Thread: U.S. to modify business crackdown on immigration

U.S. to modify business crackdown on immigration

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said Friday it will modify its planned crackdown on U.S. companies that employ illegal immigrants, asking a federal judge to delay hearing a lawsuit brought by major U.S. labor, business and farm organizations until the new strategy is completed.

In papers filed in San Francisco, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bucholtz told U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer that the Homeland Security Department (DHS) is making unspecified changes to its plan to pressure employers to fire up to 8.7 million workers with suspect Social Security numbers.

A DHS spokesman declined to comment, but court papers asked the judge to delay the case until March 24 or until a new program is ready.

On Oct. 10, Breyer barred the government from mailing Social Security "no-match" letters to 140,000 U.S. employers, citing serious legal questions about requiring companies to resolve questions about their employees' identities, fire them within 90 days or face potential fines and criminal prosecution.

President Bush made the initiative a priority in August after the Senate killed his proposed overhaul of immigration laws.

...

In a related development, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) adopted federal guidelines aimed at softening treatment of illegal immigrants who are arrested in work-site raids and are pregnant, nursing infants or serving as sole caregivers to minor children or seriously ill relatives.

The federal guidelines, released last week, said agents should develop a comprehensive plan to identify such people in raids targeting more than 150 people and work with social-service agencies to assess their needs in deciding whether to detain them while processing their deportation cases.

Originally Posted by bla bla

Government officials understand, recognize, or uphold laws at
their convenience. There is no legal detail more important than
understanding this overriding concept.

If the elites want unlawful people in the US that is what we will get.

I honestly hope that politicians will actually acknowledge the actual root cause of illegal immigration into this country, which is the fact that employers offer ("economic refugees" I prefer to call them) a job. So long as this stupid Tom Tancredo notion of bloodthirsty Mexicans bent on nothing less than maliciously stealing jobs, running over children, shooting college students, running drugs, and blowing up buildings persists, then the immigration debate will continue to be focused on the xenophobic "illegals" debate.

What always gets me most irked is the fact that the people in the U.S. who are so adamantly opposed to illegal immigration (primarily Hispanic) are people who still buy the fruits of illegal labor, ie. fast food and cheap mass-produced goods. If people want to make their voices count and seriously want to stem the tide of this apparently nefarious problem, then they should not BUY things from places you suspect employ illegal labor. Also, the argument that "they're stealing out jobs" essentially denigrates those who are making it. I don't think the majority of those who cross the Mexican border under the cover of darkness are whisking away high-powered jobs in biotech. If people are bitching that they're losing jobs in the low-end service, janitorial, or hospitality sector, then they're essentially admitting they f'ed up in life. And no, I have no qualms about saying that about people supporting the construction of a gigantic wall on the U.S. Mexican border.