Immigration Law Enforcement Promised

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced steps to enhance immigration law enforcement. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, offered some commentary on National Review Online (8/13/07). He notes that a number of the steps "are just continuations of current policy . . . or not likely to have major impacts."

One potential exception is the plan requiring employers to act on "no match" letters from the Social Security Administration. These are letters stating that the names and numbers on an employee's W-2 form don't match what the administration has in its files. Often, but not always, "no match" is the consequence of an illegal alien using a fake or stolen Social Security number to become an employee.

Companies often ignore "no match" letters, but the DHS plan would give them legal teeth. After receipt of the letter, the company and the employee would have time to resolve the discrepancy. If that is not done, the company would have to fire the employee.

Krikorian believes that this plan "could really make a difference." Nevertheless, he is skeptical of an administration which has done little for the past six years to deal with illegal immigration. In point of fact, he suggests that DHS may be plotting with reverse psychology. Namely, the enforcement will work - so much so that lobbyists for companies hiring illegals will scream and shout, and Congress will surrender to their demands to stop it.

Krikorian warns Americans and their congressmen to anticipate this reaction, and take it with a grain of salt. Cheap labor interests, he maintains, have long been notorious for their Chicken Little histrionics. In the early 1960s, he observes, tomato growers in California claimed that the Mexican guest worker program at that time was essential to their industry. But when the program ended, they managed to prosper with mechanization. A half century before that business owners testified before the Senate that abolishing child labor would "stop my machines" and "paralyze the country."

Guard Troops to Leave Border

Last year the Bush Administration sent 6,000 National Guard troops to Arizona to assist the Border Patrol. One of their tasks was to build and maintain border fence. Many observers credit the presence of the Guardsmen with reducing the flow of illegal aliens across the border.

Now the administration is planning, by the first of September, to reduce the deployment by 3,000 troops. Henceforth, Border Patrol agents will do the fence building that they were working on.

This announcement prompted the following comment from Rich Pierce, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents the agency's 11,000 non-supervisory agents: "[The administration] on the one hand is trying to convince the American public it is serious about immigration enforcement. Meanwhile the other hand reduces the National Guard by 50 percent, whose job to build the border fence has hardly started. Now the Border Patrol agents who were meant to replace the National Guard are pulled from border enforcement and tasked with building the fence."

Pierce further commented, "The president's game of pretending to enforce our border continues. He has never been serious about this issue at all."

Tell It to Congress

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