WSJ calls the Iowa ICE raid “Immigration Theater”
Many commenters in my post about the recent ICE Agriprocessors raid in Iowa suggested it was nothing but Kabuki theater designed to placate border security advocates and make them think that something was being done. Looks like the Wall Street Journal agrees–they’ve titled their newest open-borders editorial “Immigration Theater”:
Federal immigration officials raided an Iowa meatpacking plant this month in what is being called the largest operation of its kind in U.S. history. Nearly 400 of the plant’s 900 employees were arrested on immigration charges. Do you feel safer?
Ever since immigration reform died in Congress last year, the Bush Administration has made a show of stepping up enforcement. But do homeland security officials really have nothing better to do than raid businesses that hire willing workers – especially in states like Iowa, where the jobless rate is 3.5%? These immigrants are obviously responding to a labor shortage for certain jobs.
Yeah, yeah, that Americans just won’t do. Whatever. The interesting point of this editorial is that it suggests Democrats, led by Heath Shuler, sense Republican disarray on the issue and are doing an end run (or, more likely, a fake) around the GOP’s right flank on immigration. Shuler’s SAVE act funds the E-verify system, which the WSJ notes is riddled with errors and could never possibly work, and which the WSJ noted last month on page one was already working too well.
Of course, for the final word on e-verify, I’ll ask Jorge Hernandez.
As for the politics, I thought this was interesting:
You’d think Republicans would dislike a law that creates more expense and headaches for employers who are already overregulated. Instead, GOP lawmakers keep fooling themselves that immigration is an electoral winner, while Democrats like Rahm Emanuel ponder which wing of the caucus to placate.
Apparently the Democrats think it’s enough of a winner that they’ll risking the ire of some of their most important identity groups to pinch some votes on it.
P.S. I notice the Journal editorial board has retooled their style-book a bit. They used to call border-security advocates like me and Michelle “nativists”. Now it looks like they’ve settled on “restrictionists”.
P.P.S. If the ICE raid in Iowa was “Kabuki theater”, I liked it. I give it two thumbs up. I’d like to see them open shows in every small town and big city across the country.
Hey, I’m a great patron of the arts.
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{Post by See-Dubya}
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Trackbacks
- Will lip service to immigration enforcement appease Conservatives? | The TIW Blog
- Michelle Malkin » Charges for employing illegal alien workers hit higher up the food chain
- Michelle Malkin » Sanctuary v. enforcement in neighboring counties: a natural experiment.
- Michelle Malkin » How we know immigration enforcement is working–part II
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Categories: 2008 campaign, Employer Sanctions, Open Borders Lobby
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Yup a true American morality play.
What happened to the 400 that were arrested? Deported or spanked and sent back to work? What happened to the owners of the business?
The answers may indicate if the raid were real or eye candy.
I loved it as well…two thumbs up…bravo…I want to see it run for aa long a Cats ….oh and by the way the WSJ is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the slavemaster business owners….when they are thrown in jail for slavery we will than have the final act to applaud!
If illegal immigrants are willing workers, should bank robbers be called willing with-drawers? If you won’t enforce one law, should you enforce any other?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics have been cooking the employment numbers for years. Fact of the matter is unemployment is and has been severely understated.
The Wall Street Journal knows this and yet they use a fake 3.2% unemployment rate as some type of weak justification for illegal immigration.
Besides, we all know that there is no economic justification for trashing the rule of law.
Loboman–the ones iwth fake documents are doing five months in federal prison. (see top link.)
That’s why I thought this was more than theater.
Nothing has happened to the owners yet. The DMR reports that charges are pending. I think I read that 138 of the detainees are in jail now awaiting their due process procedures. Of course we’ve had near daily whining in the DMR regarding the families.
This got me thinking a little. I looked at the Agriprocessors website to see if there’s anything interesting. I’m not surprised to find they have a Fox style “breaking news” orange glow stripe going across the top of the site that says, “Hiring Now!” The employment application in very short form. Why would they bother to put this on their website if it’s typical jobs Americans won’t do? I’d say this is a Kabuki play with more than one act.
Would like to see this theater come to every city in the country. ICE needs to a check on every business in the country. 400 gone, but 20 million more to go. Amnesty McCain will be no help after watching him on Hannity last night. He wants to secure the borders first and then give amnesty to the rest of them. Just remember when anybody says “comprehensive reform”, it means amnesty.
With a cast of thousands!
Anyone want to photoshop a poster?
Well then you can call me a restrictionist too ! Get the INS back to the business of screening for the best and brightest of potential immigrants. We don’t want or need a horde of uneducated and unhealthy people using up all of our public and private recources . Legal ONLY please.
#8 Undersiege…….Amazing, none of the application is in SPANISH !!
I have to raise the BS flag on this statement. Try not paying your taxes and find out how fast it takes the Gestapo at the IRS to kick down your door seizing property and assets.
The SAVE act is a common sense approach to validate the SSAN of each potential employee. Provided we stay away from the Congressionally mandated rule of going for the lowest bidder that usually can’t complete the project without significant cost overruns it would not be hard to develop a database while letting Government agencies exchange information. Just think how may illegals you could roll up in a couple of days if allowed to use the IRS database. Personally I am very interested in finding out how often our families SSANs are being illegally used reporting earnings from through out the US. From what I have seen from the WSJ over the past year I consider them in league with Big Business in depressing wages through the H-1B visa racket and looking the other way when knowingly hiring people of questionable citizenship status.
Can’t wait for our opportunity to sit back and watch the ICE Kabuki performance in our local area. I am sure that they will still continue their tried and failed catch and release program allowing the invaders to disappear to steal someone else’s identity in a new location.
…if the Iowa illegal immigration/phony document raid was “Kabuki Theater”, may I suggest that the congress of the United States of America is a “High School Play”…..a poor one at that.
Cheers for ICE!
There will be more raids in the Midwest over the next few months. Agribusiness needs to be hit hard with fines and pay decent wages to Americans. Their Illegal Slave labor practices need to be halted.
Over the past 5 years the population of Dennison, Iowa has become over 50% Illegals. That is the birthplace of Donna Reed BTW. The cost of Medical Services, the burden on the school sysyem of a small community and the cost of the identity theft to folks that had their SSNs stolen is huge.
So far no CEOs or Management has been placed on charges so perhaps thw WSJ does not have it all wrong.
Immigration, in accordance is good. The Illegals and Employers need to be penalized. So far the Taxpaying Citizenry is being penalized.
ICE is working, the Court system needs to get to work now!
The WSJ asks,
My elderly parents live in a town with a very high population of illegal aliens because of the type of industry there. Yes, I would feel safer if they lived in a town without thousands of people who had illegally crossed into this country, who were working here illegally and who have no stake in supporting the laws of this country.
Old Trooper……good point about the stolen SSN’s. Are the cheerleaders for amnesty thinking that I.D. theft will somehow stop as soon as its passed ? Dream on. Many of the illegals are wanted for other crimes under their given names already ! Arrest them, and get them the Hell out of OUR country. I think Home Depot could have put up a border fence faster than the Govment’ by now.
Yeah, it’s theater all right.
“THE rePRODUCERS.”
For Loboman: What happens to the employers? I saw a report on the raid on the news, cannot recall what station. A ICE rep was quoted. It came across as a “Baffle ‘em with B.S.” statement. Mentioning how investigating the employers could take “years” …”blah,blah,blah.” Bottom line, some middle management types will be punished and CEO’s will skate for sure.
Looking forward to the day when SPANISH won’t jammed down my throat.
The Wall Street Journal is the mouthpiece for the U.S.Chamber of Commerce. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been trying to stay off the radar screens while working streniously behind the scenes in the halls of Congress to sustain the current open borders situation. Like drug addicts they and their members are “hooked” on the cheap, exploitable labor and simply do not want to “get clean” by paying a proper wage to attract American workers.
Like the Far left, this nation’s enemies are not some rag headed jihadist across the Atlantic, but our fellow Americans living right under our noses. And that’s the way it is!
$10,000 per illegal per day.
Problem solved.
If investigating the employers will take ‘years’, I have a suggestion: let the government run their business until the investigation is finished! (Haven’t worked out some of the kinks yet).
If I had the spectre of the government running my show - knowing I would be in debt up to my eyebrows in days! - I think I would be very cautious about my hiring practices.
The only COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM needed is EMPLOYER SANCTIONS. Once you start penalizing employers, and I mean really penalize, the jobs will dry up. Once the jobs dry up, guess what happens?? The ILLEGALS go home. In AZ we started SANCTIONS the 1st of the year. Not even fully implemented yet, and we are seeing results. A lot of opposition to it, mostly from THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY, But it seems to be working. We need to push for a NATIONAL program as quick as possible.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to post links to other people’s sites, but calling for more “theater” is pretty naive and a HUGE waste of money - remember this raid cost over $10M and didnt get a single terrorist or EMPLOYER!! As long as the JOBS are still available, and the employers arent punished, then more illegals will cross our swiss-cheese borders to take the jobs!!!
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/05/the_boondoggle.html
And of course, conspicuously absent from the WSJ’s pro-illegal immigrant/pro-lawbreker shilling is any mention at all of the hundreds of cases of identity theft and document fraud confirmed by this raid.
Maybe the editors of the WSJ could gain some credibility on the issue if they knowingly and willingly donated their SSN’s to their beloved illegal aliens to use in obtaining those jobs “Americans won’t do.”
Long before I became a college student out of economic necessity, the employers that I worked for were enthusiastic for immigration illegal or not for one thing: Cheap labor-they want people to do something for nothing an hour…and then these guys would vote liberal (democrat)…because they were “concerned” about social conditions in this country.
They wouldn’t invest in new plant and equipment to improve productivity because, like a drug, the immigration gave them immediate financial advantage at the expense of future rewards to themselves and the country-the Japanese aren’t this stupid, they take care of their culture.
American employers in a way are like vandals going ahead and vandalizing a town, and then to make themselves look and feel good, taking action to assuage themselves of guilt.
I think that if the ABA. AMA and other professional unions were disbanded, these people wouldn’t be such wonderful advocates of globalism and immigration, once they began to realize they aren’t so precious anymore.
Word plays matter folks…they are finding out -duh- the opposition to limitless immigration is across the board racially. So we’re “restrictionists” now? Could it be for the above reasons I mentioned?
This is progress, folks, do not dispair.
One thing I think would help the job market would be that more parents should PUSH their teenagers out of the house and into the real world as early as mine did! They then would have to take these jobs as they come available. When the Pushover Parenting stops and more teens have to fend for themselves, then you might see these positions filled with young Americans. It all starts in the home ! Cut the umbilical, remove the teat, and we won’t need millions of aliens to do the work ! I have several friends that have such barnacles living in their homes. Get em’ in the job market ASAP.
Good; “Keep up the sceer”. Nathan Bedford Forrest.We’ve got them running, now pour it on.
Debbie Schlussel’s take on the raid is worth reading.
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/05/the_boondoggle.html
Michelle says: “If immigration reform is such a loser, WSJ, why are Democrats outflanking the GOP on it?”
So true.
Take Heath Shuler, a “Blue Dog” Democrat, who was elected in rock solid Republican western North Carolina in 2006.
Democrat Shuler has actually introduced immigration enforcement legislation in the House, although he knows it will never pass.
Re: WSJ “Immigration Theater”
I actually agree with the WSJ headline, but not their rationale.
Anything that Open Borders guys like Chertoff and Bush do to stop illegal immigration is ALWAYS pure political theater.
These things are just public relations bones they throw to us, the snarling Conservative masses.
It doesn’t matter.
In January 2009, McCain-Obama-Clinton and the massive Democratic majority in Congress will invite all of them back and give them voting rights, too.
Does anyone know how many illegals the WSJ uses every day? Hard to expect a ‘clean’ story from a ‘dirty’ employeer.
Smart alecks. Every person in this country illegally is blatantly disrespecting us, our laws, and our sovereignity. I’m amazed that so many people in our own country are coming to the defense of these lawbreakers. Our safety is just one of the many consequences of encouraging this behavior.
Are there any ambitious entrepreneurs out there that would dare try to market their goods as “grown/manufactured/processed/picked only by legal American citizens?” I’d be willing to think they’d be doing gangbusters. But that would be deemed racist, discriminatory, and politically incorrect. Would it cost more to buy such goods? It might. It hasn’t stopped people from buying organic food, though, has it? Even with this non-recession recession we’re in. (By the way, recessions take place when there are two successive quarters of falling GDP - our GDP has not gone down.)
Uh huh. So how many more people should we legally allow into our country each year?
What’s our current unemployment rate? About five percent, right? There. Problem solved. And what’re the other 13 million illegal aliens doing? Going to school on the American taxpayer’s dime?
Per the EEOC, “citizenship requirements generally do not violate federal law,” unless the adoption of those requirements are for discriminatory reasons. The EEOC also says that the “Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) requires employers to prove all employees hired after November 6, 1986, are legally authorized to work in the United States.” (For the sake of not adding too many links, I’ll just say you should look here for more information.) Would it be a problem to expect companies to go through a specific process in order to make sure that the temp help has proper credentials? That’s called a background check.
Hey, I can be a smart aleck, too.
And Bush runs the phony “war-on-terror”. Go figure!
What do you call people who support illegal activity? Crooks?
I agree with most all of you. Making it difficult to live and work in the US wihout fear of being caught each day is one of many tools that need to be used to stop this madness. Make life difficult to be here illegally and take away the magnets that draw them here (jobs, entitilements, anchor babies) and they will self deport.
But, I fear the cause is lost already. Our pols will push this and lie/cheat/steal to grant amnesty eventually. I was in a small town outside Dallas over the holiday. It is now 50% hispanic at least. At the Czech festival parade while there, I saw many many mexican flags (more than Texas flag) flying solo or along side the American flag. This is in stark contrast to the parades of even 10 years ago, where that was unheard of. In fact, I never saw the Czech flag along side or equivalent to the American or Texas flags. The few Czech flags seen were the small 5×5 inch ones. Why would a mexican flag even be in a Czech festival at all? Basically, they are taking over this country and we are letting htem.
Well, I can think of a few people here in Michigan who might want to get a job anywhere right now. Whether it’s plucking chickens or making pork rinds.
Here we have people who can’t do what most Americans won’t do, because there ain’t nothin’ here to do!
Several different aspects of this story should be explored as well…
Agriprocessors apparently required 12 hour days and didn’t pay for overtime…possible violation of employment laws of longstanding there.
Also was Agriprocessors paying the required taxes for Soc Sec, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, and others that legit employers pay for the rest of us?
Also one employee (illegal so what) describes how he was injured while working on a meat grinder… lock out procedures were not implemented or followed that’s several OSHA violations there.
I’m not advocating giving the illegals a break on this but rather pointing to multiple probable violations of other laws that Agriscrewups been doing …
One poster upthread suggested that agriproducers be fined $10,000/day/illegal employee … concur, but add to that a very hefty fine for every unreported injury, and additionally for every other violation that will no doubt be found by a honest investigation.
No deferments, mandate it and slam the owners, operators and management.
For CO2producer, (like the name, I relate) but to your questions of how many legal immigrants we should allow per year? We could easily double or triple the current numbers and create a new class for lower skilled jobs. The issue isn’t so much how many we should allow in but control of who, where and when.