A Silent Solution?

I came across an article that appeared in the New Your Times on July 9, 2010. It was written by Julia Preston, and reports on what she calls "Silent Raids" by immigration. Her article indicates that these raids are carried out against large employers who are in industries where hiring illegal workers is frequently a regular practice.

The raids are not carried out in the traditional manner. Rather than rounding up and removing employees, the immigration agent inspects the I-9's the employees fill out and the employers maintain. By auditing the records, the agents can determine which employees are not in this country legally. The employer then fires the illegal workers.

The illegal workers are not deported. HOWEVER, they are very unlikely to find work with any large employer in that particular industry.

Under the traditional scenario, a large group of agents would have rounded up all of the illegal workers and (eventually) returned them to Mexico. This new method uses only one agent to audit the employer's records. Under this new version, the illegal parties are not forcibly deported. The cost savings to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are large.

And the worker who is in this country illegally, who can no longer find work in the industry they have been working in, and possibly cannot find ANY job? He does not qualify for unemployment, or for welfare. He may very well choose to re-partiate himself back to his country of origen.

The article was picked up by various news services and portions of it were repeated in national news outlets during the next two or three days. However, no further "in-depth" coverage was done.

Simple searches show that there HAS been a major change in immigration law. Or rather, there has been a major change in penalties for hiring illegal immigrants.

It appears that perhaps the current administration has implemented a "silent solution" to the immigration crises. By examining the payrolls of the large employers, by fining the employers and forcing them to fire the illegal employees, it appears that a program is underway to make jobs less plentiful for the illegal immigrant -- whether he is from Mexico, Poland, or China.