Caution Desperate Families image:30446:3::0

The immigration issue is potentially one of the more explosive elements in US society, and the confrontationist approach has the ability to produce a lot of sparks. Just what America needs-something else to argue about.

(I don’t know- is there some law against solving social problems in the US? Because that’s what it’s starting to look like.)

The New York Times apparently feels that the administration is playing to the conservative elements who opposed the defeated immigration bill. If so, it’s likely to be yet another highly polarizing, divisive effort.

Can't really agree with NYT that it's a conservatives-only thing. The immigration bill failed, but with it went the impression that this is a purely liberal-conservative battle. Democrats also failed to support the bill. Some of the states were just not interested in a moderate approach. Immigration is always a hot topic, and right wing groups thrive on the negative fallout whenever ethnicities are targeted.

The Departments of Homeland Security and Social Security are to team up. Social Security records will be one of the major tools in finding and enforcing labor laws regarding illegal immigrants. The Department of Social Security predicts it will send out 140,000 no-match letters to employers this year to employer whose employees’ documentation doesn’t match their Social Security ID numbers or other information. These letters are issued when an employer’s workforce equals half of one per cent of the workforce.

Employers are worried, and with good reason. They’re to be given 90 days to get their documentation together, and if they don’t, or can’t, they face fines of up to $10,000 a day. This will be particularly rough in the agricultural sector, which is well known to employ many illegal immigrants due to lack of American labor. For a lot of growers, that’s the road straight out of business.

The only good news for employers is that the new rules will clarify how employers can clear themselves of accusations of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

Already, there’s talk of Hispanic groups suffering as the targets of the new enforcement of immigration laws, and big layoffs. Unions believe that the new approach will allow employers more scope to deprive workers of their rights, based on the Social Security provisions. They think this will just add to the demand for false documents. (Sounds to me like identity theft might become a bit more lucrative, too.)

What none of this does is reconcile the need for labor against the need for better immigration management and policies. Nobody, during the debate of the Immigration Bill, claimed the present situation was some sort of ideal. Some also commented that there was no need for more severe immigration laws, and that the laws needed to address conservative concerns were already in force.

The enforcement regime could well lead to serious social clashes, and add a lot of more difficult problems than some guy picking carrots without a license to troubled communities.

I just hope this isn’t yet another attempt to win votes at the expense of human lives. There’s an extremely large number of people likely to be affected by this enforcement policy.

Wouldn’t something simple, like doing some targeting of the Green Cards, or simple Guest Worker status, achieve more than this? Millions of people enter the US every year legally to work, through the front door. No problems, no resentment, it’s business. It’s a damn sight safer than trying to sneak through a desert, too. What’s so hard about letting people know there are much easier ways of getting a job?

All this is likely to do is add some extra money to the coyotes’ pockets, and send a few people on $8 an hour back to the barrios. Even if it were physically possible to find and send all the people who enter illegally it could take decades. Add court time, and it could take millennia.

You can’t solve a problem by making the solution more difficult than the problem.