Cool Tool to Flush Out Illegals
Posted by Bill Dupray
on Jun 13 2009 Filed under Politics.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
No raids. No guns. No ICE. And the taxpayers don’t use a dime of border patrol money to get it done.
From the L.A. Times via The Corner
No immigration agents descended on Overhill Farms, a major food-processing plant in Vernon. No one was arrested or deported. There were no frantic scenes of desperate workers fleeing la migra through the gritty streets of the industrial suburb southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
For more than 200 Overhill workers, however, the effect was devastating: All lost steady jobs last month and now find themselves in a precarious employment market, without severance pay or medical insurance. It wasn’t a hot tip or an undercover informant that helped seal their fates, but a computer check of Social Security numbers.
“A desktop raid” is how the workers’ representative, John M. Grant, vice president of Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, described the scenario.
Overhill, a $200-million-a-year company that provides frozen meals for clients such as American Airlines, Panda Express, Safeway and Jenny Craig, says it had no choice: An Internal Revenue Service audit found that 260 workers had provided “invalid or fraudulent” Social Security numbers. The government took no action against the workers. But Overhill did: All of the employees were fired May 31.
The rest of the piece is a typical sob-story about how devastating the loss of a job is to illegals and their families (which is, of course, unique only to illegal aliens – Americans who get fired or laid-off from their jobs just love it). The irony is that the company has already rehired people to fill the vacant jobs, presumably with Americans who were previously unemployed. These jobs sound an awful lot like those jobs the amnesty crowd tells us “Americans won’t do.”
Cracking down on employers as a means to curb illegal immigration has long been my preferred method. After all, they come for the jobs. If they can’t get one,they will leave or never come in the first place. Raids will, of course, still be necessary, and employers need to go to jail to serve as an example, but this quick and efficient “pink-slip audit” by the IRS is pretty cool.
Related Posts
- Census Bureau: Halt ICE Raids for 2010 Count to Boost Illegals’ Numbers
- Harry Reid’s Cloud: No illegals working in Nevada construction industry
- Federal Government Caves on Sanctions for Hiring Illegals
- Definition of Progress: 1.3 Million Illegals Out in the Last 9 Months
- Flashback: Democrats defeated GOP Amendment to bar illegals from receiving ObamaCare
Short URL: http://libertypundits.net/?p=4578
If a worker gives an employer a social security number and a drivers license issued by the state (in my case, NM gives anybody a drivers license, literally) and the SS taxes are duly paid to the IRS, then why would you say the “employer” needs to go to jail? Until recently, (the last year or two-and this is voluntary, not mandatory) and not in all states, and only for “new-hires”, not existing employees, has there been ANY system for employers to find out if a worker’s SS number is fraudulent. Meanwhile, the FEDS can figure this out relatively easily- I think they choose not to except to showboat every once in a while so the revenue keeps pouring in. You’d think the Feds could figure out an invalid number upon the first payment, not 4 years later, or that a 109 year-old in Missouri is employed in 6 states simultaneously as a brick layer, when “stolen” numbers are used, wouldn’t you??? No, put the onus on the employer who is already red-taped and regulated to death. I bet you never employed anybody, have you?
This is a little odd. Since 1988, the (former) INS had been doing exactly this in its audits of businesses, using as its justification several of the following legal tools:
Probable cause to believe illegal hiring based on the arrest of an illegal alien working at the company, and;
Two different, random administrative plans that were agreed to in the formulation of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The plans allowed scrutiny of certain businesses or businesses in certain areas of industry, based on a history of hiring practices.
The audits were designed to identify those social security numbers or alien registration numbers shown to be fraudulent or counterfeit, therefore exposing specific employees as illegal aliens. So, the employer was given a choice to require the employee to submit valid documents or be fired. Raids on the businesses often followed. Throughout, there was little to no cooperation involvement from the IRS. After all, tax information was private and sacred. Even mafiosi were protected from exposure, as long as they paid their “fair share.”
But, now the IRS is doing the same thing? Unless the original premise for the audit was related to something else, sounds doubtful, since that isn’t really the province of the IRS. Why should they care what numbers are being used as long as the taxes are being paid? And, besides, why should the current administration want to flush out illegal aliens, when they can destroy the business with the stroke of a pen?
Speaking of people who ought to be unemployed in a precarious employment market and without severance pay or medical insurance, how about the mental midget who wrote the article that Bill linked to? Hard to tell why you’re dying, LA Times. It’s honestly hard to imagine.
For more than 200 Overhill workers, however, the effect was devastating: All lost steady jobs last month and now find themselves in a precarious employment market, without severance pay or medical insurance.
I hate journalists. What the hell are these lines doing in an American newspaper? These 200 workers were stealing. They are illegal. They shouldn’t have steady jobs to lose, they shouldn’t be in an employment market at all (precarious or not). Did the author really whine over their lack of severance pay? Medical insurance? Who the hell needs medical insurance when your illegal status requires hospitals to take you in for free?
Hey lets open a new paper with everybody that works there has to be Ileagal. Lets see how the reporters react to this. Pay them 1/3 or what the other papers do and keep their idenity secret.
Claire, how much was the bet on whether I have ever employed anyone? I have been a business owner for years and have hired, fired, and reluctantly had to lay off, lots of people. But that is irrelevant, because I don’t play the game whose rules say that if you haven’t been a business owner you can’t weigh in with an opinion on the subject. I dismiss the same logic from people who say that if you haven’t been in the military you can’t have an opinion on that either. Challenges like yours can backfire and make you look arrogant and foolish when the person calls your bluff.
The irony is that I agree with you. Employers need to have a system (frankly the reliability or accuracy is beside the point) that they can use, like E-Verify, that has black and white consequences. If you used it and have the printouts to prove it and the guy turns out to be illegal, you are bulletproof. If you can’t provide the proof, it’s off to The Gray Bar Motel for you.
Classic liberal immigration sob story: pure emotion, entirely divorced from law, logic, and intelligence.
Good call! That’s the only idea that has any possibility to have an impact on people like this. But not until it actually causes a reporter to lose his job, and then only that reporter will see it as a problem, and he won’t be able to write about it because he will already have lost his job.
It’s tough to think with your heart.
Calm down, Scott. You are 100% right. I hate journalists too, as do many folks these days!
This is a great post, Bill. I’d like to comment on something Hector said.
“Why should they care what numbers are being used as long as the taxes are being paid?”
Well, let’s see, maybe “they” should care because many, many of these illegals who are “paying” taxes are having the absolute minimum withdrawn from their paychecks, claiming obscenely ridiculous numbers of dependents, (thereby paying very little, if any taxes) sending every extra cent back to Mexico to “stimulate” the Mexican economy, using up resources intended for US citizens, & generally wreaking havoc on our economy. Is that enough or would you like me to go on?
God bless America!
Can’t be done, Harrison.
Especially when your heart is bleeding.
Glad you like the post Genie, and I agree with you. I never understand the logic of an argument like Hector’s. It’s okay to break the law because what, nobody is hurt? So we all get to decide which laws to break based upon our subjective view of the nature and scope of the damage it causes? Why have any laws in the first place?