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March 13, 2008

Getting Carded on Branch Ave

Monique Chartier

While David Richardson, owner of Rhode Island Refrigeration on Branch Avenue in Providence, went over the line in asking to see the social security card of someone in his shop speaking a language other than English, his action on this and prior occasions is understandable. It stems from frustration with a government which has carried out one of its basic responsibilities - defense of its sovereignty and enforcement, on every level, of its borders - sporadically at best.

On the federal level, our government:

> allowed employer enforcement to drop to ineffectual levels,


Figure 3. Employer Sanctions Cases Resulting in Fines for FY 1988 to 2003

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thereby not discouraging the employment of undocumented immigrants and, correspondingly, providing a major incentive for them to risk life and limb to come to the United States;

> repeatedly passed legislation which promised to pair amnesty with immigration law enforcement but in each case, assiduously carried out only the former;

> in 2007, tried to pass such legislation yet again [for those who would rather listen than read: YouTube video of Glenn Beck outlining the many problems with this bill] and was only stopped by the determined efforts of many, many constituents who firmly said, "Won't get fooled again";

> has waffled over the funding and design of a border fence;

and on the state level:

> has demonstrated, contrary to federal law, a studied indifference to the immigrant status of anyone seeking social services, exacerbating a serious budget problem and, more importantly, failing to remove another incentive to illegally migrate to the state and country;

> has until recently seemed too willing to place the best interest of the state a distant second to both misguided compassion and a delusional effort to curry favor with a hypothetical, future constituency.

Advocates, predictably, are shouting "racism" at this incident and at anyone who dares to insist that our employment and immigration laws be enforced. They could not be more wrong. Mr. Richardson asked only about the legal status of the gentleman. For Mr. Richardson and for all of us, the question revolves, prima facie, not around race, but around legality, adherence to a process for immigration and, equally important, respect for immigrants who upheld those principles in coming to the United States.

Comments

I still contend that all we have to do as a nation is adopt the same exact set of enforcement rules against the Mexican border as the Mexicans have on their southern border.

That way nobody can accuse us of racism or unfair enforcement.

Of course we'd need to actually give the Border Patrol BULLETS and right now that's not in the budget.

Posted by: Greg at March 13, 2008 7:48 AM

greg-When i was first in the Border Patrol 32 years ago we had enough bullets,but we would only turn out five agents on a night shift at my station and we had 600 square miles to cover -do the math-as far as this incident,mr richardson's behavior has been punced on by the jerzyk/crowley/segal crowd and steven brown of the aclu as an excuse to smear RIILE as racist.Okay-since there have been two recent cases of pedophilia resulting in convictions of two ACLU officials(the director in Virginia and an attorney named Cunningham in NY)-the first was for possession of violent child porno and the second for attempting to meet a minor for sex via the internet.Can we now say all ACLU members are pedophiles?That's ridiculous,right?But it's no problem for a lowlife like Crowley to accuse Terry Gorman of promoting racism based on the actions of another person who probably was acting more out of frustration at the ineffectiveness of the government than anything else,although I don't think he should have done it because he jumped to a conclusion without knowing he facts.

Posted by: joe bernstein at March 13, 2008 9:27 AM

FWIW, about 5 years ago I attended a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) seminar in Boston. One of the speakers panel members was an "expert" who recently left the employ of what was then called INS.

He made it clear (in so many words) that the posture of the agency was to unofficially but very definitely to not enforce the immigration (I-9 and such) laws against employers, unless forced to by a particular circumstance that it couldn't ignore; and that as to the "ID" that employers are supposed to check for the I-9 verification, unless the document(s) were so crudely phony that INS couldn't look the other way, that the employer should "accept it" as valid ID.

In short, the message was INS will do everything in its power to look the other way, and so long as employers don't do anything stupid and maintain a low profile everybody will be happy (except those of us who pay taxes to subsidize the expense of illegals being here and otherwise believe in the rule of law).

Posted by: Tom W at March 13, 2008 11:21 AM