions. Not before.
Of course, most immigration experts don't believe for a minute that Bush would do anything to cut the flow of cheap labor. "If they were serious, they'd be enforcing the law now, so they would have credibility with Congress," says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
What could the president and Congress do now to enforce the law? For one thing, they could require employers to electronically check the Social Security numbers and work eligibility status of prospective hires. This simple process would weed out people with counterfeit documents. The program is already up and running, but is voluntary.
Every year, the Internal Revenue Service gets over a million tax returns on which the taxpayer ID number does not match the Social Security number on the W-2 form. The most likely reason is that the Social Security number was fake or stolen.
In years past, the Social Security Administration would send out "no match" letters to employers. That helped honest companies weed out undocumented workers. In 2003, however, that program was deemed "too effective," according to Krikorian, and dramatically scaled back. It could be restored.
It should be obvious. The only place to control most illegal immigration is in the federal bureaucracies and their computers. Citizens who get into confrontations with illegal immigrants are playing sucker in a fixed game.
The Minutemen now rail at Bush for calling them "vigilantes." But by drawing the spotlight to the border, they are playing into his hands. If the volunteers want to be effective, they should turn their SUVs in a northeasterly direction and head to Washington. Now that might make an impression.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0405/harrop040605.php3
freeandfun1 said:From what I undestand, the minutemen do plan to march on Washington. I think what they are doing in AZ right now is more to bring attention to the cause than anything else. The border is so long there are other points of entry, so again, this is just for "show".
If it is--he's wasting itSmarterThanYou said:is this part of his 'political capital' he's trying to spend? amnesty?
Pale Rider said:Minutemen should refocus their efforts border isn't source of immigration problems
I agree with this woman. Illegal immigration from mexico, and President Bush's apparent willingness to "HELP" illegal immigrants instead of enforce this country's laws, is my biggest bitch with the man, and it's a big enough bitch that my opinion of him has slipped considerably.
Merlin1047 said:I don't know about all that PR. The best way to get big business to respond is to cost them money. Obviously that doesn't work with government. To get government or any other bureacracy to respond is to embarrass them.
Seems to me that the Minute Men are accomplishing that rather nicely. They could go to DC and bitch till they got hoarse and all they would get is the old fast shuffle. But there they are augmenting the border patrol and GW is already starting to blush just a bit.
SmarterThanYou said:is this part of his 'political capital' he's trying to spend? amnesty?
ScreamingEagle said::duh3: How about a solution for everybody:
Catch all the illegals coming in and put them right into the services (or else send them back if they don't want a job) - border patrol, army, coast guard, etc. - which will help Bush beef up the service and then he will have enough people to both guard the borders and go to war and it will create jobs and votes and the illegals will become Americans and pay taxes and U.S. citizens will maybe pay more for a bigger military but at least it will lessen crime plus stop the future flow of illegals.
what are security background checks useful for anyway, right?ScreamingEagle said::duh3: How about a solution for everybody:
Catch all the illegals coming in and put them right into the services (or else send them back if they don't want a job) - border patrol, army, coast guard, etc. - which will help Bush beef up the service and then he will have enough people to both guard the borders and go to war and it will create jobs and votes and the illegals will become Americans and pay taxes and U.S. citizens will maybe pay more for a bigger military but at least it will lessen crime plus stop the future flow of illegals.
SmarterThanYou said:what are security background checks useful for anyway, right?
If I can be turned down for a job with the TSA, theres no way in hell I think an illegal should automatically get a border patrol job.
insein said:from what i understand their efforts are working thanks to the media. The meida portrays them as gun-toting right wingers from the sticks waiting to fire off at anything that moves. Granted this is meant to hinder their efforts and destroy their chracter but it is actually helping them. Mexican officials have been stoping their migrants at the border for fear of them being killed. Migrant activity has gone WAY down since the minutemen have begun their patrols. Probably because they are afraid of being shot at but some yahoo as the media keeps telling them they are.
So thanks LMM for continueing your backfired efforts.
freeandfun1 said:From what I undestand, the minutemen do plan to march on Washington. I think what they are doing in AZ right now is more to bring attention to the cause than anything else. The border is so long there are other points of entry, so again, this is just for "show".
William Joyce said:The columnist has a point. Bush needs to be confronted on this issue, and he's running away from it. The Minutemen are great. I saw a headline on Drudge, "Border Patrol Upset, Minutemen Disrupting Operations." What operations are those? Their afternoon nap?
