San Francisco Chronicle – October 10, 2007:
A federal judge in San Francisco barred the Bush administration today from threatening to prosecute businesses for knowingly employing illegal immigrants if they fail to fire workers whose Social Security numbers don’t match government records.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer issued a nationwide preliminary injunction barring the government from enforcing the so-called no-match rule, which was scheduled to take effect last month but was blocked by temporary restraining orders from Breyer and another judge. Today’s order remains in effect until a suit by labor unions challenging the rule goes to trial sometime next year or until a higher court intervenes.
OK, now, I am not sure I get this. Is it or is it not illegal to hire illegal immigrants? Further, is it not illegal to then keep them employed if you later discover they have used forged or false information in order to get employed?
Being a hispanic myself, I have met many many illegal immigrants, and while they are good people, I do believe that they should follow proper procedure to enter this country, and when they fail to do so, or use one legal measure to enter and then overstay their visas, they should not be employable in our nation until they correct their status.
And frankly, i think employers who knowingly employ them should be punished as well since they are enabling this behavior in illegal immigrants. In fact, perhaps more so. Many illegals are desperate not to return to what, to us, seems like a hellish life, but employers in these areas are doing it out of sheer greed.
Back when the law was passed – and the Feds actually enforced the law in a few cases – objections like these were tested and set aside.
Of course, once the Chamber of Commerce realized that profits could be bumped a chunk in industries like home-building enforcement of the law disappeared.
For me the saddest story is unions supporting the use of scabs to reduce average wages. There is no integrity left in any aspect of American politics.
I brought up earlier that the liberals want the illegal aliens here so they can vote. It was pointed out that they can’t vote. Let’s see, they come here and use a fake SSN card and get a job and the employer faces no repercussions for hiring them and in at least one state (NY) they want to give them driver’s licenses.
So what’s to stop the illegals from then registering to vote? Nothing.
We can’t keep them from getting a job ILLEGALLY and we can’t punish the employers for hiring them ILLEGALLY.
At least we (the US) is getting all that fake SSN money into our coffers. Unfortunately after the DREAM Act passes and all the other little immigration bills go through we may as well buy every illegal a home and car and setup a fully funded 401(k) for them and just get it over with.
I heard this story on NPR and it turns out that not just illegal aliens are being fired for not matching SSN database. The database is seriously inaccurate. Either the SSN’s don’t matchup with the correct name or the name’s are misspelled. The judge said that, until the database is updated and made considerably more accurate, he won’t allow its use as the sole determiner of whether a person is an illegal alien or not.
Well at least the first three people didn’t bother to read the story.
The rule gave employers three months to correct any problems with the SSN or fire the worker. If the problem wasn’t corrected in that time and they didn’t fire the worker then the company would be fined. The problem is the SSN data base is so filled with errors and does not have a quick enough response time to protect LEGAL employees. The Judge recognized that problem and ruled on that issue.
I for one have no issue with the enforcement of proper SSNs. But, a proper and correct data base must be the basis for the enforcement. Although the SSA is a different division of the government then is Immigration, they must work together to provide prompt correction of errors.
Keep on rockin’ in the third world…
Once again, apologies to Neal Young, and our grandkids
Like I said – #5 – all those problems were recognized in 1986. Did you actually think record-keeping at SSA was better in 1986?
The issues remain the same. Only the tactics vary from week to week, year to year.
Don’t overreact everyone, the story stays clearly that’s it’s a temporary injunction until another case is cleared up. This happens all the time, right?
I have FOR YEARS said employer enforcement would be the cheapest, most effective way to slow down illegal immigration.
A MULTI GAZZILLION DOLLAR fence is the most expensive and least effective — so, of course, that’s what conservatives demand.
However, mis matching social security numbers seems like too low a bar to bust employers. It would be just like homeland security to make someone’s life a living hell for a typo.
The simple fact is that the real criminals are the people employing undocumented workers, not the workers themselves; the reason they do this is to drive down our wages by utilizing an easily abused and underpaid workforce to drive down the general price of labor. It’s essentially the planned and malevolent economic assassination of the middle and lower classes. Focusing on the workers who would not be here if we enforced our employment laws is only ladling more abuse on people who are already downtrodden.
Remember that when these debates go round and round; it’s not the ‘scary brown people’ that are running down your wages and abusing others, it’s our bloodsucking corporate masters who are doing that. The Mexicans are just a convenient population that can be easily exploited due to the fact that NAFTA basically destroyed their agrarian economy.
3 – Steve –
One little (actually major) problem with your “Liberals bring them to vote” theory:
In past elections (including the last two presidential elections), Latinos have voted REPUBLICAN in their majority, because of the influence of the Catholic church. Abortion and Gay issues are important to Catholics (and Christians in their majority), so the immigrants tend to vote conservative.
The deep attacks by the right wing against Latinos will backfire in this area, since almost all Latinos now see it as purely an issue of racism, not immigration. Every sign is that due to the attitudes of the right wing, the Latino community as a unit will refuse outright to vote for a Republican anything in future elections, opting instead for less radical Democratic candidates.
Imbeciles like Michael Savage, Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, with their unabashed hate speech are actually strengthening the Latino movement, and making conservatives look like a bunch of Nazi’s. That will just drive more and more people of all races away from the conservative parties.
Of course, if HS prioritized this over spying on protestors, this problem would be solved, but they won’t because the plan is to destroy our economy in order to force us to join with Mexico in a North American Union.
BTW, that’s not a ‘conspiracy theory’ anymore, Vincente Fox let the cat out of the bag on the Daily Show and CNN this week. It’s on YouTube, there is no hiding it now. I’m not sure Bush wanted the world to know that he has violated his oath to the Constitution and betrayed the country by selling us under at the Waco accord, but there is no hiding behind a fig leaf of disbelief anymore.
#9 – I’d agree with everything except that most illegal immigrants don’t take middle-class jobs (granted the definition is largely arbitrary and political). The middle class was created by the upper class/ruling elite as a buffer to keep the lower class under control and disenfranchised. Illegal immigrants are simply an illegal lower class. The “illegal” classification is simply a ploy to not have to give any rights to a large swath of Americans. That’s nothing new in US history (natives, blacks, women, men without property). This is just yet another civil rights fight that is being painted as illegal vs. legal to get the middle class on board with the upper class in rejecting rights for working class Americas.
#10 Awake – Good point but I didn’t put my rant in the posting about the conservatives wanting the illegals in the country for the cheap labor.
I blame both sides for this mess (like most).
I don’t agree that because there are errors in the database the plan should be discontinued. That’s a reason for the plan to go forward. If there’s a mistake in the database, better to get it fixed now than to have your retirement get stolen in a few decades.
San Francisco – must be something in the water out there.
OK, but this order doesn’t prevent the Feds from showing up and deporting the workers, does it?
#12 Much as a rising tide raises all ships, a sinking one beaches them all on the reef together. By lowing the effective ‘minimum wage’ by employing large numbers of people who get no benefits and can be freely cheated out of the money they have been promised, the overall value of labor falls, and everyone who doesn’t have a golden parachute suffers.
Besides, a lot of the undocumented workers are doing electrical, masonry and plumbing work on construction sites, and those jobs used to be considered middle class positions.
#15 – San Francisco – must be something in the water out there.
And it is delicious.
Didn’t DD Eisenhower take care of this probem 50 years ago, and with about 1/10th of the United States Border Patrol agents we have today?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0706/p09s01-coop.htm
An interesting pic and more info from UPI here:
http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,2561.0.html
#9…Li…sorry…but no illegals, no one to exploit….very simple. The new law calls for a very harsh punishment for employers who hire these people.
#10…Awake…..the only Hispanics that have historically voted majority for Republicans are the Cubans. Almost all other Hispanics have voted Democratic. In the 2000 election Bush took 36% of the Hispanic vote, a record for a national candidate of the Republican party….in 2004 he won 44%. Most immigrant groups vote Democratic for the first generation, then they usually start voting Republican. One *expert* made the comment that the reason so many new immigrants vote for the Democrat’s is because they confuse *Democrat* with democracy, so vote accordingly.
I would love to see the old Esienhower approach as shown in Bubba Ray’s link. I think the feel good policies have to end and we have to deadly serious about the problem. But as long as politicians are in control, nothing worth while will happen because they are afraid to stand up and be counted. And that is true for either party.
This is BS! The place where I used to work had thirteen janitors who all had the same Social Security number! When they got caught (and the story got into the newspapers) they gave them three months to get their documentation straightened out! They should have busted everybody who had anything to do with their hiring, right up to the CEO.
My boyfriend’s identity was stolen by someone we believe to be an illegal alien who was hired by the Spring Meadow Nurseries in Grand Haven, MI. The identity thief worked there for two years or more and my boyfriend didn’t find out until the IRS came after him for failing to report all of his income. What a surprise that he wasn’t aware that he was earning income in a state he hasn’t lived in since he was a small child.
We feel that the nursery is partially responsible because not only did they apparently fail to collect a government issued photo id from the identity thief – the State Police confirmed that one was never issued – but they may not have even collected a Social Security card. We are still waiting to find out if he had a fake card or just the number. In addition, my boyfriend has a very Anglo-Saxon first and last name and the identity thief was apparently from Mexico and barely spoke English. Obviously, we shouldn’t target people based on their ethnicity, but if they also can’t produce documention required by federal law – YOU SHOULDN’T HIRE THEM.
When the nursery was contacted by the IRS and by my boyfriend, they failed to take appropriate action. It is our understanding that they continued to allow him to work there and they didn’t report him to the INS. In fact, he lived on premises, so they were harboring an illegal alien. They refused to cooperate with my boyfriend, answer questions about their hiring practices and even hung up on me when I began to question them. We understand that the identity thief was finally fired, but by failing to turn him in to the INS, the nursery allowed him to flee to Texas where he will likely never be caught since he will, I’m sure, have bought a new identity by now.
It is critical that we prosecute the companies who knowingly hire illegal aliens with the same vigor that we pursue the illegal aliens themselves. Frankly, I don’t care if they hire them and pay them under the table – that’s between them, the Feds and the IRS. But when they knowingly hire – or should know that they are hiring – someone who is using a stolen identity, they are perpetuating the crime just as much as the identity thief is. They are agreeing to it and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
If the San Francisco judge, in his decision, is merely trying to ensure that innocent people are not terminated, then I support his decision. However, there are many incidents out there in which employers are on more than sufficient notice that their employees are illegal aliens and are using stolen identities. In those cases, they need to be prosecuted. We intend to pursue the matter against Spring Meadow Nurseries to the fullest extent that the law permits to ensure that other victims of identity theft do not suffer because of a business’ failure to follow federal law either deliberately or negligently.