Earlier when we talked a lot about how Carol Lam, who was fired for "not being tough on immigration", one of the stories that stood out to contradict that was how she prosecuted Golden Gate Fence Company for hiring illegals, ironically making the fence on the Mexico/U.S. border. I put this article in a few threads on that from NPR.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6626823Well, just a week ago or so, AP had a more in depth story on this case:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hwEFSCC4SnimQi2VGKLLA235dCUAD8U4HNU80and it kind of shows you what is wrong with our system now in prosecuting illegal immigration. Like:
1) Carol Lam actually wanted a year and a half of prison time for Kay in this case, which was very unusually hard nosed compared to other prosecutions of illegal employers. It got "compromised" down to six months. And in this story, it was made to be only house arrest for only two individuals, not prison time. And yet she "wasn't tough on illegal immigration."! Go figure!
2) Other interesting quotes:
"The government's enthusiasm for punishing employers waned after Flores' first few years on the job and, by the mid-1990s, his focus turned to illegal immigrants who got into gangs and violent crime.
The Bush administration has renewed enforcement at factories and offices but scored few legal victories. There are many reasons: some 7 million illegal immigrants are part of America's work force, making a crackdown on more than a handful impossible for prosecutors with limited resources; employers easily shield themselves by saying they didn't know illegal workers had phony documents; prosecutors refuse cases because it is extremely difficult to prove businesses are complicit."
...
"When Kay arrived at his sentencing in March, U.S. District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz said his initial instinct was to send him to prison. Moskowitz joined the federal bench in 1986, the year that President Reagan gave amnesty to 2.7 million illegal immigrants and promised to crack down on employers who broke the law.
The crackdown never came, and the judge felt it was long overdue. Neither the judge nor the young prosecutor could name even a single U.S. employer who went to jail for hiring illegal immigrants even though the practice is widespread."
...
"Kay, whose electronic monitor was removed from his ankle in September, doubts the government can mount an effective crackdown on employers.
"On a smaller scale there are thousands of companies like me in Southern California," he says. "Just go down, take out a company and bust 'em. They won't do it. They don't have the manpower.""
...
"Kay, a longtime Republican, hopes the government overhauls laws soon to permit some illegal immigrants to stay in the United States. If not, he says, he may struggle to fill jobs when the housing market rebounds.
Meanwhile, Kay is relying more on government work. One contract he bid on, but did not get: a seven-mile extension of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in California."
There are so many things wrong with this story! I hope we have some newer leadership in government in 2009 that can have the stomach and some sensibility and sense of ethics to do the right thing then.
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