Monday, August 2, 2010

THE comment below, offered to an Opinionator essay about the Arizona immigration law, helps explain, perhaps, why Republican congresses during the George W. years did nothing about immigration reform and now wants to claim, inaccurately, that Obama isn't doing enough:

Michael Wolfe
Henderson, Texas
July 31st, 2010
9:38 am

There was an article in the Times about Obama and immigration about a month ago. It said that, from Reagan to Bush, Jr., the Presidents all ordered the INS (then the ICE) to make raids, TV crews and newspaper in tow, to show they were doing something about immigration. This only affected a few thousand (out of millions) of undocumented workers.

President Obama, according to the article, turned enforcement over to the IRS, a much larger and more tenacious organisation. Before, businesses could deduct payroll expenses from their taxes without providing legitimate SSNs; Obama ordered that all businesses must now provide, for all employees, valid SSNs or face fines large enough to close the businesses. Fake IDs that fooled the INS and ICE cannot get past the IRS computers, and millions of undocumented workers have lost their jobs. But quietly, with no raids and arrests for the TV cameras. With no way to obtain jobs, they have no way to support themselves if they remain in the US, so they are very quietly leaving.

For which the right is justifiably complaining: the old way provided ample entertainment to mollify irate citizens on the nightly news without imposing undue burdens on businesses who need sub-minimum wage labour to remain profitable. ...

Indeed, it seems "the Obama administration is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants and auditing hundreds of businesses that blithely hire undocumented workers," according to the Washington Post. But isn't that what the rightwingers and the nativists say they want? Or is it really, as usual, all about money?