The DREAM Act mob is on the march again — and this time they have a prominent left-wing journalist leading the charge. My syndicated column below spotlights the serial law-breaking of former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, who is now an illegal alien activist clamoring for amnesty with the backing of the radical Tides Center, a project of George Soros and the former chief organizer of ACORN, Drummond Pike. (Hey, maybe they’ll hire Obama’s grousing illegal alien aunt Zeituni Onyango as a senior fellow.)

Vargas’s splashy revelations in the New York Times come — no coincidence, of course — amid a renewed push for the DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout.

Remember: This is a brazen “down payment” on a larger shamnesty.

Remember: This is nothing more than a 2.1 million future Democrat voter recruitment drive and a massive open-borders entitlement program for untold numbers of multi-culti ethnic tribalists who pretend to embrace assimilation for show.

And remember: The CBO score estimated that the last, failed DREAM Act bill would increase projected deficits by more than $5 billion in at least one of the four consecutive 10-year periods starting in 2021.”

Citizenship is a privilege, not an entitlement.

Want part of “no” doesn’t the open-borders lobby understand?

***

“Undocumented” folly: A liberal reporter’s illegal alien sob story
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

With great fanfare and elite media sympathy, Jose Antonio Vargas publicly declared himself an “undocumented immigrant” this week. “Undocumented” my you-know-what. In the felony-friendly pages of The New York Crimes — er, Times — the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned illegal-alien activist spilled the beans on all the illegal IDs he amassed over the years. He had documents coming out of his ears.

The Times featured full-color photos of Vargas’ fake document trove — including a a fake passport with a fake name, a fake green card and a Social Security card his grandfather doctored for him at a Kinko’s. He committed perjury repeatedly on federal I-9 employment eligibility forms. In 2002, while pursuing his journalism career goals, an immigration lawyer told him he needed to accept the consequences of his law-breaking and return to his native Philippines.

Following the rules would have meant a 10-year bar to reentry into America. Making false claims of citizenship is a felony offense. Document fraud is a felony offense.

Vargas, who frames himself as a helpless victim, freely chose instead to secure yet more dummy documents. He used a friend’s address to obtain an Oregon driver’s license under false pretenses. It gave him an eight-year golden ticket to travel by car, board trains and airplanes, work at prestigious newspapers, and even gain access to the White House — where crack Secret Service agents allowed him to attend a state dinner using his bogus Social Security number. (Reminder: Illegal aliens were able to get through White House security under the Bush administration, too.)

At least Vargas tells the truth when he says he’s not alone. Go visit a 7-11 in the D.C. suburbs. Or the countless vendors in MacArthur Park. Or any of the 19 cities in 11 states from Massachusetts to Ohio to Kentucky where a massive, Mexico-based “highly sophisticated and violent” fraudulent-document trafficking ring operated until February 2011. “Undocumented workers” and “undocumented immigrants” have plenty of documents.

The persistent use of these open-borders euphemisms to describe Vargas and countless millions like him is a perfect illumination of the agenda-driven, dominant progressive media.

They’re as activist inside their newsrooms as Vargas is out in the open now. Bleeding-heart editors were hoaxed by a prominent colleague, exposed to liability, and yet still champion his serial subversion of the law. San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein bragged that he was “duped” by Vargas, but endorses his “subterfuge” because Vargas’ lobbying campaign for the illegal-alien student bailout known as the DREAM Act “just might lubricate the politically tarred-up wheels of government and help craft sane immigration policy.”

Who’s insane? The Vargas deceit is not an object lesson about America’s failure to show compassion. It’s another stark reminder of America’s dangerous failure to learn from 9/11.

Time and again, security experts have warned about how jihadists have exploited lax immigration and ID enforcement. Driver’s licenses are gateways into the American mainstream. They allow residents to establish an identity and gain a foothold into their communities. They help you open bank accounts, enter secure facilities, board planes, and do things like drive tractor-trailers carrying hazardous materials.

It’s been nearly 10 years since several of the 19 9/11 hijackers operated in the country using hundreds of illicitly obtained fake driver’s licenses and IDs. Most states tightened licensing rules, yet Vargas easily obtained a driver’s license not only in Oregon, but more recently in Washington State. He again used a friend’s residence to pass muster. Washington State’s licensing bureaucracy still does not check citizenship. The man sitting in the White House campaigned to keep driver’s license laws as loose as possible for the open-borders lobby. He appointed illegal-alien lobbyists to top federal immigration positions. His head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement just signed a memo pushing the DREAM Act through by administrative fiat. And the privacy of illegal aliens still trumps national security.

I ask again: Who’s insane?

Vargas believes his sob story is an argument for giving up on immigration enforcement and passing a mass amnesty. It’s a sob story, all right. Homeland security officials across the country should be weeping at the open mockery Vargas and his enablers have made of the law.

It is painfully clear from this latest clip of California Democrat Rep. Pete Stark at last weekend’s town hall that he has no idea what the hell E-Verify — the federal employer citizenship verification program — is. Nor does he seem to care what it is, as he smirks at his informed constituents and asserts that denying jobs to illegal aliens could be “unconstitutional.”

The endless Pete Stark Raving Mad video marathon continues:

(Via Steve Kemp/Golden Gate Minutemen.)

***

California, please change the channel and turn off the Stark horror show.

Chris Pareja is the independent Tea Party candidate running against Stark. He’s a father and small business owner with solid grass-roots support and a limited-government agenda. Learn more about him here and help out his campaign.

Just watched Jeff Session’s E-Verify amendment to ensure that omni-pork spending only goes to legal citizens get tabled.

Vote was 50-47. Here’s the roll call vote.

Senators now voting on Ensign amendment to save the DC public school choice program, which I noted earlier this morning here.

Update 6:00pm Eastern: Lieberman voted for school choice. Specter voted against.

Sigh.

Another GOP no on school choice: Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

School choice amendment goes down, 39-58.

Update 6:09pm Eastern. Dingy Harry Reid now on the floor trying to stave off Vitter’s attempt to repeal automatic pay raises.

Meantime, news that Obama’s Democrat support for omni-pork is crumbling. Hope lives:

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said Tuesday that President Obama’s budget plan doesn’t have enough support from lawmakers right now to win approval.

Conrad said that he has spoken to enough colleagues with reservations about several different provisions in the budget that he thinks Congress won’t pass it, at least in its present form.

Conrad urged White House budget director Peter Orszag not to “draw lines in the sand” with lawmakers, most notably on Obama’s plan for a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions.

“Anybody who thinks it will be easy to get the votes on the budget in the conditions that we face is smoking something,” Conrad said Tuesday during a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee.

6:38pm Eastern. Reid successfully beats back automatic pay raise repeal amendment. Whines about how “difficult” the process has been.

***

7:02pm Eastern. Meet the Republicans against school choice…Crapo, Specter, Snowe, Murkowski. Here’s the roll call vote on the Ensign amendment:

Grouped By Vote Position

YEAs —39
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (D-VA)
Wicker (R-MS)

NAYs —58
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Burris (D-IL)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Crapo (R-ID)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Hagan (D-NC)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kaufman (D-DE)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Udall (D-CO)
Udall (D-NM)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
Not Voting – 2
Johanns (R-NE)
Kennedy (D-MA)

Under President Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s watch, federal immigration agents had the nerve to — gasp! — enforce immigration laws.

How could this happen? Quick, launch an investigation! This must not be allowed to stand!

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Wednesday ordered a review of a raid at an engine plant in Washington State that resulted in the arrests of 28 people suspected of being illegal immigrants.

A high-level official in the Department of Homeland Security said that Ms. Napolitano had not been informed about the raid on Tuesday before it happened, and that she was seeking details about its planning and scope.

“She was not happy about it because it’s inconsistent with her position, and the president’s position on these matters,” said the official, who agreed to discuss the matter on condition of anonymity because the secretary had not authorized the conversation.

You can be sure the taxpayer-funded National Council of Raza will use all the earmark money it will be receiving to lobby aggressively for comprehensive shamnesty:

The National Council of La Raza urged supporters to call the White House and demand Mr. Obama lay out his immigration policy, while the National Immigration Forum said the raid was an unwelcome continuation of Bush administration policies.

“What are Latino and immigrant voters to think? They turn out in massive numbers and vote for change and yet ‘change we can believe in’ turns out to be ‘business as usual,’ ” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the forum.

He called for a halt to the raids while Homeland Security conducts its review of immigration policies.

As for the poor, innocent workers nabbed in the raid, guess what? The raid was the result of a gang investigation:

“Information derived from two gang members previously arrested in an ICE gang operation led to the initiation of the work-site investigation at Yamato Engine Specialists,” said press secretary Kelly Nantel. “Follow-up investigation uncovered a potentially large number of illegally employed workers. ICE conducted the operation in order to identify and if appropriate, apprehend any unauthorized workers and to further determine potential criminal activity.”

Homeland Security officials worried about gang and criminal activity?

This must not stand!

“…the E-Verify fight isn’t over. We just re-filed the amendment which is modified to fit the Collins/Nelson substitute. We can still object to a UC [unanimous consent] to accept the manager’s amendment unless we get a vote on E-Verify.”

I’ve uploaded the amendment text (pdf) here.

Call Reid, Baucus and Menendez.

202-224-3121.

***

Previous: Reid blocks bipartisan amendment requiring citizenship verification for stimulus recipients

GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions and Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson attempted several times to bring their bipartisan amendment to the floor last week. SA 239 would require local governments and businesses that receive porkulus money to use the federal E-Verify citizenship check system.

On the House side, a long term extension of the E-Verify program passed there 407-2 (Conservative Oasis).

But Democrat Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to allow it to come to the floor. Now, we’re headed for cloture.

“While it is difficult to believe that Senate leaders might insist that illegal aliens have the same chance at new stimulus jobs as unemployed Americans, this scenario may now be at hand,” says Roy Beck of Numbers USA. “SA 239 is now unlikely to receive a floor vote.”

The provision is not included in the Sellout Substitute Amendment forged by the Turncoat Caucus and the Democrats.

Who’s Dingy Harry looking out for?

“Undocumented Americans,” of course.

Howard Industries found itself at the center of activity again Tuesday.

Hundreds of job applicants lined up, eager to take advantage of the sudden job openings at the plant located in Jones County, where the unemployment rate is 6.3 percent.

ICE agents on Monday seized 595 plant workers suspected of being in the country illegally. Several workers, who did not identify themselves, said Tuesday they were working and trying to keep the plant operational in the wake of the sudden loss of co-workers.

They said it was common knowledge many of their co-workers were suspected to be illegal.

It’s an idea that maddens Samantha Stevens, 18, of Heidelberg, who was among those who pulled up to Avenue A across from the plant’s entrance throughout the day. She said she has been unable to find a job since she graduated from Heidelberg High School in the spring and blames, in part, the willingness of companies to hire illegal workers.

“We were here first. It’s not fair for them to have a job,” she explained.

Others welcomed the vacancies left by the detained workers.

Gwendolyn Watkins, 40, of Stonewall said she drove 40 miles to Laurel to fill out an application with the electronics maker. She worked at Tower Automotive in Meridian as a production worker for eight months before job cuts in June left her unemployed.

She now hopes to get on at Howard, and said that, while “everyone needs a job,” she believes that legal workers should be the priority.

Who’s looking out for them?

Workers at Tyson Foods’ poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day, but will instead take the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in the fall.

A recent press release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) stated that a new contract at the Shelbyville facility “implements a new holiday to accommodate the … Muslim workers at the plant.”

The RWDSU stated that “the five-year contract creates an additional paid holiday, Iidal Fitil, a Muslim holiday that occurs toward the end of Ramadan.”

Eid al-Fitr falls on Oct. 1 this year.

…The press release stated there are approximatly 700 Muslims working at Tyson, but Mickelson said that Somalis only represent approximately 250 of the 1,200 employed at the plant, a little over 20 percent of the workforce.

“All Team Members who have completed their probationary period are eligible for all eight paid holidays including Eid al-Fitr,” the Tyson spokeman said.

The union also claimed that in addition to the observance of the Muslim holiday, “two prayer rooms have been created to allow Muslim workers to pray twice a day and return to work without leaving the plant.”

Check out the comments section at the end of the article for a taste of the local (and growing) backlash against Tyson.

The Times-Gazette reporter, Brian Moseley, has a background piece on his story that’s worth reading. After noting how quickly the story has spread across the wires and the Internet, he writes:

So what do I think about all this?

Clearly, the accommodations given to the Muslims have upset a great many people here and across the county, especially if they believe, as many apparently do, that their traditional values are being suppressed in the name of cultural diversity and political correctness. More than one person has told me that their tolerance only goes so far, and this is obviously one of those times.

I have stated my opinions about the refugee issue itself before. It is my personal opinion that the drive to bring so many refugees to America are not prompted by just good will or concern for the plight of these poor people, but instead for the millions of dollars in federal grants that are available for settling them in this country. According to Chris Coen, who is trying to help out refugees of all nationalities, there is a lot of money to be made in this “profession.”

I also need point out that it would appear that some of these refugees are being used for other reasons. I find some of the allegations about these employment arrangements to be awfully similar to this sort of thing, and it should not be tolerated.

I also have to say that I do not feel that I am “obsessed” or “fixated” with the topic of Somalis living here, as one blogger believes. The refugees have lived in Shelbyville for the past four years, and no one has even addressed the issue until the T-G published the series in December of last year.

I would also have to suggest that the blogger’s opinion is quite possibly influenced by the fact that she makes her living by working with the Nashville refugee community, as she states on one of her other websites.

I am simply reporting on what happens when hundreds of people from a totally alien culture suddenly move to a small town in the rural south — both the good and the bad. I can not control how people are going to react to my stories.

In closing, I’ll just say that I’m going to continue to keep looking into the various issues surrounding our new neighbors so that our community can stay informed. That’s what we’re here for. And that’s what I’m going to do.

I have a feeling it won’t be long before CAIR comes knocking on his paper’s door.

Translation: No enforcement.

For a stark illustration of McCain’s double talk at La Raza/The Race yesterday, here he is telling an audience member that he’ll support the DREAM Act–after telling conservative bloggers that he would have voted no on cloture for the bill “because he ‘got the message’ this summer that Americans want the border secured before we ‘go on to the rest.’” Uh-huh. McCain was AWOL for that cloture vote last October. He was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act.

I’d say my pre-event translation yesterday was dead on.

***

Allah begs to differ with me on McCain and the DREAM Act. Gabriel at Ace thinks I’ve been “taken in.”

Yes, I know what McCain said in the rest of his answer, not shown on the clip, about securing the border first. Anyone who believe that is the one who’s being taken in. He led conservatives to believe that he opposed it. He told his friends at La Raza that he supports it. All the rest is noise.

***

Reader Edgar M. e-mails:

On a Mexican radio program on 1420 AM in Tijuana hosted by Odilon Garcia, Morones called in and gave more information on what Morones and McCain talked about after their public conversation took place.

Morones told Garcia that while McCain was talking on the microphone about the fact that drug smugglers are using migrants to cross over illegal drugs, Morones told him that the United States should stop the demand for illegal drugs.

After McCain ended his Q and A session, Morones and McCain spoke face to face and McCain told him about the need for Border Security. Morones asked the Senator to meet with him privately without cameras so Enrique could make the point that Immigration raids are “separating families” and border walls are “killing immigrants”. He told the Senator to ask Enrique’s good friend Juan Hernandez, whom Enrique had dinner the night before, to set up the private meeting. McCain told him that he would. Enrique said that he would ask McCain to sign an executive order to stop Immigration raids.

Enrique then adds, that he called Juan Hernandez about the mistake the McCain campaign is doing by portraying the picture of John McCain with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the background at the NCLR convention. Morones then told the story that on Saturday some students called him at the convention that they were upset with the McCain booth having a picture of Senator McCain with the Virgin of Guadalupe because the senator was using the image of the virgin for political purposes. One of the students took the picture and ran away. Some security officers ran off and caught the student but that the picture was not hung back. The next day the picture was not seen and Morones called that a victory.

Two supervisors at an Iowa meatpacking plant that was raided by federal immigration agents in May were arrested and charged with encouraging people to live in the United States illegally.

Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, 35, and Martin De La Rosa-Loera, 43, were also charged Thursday with and aiding and abetting the possession and use of fraudulent identification.

That’s the May Agriprocessors bust in Postville, Iowa, about which complaints were lodged that only the workers faced charges, but no top brass. I’m not sure how high these two supervisors were on the food chain, but that’s a step in the right direction.

The WSJ called the Agriprocessors raid “Immigration theater”, about which I remarked:

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.

I like Act II even better.

As Michael Ledeen says about Iran, Faster, please!
______________

UPDATE: AS regards the struck-through section below: Umm, oops.

That’s not the Mexican flag. I should have known that was too bad to be true.

As Emily Litella might say, never mind.

Please commence blogosphere-wide flaming.

Thanks to “fretless”.

MORE: I went to the Agriprocessors site to look for a graphic to use on the front page. I thought their front page “splash screen” was…unfortunate. Here’s a screencap; I’ve highlighted an interesting detail:

Is that Mexican flag really the best PR to have on their corporate website right now?
___________________

{Post by See-Dubya}

Here’s the news from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco:

A federal appeals court ordered reinstatement Monday for 33 janitors in Los Angeles who were fired because their Social Security numbers did not match the government’s database, a ruling that could strengthen unions’ case against a Bush administration proposal to pressure employers to get rid of suspected illegal immigrants…

But in ordering the Los Angeles janitors rehired with back pay, the court said employees can’t be fired merely because the Social Security number they submit differs from the number in the government’s files – a major issue in lawsuits over the administration’s plan…

The employees, whose union contract protected them from being fired without good cause, won reinstatement and back pay from an arbitrator, who said Aramark had no convincing information that they were illegal immigrants. A federal judge disagreed but was overruled Monday by the three-judge appellate panel.

So a company trying to do the right thing is being forced to employ illegal immigrants by labor unions and liberal judges. The labor union in this case is Service Employees International Union (SEUI), which strongly endorses both Barack Obama and amnesty.

***

Meanwhile, in Europe via VOA (too little, too late for them, but noteworthy nonetheless):

The European Parliament has approved new rules for detaining and expelling illegal immigrants, legislation that human rights groups consider unfair.

EU lawmakers voted in Strasbourg Wednesday to let governments detain illegal immigrants for up to 18 months and impose a re-entry ban of up to five years. The rules are to go into effect by 2010.

I’ve mentioned the illegal alien workers’ comp scheme before in immigration speeches over the years and have been met with skepticism. The trend has only exploded since I first reported on it.

Here it is in black and white:

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.

____

{Post by See-Dubya}

The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process. Twenty-seven immigrants received probation. The American Immigration Lawyers Association protested that the workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims under immigration law had been swept aside in unusual and speedy plea agreements.

The illegal immigrants, most from Guatemala, filed into the courtrooms in groups of 10, their hands and feet shackled. One by one, they entered guilty pleas through a Spanish interpreter, admitting they had taken jobs using fraudulent Social Security cards or immigration documents. Moments later, they moved to another courtroom for sentencing.

The article suggests a federal case is being built against Agriprocessors as well for employing (and exploiting shamefully ) so many illegals. The judge sounds tough but fair:

Judge Bennett appeared moved by Mr. Nadler’s remarks. “I don’t doubt for a moment that you are good, hard-working people who have done what you did to help your families,” Judge Bennett told the immigrants. “Unfortunately for you, you committed a violation of federal law.”

Meanwhile out in San Diego, a three-week ICE sting has led to the arrest of 905 more illegal aliens. I wonder whether ICE and federal prosecutors will continue to make an example of the ID thieves among them.

Since the employer sanctions law went into effect, Roberto has been fired from one job because he had no documents. He quit his other job to seek higher-paying day labor, but that never panned out. Now he earns less than the meager $120 a week he made as a construction worker back in Mexico.

That’s the idea. Economic incentives lead to self-deportation. From there, naturally, it’s a reprise of the theme introduced by the LA Times, with the labor shortages and businesses that cater to illegal immigrants shutting down and the climate of fear and repression and scary scary oh noes, and (apparently a matter of exigent political concern to the Left)…expensive produce:

In the Yuma area, where agricultural workers earn from $10 to $19 per hour, farmers couldn’t find enough laborers to harvest their lettuce crop, Sigg says. Other farmers have stopped planting labor-intensive vegetables like lettuce in favor of mechanically harvested alfalfa and wheat, and some farmers are considering selling out altogether, he says. “If the agricultural industry can’t get laborers, the land will be converted to other uses and we’ll put our food production at the mercy of other countries,” Sigg predicts.

Is it really a labor shortage driving this, though, or something else? Wheat prices are through the roof, and UNESCO is putting the blame on increased demand from another, slightly less PC sector:

Rising food prices – one of the world’s fastest-growing crises – are being blamed on China’s rapidly increasing consumption, climate change and the increased use of biofuels, all of which heavily increase demand disproportionately against supply.

“The diversion of agricultural crops to fuel can raise food prices and reduce our ability to alleviate hunger throughout the world,” the report said. Wheat prices have risen by 130 per cent since March 2007 and soy prices by 87 per cent, it added. Last week, the World Bank warned that 100 million more people could be pushed into poverty because food prices had risen by 83 per cent in three years.

No joke. I saw this picture on a story about Pakistan sealing its borders to prevent smuggling and I thought…well, you know what I thought:

Guess what? It’s flour.