Comments (22)

theAmericanist wrote on December 21, 2006 5:06 PM:

Josh (I'm addressing you, since it's your blog): is there some reason why you're not even trying to get this right?

Just as a f'r instance, nobody has been "summarily deported". There is a technical term in the law, but the MEANING isn't technical at all -- to be "deported" someone has to have been legally "admitted".

About half to two-thirds of foreigners living illegally in the United States "entered without inspection", which means they're not deported, they're thrown out.

JR might not LIKE that -- but calling it "deported" demonstrates that he doesn't understand it, either.

MK wrote on December 21, 2006 5:19 PM:

Deport: 1. To expel from a country.
Deportation: 2. The expulsion from a country of an undesirable alien.

theAmericanist wrote on December 21, 2006 5:56 PM:

LOL -- that's a dictionary definition, it's not the one in the law. When you're talking about the law, it helps to use terms precisely. As Dr. Johnson observed, you can TALK as people do, but strive to THINK clearly.

And in fact, it's a BAD dictionary definition, at that. There isn't anything necessarily undesireable about lots of hardworking folks who lose their jobs when the immigration cops show up -- except, of course, that they've broken the law by working illegally in the United States.

Not a small distinction: or doesn't it matter to you?

The law uses terms like "summary exclusion", which denotes that the person was never admitted to the United States, as all foreigners must formally be admitted, and thus lacks the extensive legal protections that someone formally admitted has before being removed.

Last I checked, there were SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND criminals -- folks who'd knocked off banks and 7-11s -- who'd had formal orders of deportation served against 'em, who were still at large.

So it's not a term to be used when you don't know what it means, Justin. So ask yourself: why are you using it?

Look, Justin: you can't make sense if you won't make distinctions.

You're not making the right distinctions in your 'reporting' about these raids -- and to those of who know what you're talking about, you're not making any sense at all.

theAmericanist wrote on December 21, 2006 6:21 PM:

I don't wanna get derailed into some dumbass semantic thing here, so let's just get to the point: typically in a raid like this, some guy from Oaxaca will sit down with an ICE guy and a box of the forms everybody who works in America has to file when they're hired. The ICE guy will pull out the guy's form, and ask him "is this you?" The worker will say, yeah, that's my name. The ICE guy will say "So you claim to be Joe Isazza, born in San Juan Puerto Rico, and a legal permanent resident of the United States?"

The guy will look around, and say, yeah, that's me.

And the ICE guy will size the guy up, noting that he was hired four years ago and that the form, while properly filled out, has none of the telltales that the guy from Oaxaca has a clue what's going on, so he will heave a deep breath, and say:

Look, pendejo: People born in the United States are US Citizens. This isn't you. I'm a Federal agent. Lying to me is a felony. But I'm busy, and you can't tell me where you got the name to use, right? So get on that bus outside, and you will be sent back to Mexico without being deported, which means if I catch you again, it won't be a felony. Just get the hell out of here, and don't try to get a job in America until you're legal: got it?

'Course, JR here would report that as if the guy was trying to get lunch at a segregated counter at Woolworth's.

Instead of, say, doing a REAL journalist's job and finding out who has been stealing the identities of US citizens in Puerto Rico, and selling 'em to guys working at meat plants in Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Georgia, some of whom turn up with felony convictions in Florence, Arizona.

BTW -- what's with the code words? So far I've had "shame", "poison", and "snake". Somebody got issues writing your security software?

MK wrote on December 22, 2006 8:39 AM:

Americanist said: ...to be "deported" someone has to have been legally "admitted".

False.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/deportation

deportation n. the act of expelling a foreigner from a country, usually because he/she has a criminal record, committed a crime, lied on his/her entry documents, is in the country illegally, or his/her presence is deemed by Immigration and Naturalization Service, FederaI Bureau of Investigation or State Department officials to be against the best interests of the nation. Deportation is usually to the country of origin.

mike wrote on December 22, 2006 9:43 AM:

It's always entertaining to see people who appear to be "on the same side" of an issue get into a heated dispute about semantics.

However, there is a real substantive issue behind the bickering, which is that JR and others who report on this issue need to be aware that the gov't may want to use semantic distinctions as a smoke screen for what is really going on here, which appears to be indictment and deportation of lawbreakers who have been "admitted" to the US, and "exclusion" of persons who entered the US illegally (and thus were never "admitted", and therefore will not be "deported"). Of course, for the individuals involved, the result may be exactly the same.

Getting clear on this issue - and the distinctions involved - should make it possible to provide more complete and accurate reports on the outcome of the detentions in this matter.

MK wrote on December 22, 2006 9:54 AM:

mike said: "It's always entertaining to see people who appear to be "on the same side" of an issue get into a heated dispute about semantics."

Who's "on the same side"? (and which "side" is it?) And, "heated dispute?" Where's that?

theAmericanist wrote on December 22, 2006 10:07 AM:

MK, I DO suggest that you learn something before your next post, which (if you have class) will apologize to me.

Contact the American Immigration Lawyers Association (aila.org) and ask the meaning and practice of "summary exclusion", as opposed to "deportation".

See if you can make a better explanation then, than what follows --

Basically, it works like this: if a foreigner has been admitted to the United States, there is a legal framework for their presence -- that is, they are a legal permanent resident (and thus may remain in the US and work here indefinitely, provided they do not LEAVE for longer than six months in any given calendar year), or they have some form of temporary visa, viz, as a student, and cannot work, or as a temporary worker.

Folks from certain countries, like Britain, do not have to have a visa to be here (although they do to work), but the same principle applies.

When someone who has been lawfully admitted, say with a green card, commits crimes, it is a HUGE process to formally 'deport' them, which is why Congress expanded summary exclusion ten years ago. (Over my own hard work to oppose it, btw, which is one reason I'm so contemptuous of the folks who screwed it up in '96 demonstrating their political acumen again, especially on unsuspecting journalists like JR.)

One policy innovation that was a good idea, was beginning the process of deportation (which can take years, and always takes months) while holding criminal foreigners in jail for their original felony convictions. That's evidently how ICE learned about the theft of the identity of US citizens from Puerto Rico, from interrogations in the max facility in Florence, Arizona.

Prior to that innovation, it was common for a criminal facing deportation to have the following experiences: First, if they had one, their lawyer would tell them immediately before being formally deported, to cop ANY available means of "Voluntary Departure" to AVOID "deportation" because to return to the United States after being deported, is itself a felony.

JR: DO report to us if that applies to the instances in which you so sloppily used the term. Kindly explain to us why it doesn't matter whether or not a given foreigner commits a felony by returning to the United States; why this is such a minor and technical distinction there is no reason to use words for what they mean.

Second, for those who either did not have a lawyer or didn't listen to 'em, 72 hours before being served with a formal order of deportation the foreigner would be notified in writing, by what is known as a "run letter", for the obvious reason that folks who get 'em, tend to take advantage of the three-day window, and split.

As noted, last I looked there were SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND such criminal foreigners in the United States, despite being not only convicted of major crimes, but also having been served formal orders of deportation.

So an honest observer might note that it ain't the most accurate way to refer to foreigners caught working illegally as "deported". It misleads readers in a significant way: Josh, is THIS what you're trying to accomplish here?

A person who "enters without inspection", as do most foreigners working here illegally, particularly in meatpacking, has never been formally admitted to the United States, and since entering without inspection is itself lawful grounds for removal, does not have the legal framework of someone who HAS been formally admitted.

As I said above, typically a guy caught in an ICE raid is confronted with his own unauthorized to work status. He can fight it, or he can leave.

Since each has the option of insisting that they are, too, lawfully working, their rights are not violated.

Those who accept "summary exclusion" do so precisely because a)it merely acknowledges that they ARE illegally present in the US, and b)it does not incur the prejudices of deportation.

So they're not "deported". To call it so misrepresents both the law and more importantly, the facts: JR, you're writing about this as if most of these folks have a lawful right to work here which has been trampled on.

In fact (and in the law), most of these folks have readily acknowledged that they were illegally present and working in the US, and BY THAT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, accepted their summary exclusion: they get on the bus.

This isn't a judgment call, not a question of AP style. The words you're using to "report" are false and misleading.

MK: learn something -- and apologize in public.

JR: DO let us know if the folks you referred to as "deported" will, because of the legal character of the act you described with the word, incur the penalty (to return after being deported is a felony)that formal deportation imposes.

Cuz if not (and they don't) you are misleading your readers. Now you can't pretend you didn't have the opportunity to do better.

Or take the easier route, and report accurately that foreigners who are caught working illegally do not and cannot return to their old jobs: THOSE are the big numbers in these cases, which you are trying to distort by complaining that only a hundred or so out of 1,200 have been indicted.

And, oh yeah: you might add that Swift is raising salaries to attract legal workers to take these jobs now.

Well?

MK wrote on December 22, 2006 12:13 PM:

First, your last post was much more interesting and informed than the other two. For what it is worth I did indeed "learn something" from it. ;^} I genuinely appreciate the fact that you took the time to explain that there was a legal difference between "summary exclusion" and "deportation". However, and I really shouldn't speak for Justin, but I feel his use of "summarily deported" is perfectly accurate considering my two definitions provided above. I don't believe he tried to imply that they went through the full legal deportation process. It may have indeed been sloppy or less than perfect legalese, but I think your over-the-top, maybe even paranoid, conclusion about Justin's or even Josh's motivation is comical.

theAmericanist wrote on December 22, 2006 1:25 PM:

It's not their motives, it's their METHOD, which bugs me.

Getting the law right isn't "legalese"; it's what used to be considered journalism 101.

JR clearly meant to imply that these guys had some sort of rights to remain here which were stomped on by ICE in 'summarily deporting' them. If he did not mean that implication, he is free to say so.

But, unthinkingly or not, that's why he used the inaccurate term, which MK endorsed, rather than bothering to understand the actual issue.

Like I said, it's not simply sloppy writing, it distorts the facts.

If I'm working at a meatpacking plant when ICE raids, and they pull my form and say "is this you?" and I say yeah, so what? they have some reason to keep talking to me (like claiming to be a legal permanent resident born in Puerto Rico -- or is the 14th amendment just so much "legalise" to you, MK? Answer that one.)

That reason may cause them to offer me the choice of proving I'm legit, despite some irregularity on the form, missing a box or something, or getting on the bus to the border: if I DO get on he bus, I've admitted that I was here illegally.

If you don't know that, you should be writing about ICE raids. Evidently, JR does not know it.

Cuz if you DO write about 'em from that sort of ignorance, you will distort the law, as JR did, and misrepresent the facts in a truly (if subtly) Orwellian manner, simply because the way you write "deport" means all kinds of stuff that ain't so.

What sort of reporting is it when the perp admits guilt to get a lesser penalty, and the reporter continues to write as if he didn't accept guilt to agree to the penalty, as if that agreement somehow 'summarily' did him dirty?

As for 'comical', well: what's most important to me in the immigration debate is US citizenship. (Do you have some other, higher value, MK?) What is good, in immigration law, is good for US citizenship, what is bad, is not.

Sound like a ludicrous position to you, MK?

Nearly 20 years ago, I played an infinitesimal role passing the last annual increase in permanent immigration (40% in 1990), so I don't like the unthinking reflex that suggests if you make the distinction between legal and illegal, you're somehow "anti-immigration".

ONLY legal immigrants get to be citizens -- so the distinction that ought to count is between legal, and illegal; which is precisely the one JR is blurring, and you're encouraging him to blur, MK.

One last thing: don;t kid yourself that blurring the difference between legal and illegal is harmless. There are about 1.5 million spouses and kids of LEGAL immigrants who are outlawed and exiled under current law, in a backlog created by the 1986 amnesty, while guys like JR write about today's illegal workers admitting they broke the law as if that makes enforcing the law illegimate -- when, byallthingsgodly, the reaction of their employer to losing lots of illegal workers was promptly to RAISE wages, to attract LEGAL workers.

And being bugged about such bad reporting is ... comical to you?

Time was, progressives understood that it was wrong to encourage employers to hire people illegally in order to keep wages down.

Once upon a time, progressives understood that the law should allow husbands and wives to sleep in the same country, that changing laws which bar this sorta thing OUGHT to be a priority.

Has JR ever written about this? Has TPM?

And you, MK?

MK wrote on December 22, 2006 2:03 PM:

You are clearly very passionate about this topic.

It is my contention..again, shouldn't speak for Justin but...that he was wondering just how many of the detainees were sent back to where ever it is they came from in a quick unceremonious fashion. Hence the words summarily and deport. And given the regular and legal dictionary definition of those words I think it was a perfectly accurate phrase. And I say that, again, with my newly found knowlege of the distinction between "summary exclusion" and "deportation" as it refers to immigration law...thanks to you. If you want to continue to contend, however, that he was purposefully trying to mislead TPM readers, cool. I disagree.

And by the way, I said that I thought your conclusions about Justin's and Josh's motivations were comical, not immigration or the debate itself. I'm beginning to get the impression that you're getting beyond passionate, nearer to irrational.

I could be wrong, but maybe you should take a deep breath before your next post?

theAmericanist wrote on December 22, 2006 3:37 PM:

LOL -- yeah yeah yeah.

This is what, the fifth or sixth time JR has written about these raids? But he hasn't gotten literally the first thing accurate yet, what happens to the workers he keeps writing about. (nor has he bothered to defend himself, either)

I dunno why that doesn't bug you, much less that you blandly excuse it as if this sorta clarity doesn't matter.

Cuz it does, dude: sloppy thinking and happy ideology is WHY our immigration laws suck. Hell, you showed it again yourself -- it doesn't matter to you that folks who were here illegally, who entered illegally, and worked here illegally, and who ACCEPTED being summarily returned, were breaking the law.

You figure, hey, what's the diff? It's just "legalese".

As a consumer of news, so to speak, would you accept it as easily, if a sports writer talked about how somebody won a baseball game with a 3rd period field goal? Especially if he insisted that this was the key to the whole game, that "if the Feds were trying to protect citizens from identity thieves, they failed...", like a football writer talking about a quarterback failing to bunt safely cuz he was sent to the penalty box.

Personally, I prefer journalism that knows what it's talking about, and uses terms precisely. Once you know what you're talking about, then you can translate jargon into plain English -- but if you're too eager to skip steps, you get it wrong, as JR did. It's not just that he uses 'deport' wrong -- it's that he doesn't get WHY it's the wrong word: most of these folks were here illegally, they had entered without inspection and were never admitted, which is why they were NOT deported... with their consent.

It's that sorta up is down, left is right reporting that... you LIKE?

Tell ya what, MK: take a look at the stories on this site, the unite families.org website.

Bear in mind that those folks are all screwed because of the impact the 1986 amnesty had on the backlogs for family-based immigration.

Recall that the point of the current debate over immigration policy, including enforcement, is whether or not to have ANOTHER amnesty -- and the point of reporting about the Swift raids and the like, is if it is possible to enforce immigration law at all.

So it isn't a minor distinction-without-a-difference not to know that in immigration law "deportation" means somebody was legally admitted and only thrown out after something like a felony conviction and a long legal process, while (in this context) 'summary exclusion' means that they admitted entering illegally and simply got on the bus.

And this sorta sloppy thinking affects the politics in a way that has always in the past, continued to screw LEGAL immigrants who obey the law... we're talking about the separation of families, MK.

So, forgive me if I take it a bit more seriously than you do. I know some of these folks. Every now and then I have to explain to some mom in the US why her husband has to stay in Bulgaria or Bangalore, cuz folks like JR are more interested in getting stores like the Swift raids wrong.

theAmericanist wrote on December 23, 2006 8:52 AM:

Just to rub JR and MK's collective nose in it -- this is what one of the REAL stories of the Swift raids looks like:

Delaware (May 26): Osiel Sotelo-Cisneros, located in the 8,000 block of Concord Road, to execute a search warrant. The search warrant was obtained as a result of an undercover investigation. Upon searching the home, officers located approximately 14 grams of powder cocaine, a digital scale, $2,594, plastic baggies, and a Puerto Rico birth certificate belonging to another man. This birth certificate was apparently used to obtain a Maryland driver’s license, social security card and voter registration that the suspect was using for his identity....

Minnesota (September 6): A Guatemalan named Oscar Federal Bartolon Martin, age 33, was sentenced to ten months in federal prison by U.S. District Court Judge Donovan Frank. The court also ordered Martin’s immediate deportation upon completion of his sentence.

According to court documents, the Worthington post office alerted U.S. postal inspectors in the fall of 2005 about a large volume of express mail addressed to Martin. The parcels aroused suspicion because they were similarly packaged and mailed from either Puerto Rico or Delaware. The postal inspector assigned to the matter had previously conducted other investigations in the area involving individuals who had purchased false identification documents from sources in Puerto Rico and Delaware. Therefore, between September of 2005 and March of 2006, sixteen express mail packages addressed to Martin were intercepted. Federal search warrants were executed on those packages. Inside them, inspectors found Puerto Rican birth certificates, U.S. Social Security cards, state identification cards, and U.S. currency.

As JR's own 'reporting' above points out, in what, two weeks? since the Swift raids, ABOUT TEN PERCENT of the workers involved have already been charged with major crimes relating to identity theft. There have been similar raids in Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Colorado, and so on: it's a VERY long list.

And, as noted in the above posts (like rubbing a puppy's nose in his mess), JR continues to get the most basic facts, e.g., what happens to the workers, wrong cuz of his cavalier approach to the law involved.

Do the math, dude: there are roughly 7-8 million foreigners illegally working in the United States. Yet EVERY new hire for 20 years has had to produce documents establishing that they are legal to work.

Tell ya what, JR: how about you publicly guess how many US citizens born in Puerto Rico have had their identities stolen like this, before your reporting shows us once more how little you care?

MK wrote on December 23, 2006 1:51 PM:

When the deeply irrational get on tear it really is something to behold. Whew!

theAmericanist wrote on December 23, 2006 3:45 PM:

My first post, addressed to Josh: "is there some reason why you're not even trying to get this right?

Just as a f'r instance, nobody has been "summarily deported". There is a technical term in the law, but the MEANING isn't technical at all -- to be "deported" someone has to have been legally "admitted"."

MK's belated discovery that he was wrong to challenge me: "I genuinely appreciate the fact that you took the time to explain that there was a legal difference between "summary exclusion" and "deportation"..."

My gift to Josh, KR and MK: now you all have the opportunity NOT to screw this up in the future.

Merry Christmas.

MK wrote on December 23, 2006 10:02 PM:

Irrational and arrogant. Good luck to you!

theAmericanist wrote on December 24, 2006 8:32 AM:

LOL -- very charitable, and typical of MK's approach. Knowing the difference between legal and illegal is "irrational", thinking it matters is "arrogant".

A friend pointed out to me that JR may still not get my point (MK being hopeless): you'd mislead folks far less (and from now on, a sensible person would conclude you were doing it on purpose) if instead of writing so tendentiously, you kept in mind the somewhat oversimplified point that foreigners get "deported", if they were here LEGALLY and then committed crimes.

Foreigners get "removed" or "excluded", if they are here illegally, whether or not they have committed crimes.

If you're gonna use the word "deported" (so you don't have to explain all this crap to the willfully ignorant, like MK), be sure your readers know that you're talking about foreigners who have ADMITTED they were here illegally. (If they don't admit it, they have the option of fighting removal or exclusion, which can lead to REAL deportation, e.g., for trafficking in stolen identities, which isn't what you're talking about. You're confusing the witnesses ICE doesn't need with the targets of the investigation.)

Whether you call it deported or not, in a case like Swift your reporting needs to understand that virtually all the folks you're talking about -- the 1,200 plus who've were arrested -- promptly admitted in the face of overwhelming evidence that they had entered the U.S. illegally, and accepted removal to avoid the formal process of being deported or other, nearly as harsh forms of removal (not to mention a few months in jail).

But your reporting on the Swift raids strongly suggests that you don't understand either the way a massive national investigation unfolds, OR how immigration law is generally applied in individual circumstances.

Of the 1,200 arrested, the count now stands at 150 or so who've been indicted for serious crimes. That's a very high percentage. And some folks might find the picture emerging is damned interesting: a national criminal conspiracy to steal the identities of US citizens in Puerto Rico, sold to Mexicans to work illegally all over the country, a number of whom have turned up with felony convictions.

LOL -- you might see if you can find some of those US citizens and ask what THEY think about having their identities used like that. Or don't they count to you, being US Citizens and (gasp!) Hispanic and all?

What it means for the individual illegal worker generally goes like this: a guy gets arrested because his hiring form says (for example) that he is a legal permanent resident, but he claims to have been born in Puerto Rico, which is where his Social Security identity comes from. ICE asks him where he got the name/#, and he identifies some other guy, also arrested. THAT guy gets indicted -- but if they have 41 witnesses just like the first guy, and he doesn't seem to know anything, he's likely to be offered a ride on the bus, and even more likely to take it.

Get it now? Holding up the guy who got on the bus as if he's evidence of a Federal failure misleads your readers. It also shows you don't know what you're reporting about. (I'd suggest you think twice about your sources, too.)

LOL -- hell, JR, you're also missing the single most significant piece of the story, which is that the Swift raids have pretty much killed the centerpiece of Bush's worksite verification program: voluntary participation in the Basic Pilot.

There is a better way to do all this, yanno (and it's the linchpin supporting LEGAL immigration -- remove it, and the wheels come off).

Let me know if you ever want to find out what it is.

MK wrote on December 24, 2006 12:14 PM:

My comments regarding Justin's use of "summarily deported" stand. He was perfectly accurate in his use of those words. Your absolute freak out over them proves your irrationality. Your inablity to accept graciously my thanks for pointing out that I did learn something new further proves this. You seem thoroughly miffed that neither Josh nor Justin wasted their time responding to you (sorry, just lowly ol' MK!) I suspect this further sent you over the edge. You make foolish suggestions about my thoughts on immigration when I offered none. Your overall tone is condescending and arrogant...no problem, really, I guess that sort of comes with the territory when you absolutely know everything. Your posts are chock full of insults and snide remarks. Again, no problem, maybe that's just the way you roll!

Ultimately, your overly emotional character shines through brilliantly.

Irrational and arrogant, still. (I was considering throwing in "pathetic" as well after your last post...but that'd be just plain mean!)

Happy Holidays!

Robin wrote on December 24, 2006 2:29 PM:

Americanist lost me early on when he was bitching about the legal definitions of terms and then used 'thrown out', and unless that's defined by law somewhere, he undermines his entire point.

I sure wish people weren't so angry all the time, and didn't act like 4$$holes to everyone. What's the point, other than to come off looking like a total prick?

theAmericanist wrote on December 24, 2006 3:33 PM:

Wow -- for folks who object to my tone, you guys are a mite personal.

I cited the misuse of "deported" as a f'r instance. I used "thrown out" cuz I'm not actually that hung up on the language, it's the meaning that counts.

JR's writing on the Swift raids consistently misunderstands, if it doesn't actually misrepresent, what is happening.

To cite another f'r instance that isn't semantic, 150 indictments is a very big # for an investigation like this. The scope, as well as the scale of the indictments, is pretty telling -- over a period of months, in Puerto Rico, Delaware, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Georgia, Virginia, etc.

But JR writes that "it's increasingly clear that if the Feds were trying to protect citizens from identity thieves, they failed."

How does this follow from his reporting?

When I tried to figure out what on earth he thought he was seeing, I realized it's why he used "deported": he doesn't know what it means. He either doesn't understand, or doesn't consider it significant, that there is a national conspiracy to steal the identity of US citizens in Puerto Rico, selling 'em to (mostly) Mexicans to get jobs illegally, and that some of those guys have turned up convicted of felonies in jail. (and have ACTUALLY been deported)

It's what news editors do, yanno: some might look at the Swift raids and want to know what "summarily deported" is supposed to mean. I can hear Perry White now: "Well, ARE they illegal, or not?"

And, if you know the facts, you realize the answer is NOT "we don't know", which is precisely the implication of noting, over and over again, that after all there have been so few "criminal indictments".

So I noted that he's not even trying to get it right, citing his misuse of the word "deported" as an example.

There are other reporters (Nina Bernstein of the NYT, for example) who use 'deported' in this way, and I don't bitch to her about it, because she knows and what's more, she writes that the workers busted (NB, not a technical term, but y'all understand it, right?) are ILLEGALLY here.

It's not clear from JR's reporting that he knows that. He seems to think that because most of the workers have not been charged with criminal violations, and (as he puts it, not understanding what actually happens) were "summarily deported", that this denotes a failure.

And my own reading is that he simply didn't bother to find out that most of these guys were offered the chance to dispute that they had entered illegally and were illegaly employed, and they chose to accept removal -- which JR is reporting as "summary deportation", which it ain't.

Bear in mind, there are activists here whose agenda is NOT the interests of the workers involved, much less making an immigration system that works. I've seen this in Florence, the ICE jail in Arizona.

The best recent example is Stillmore, Georgia. There were something like 600 workers who got no-match letters or were otherwise notified that there was a problem in how they had presented themselves as lawful to work. The employer told them (as the law requires) that they were NOT being fired -- but that, if they were here illegally, they were not going to be able to continue to work indefinitely. So, it was time to come clean. Something like 75 had easy to fix problems -- married women whose SSNs were sitll in their maiden name, or knuckleheads (I know, I did this in college) who got their own SSNs wrong.

Of the remaining 500 or so, a couple hundred instantly bailed, precisely because they were illegally present and knew they'd been caught.

But ANOTHER couple hundred were simply, honestly confused. (Many of these are the Salvadoran asylum cases, a saga and a half.) They weren't sure if they were legal, or not; nor what the no match letters meant.

And THOSE folks had the bejesus scared out of 'em by activists who told 'em that the no match letters meant they were fired, that ICE was going to incarcerate 'em, etc.

It finally fell to a local Catholic priest, their pastor, to help 'em sort out what their actual legal rights and claims are, without all the talk about "summary deportations". That's why -- having seen this before, more than twice -- I'm short on patience.

So on that note: Merry Christmas.

thegurupat wrote on December 25, 2006 8:34 PM:

Thank you to both of you for this thread!

The Americanist is passionate and knowledgable which others can sometimes construe as arrogant, but that is their problem. MK has established credentials (for me at least) as a thinking caring person...but throwing out judgements like emotional and irrational in response to closely argued statements seems a bit harsh! But maybe it is just too close to the holidays to be as clear thinking as usual...too involved in "being right" is sometimes just a reflection a being a bit too tired or distracted by other "things".

Congrats to both of you for fighting your corners and both of you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Gurupat

theAmericanisteAmericanist wrote on December 26, 2006 9:47 AM:

FWIW, this is what's actually happening in a big picture sorta way:

The basic deal offered by the Hesburgh Commission in 1981, and attempted by the 1986 law, remains the most sensible approach to a genuinely nation-threatening dilemma: a bright line between legal and illegal, drawn NOW, so that folks who come illegally in the future will be unemployed. (This is not only possible, it's not actually that hard to do.) The policy logic is simple -- if you can't say "no" effectively, your "yes" will become meaningless. (Ask any teenaged girl.) We've seen the dynamic consistently since 1986, which failed to make "no" effective, as the status of immigrants in America has been steadily eroded: summary exclusion, an exponential expansion of deportable offenses, the welfare ban, a tenfold increase in LEGAL guest workers, intolerable and immoral waiting lists for LEGAL immigration, not to mention the steadily growing population of a literally foreign underclass.

LOL -- and where the hell is JR's reporting on all this? Josh?

The half-baked 'solution' folks call for now is (imagine!) a guest worker program that is either NOT a guest worker program at all (cuz everybody gets to stay permanently after a decade or two of indentured servitude), or which will fail.

It's not much of an observation to note it will fail, either. For one thing, NO guest worker program has ever worked, anywhere, at any time: Turks in Germany, Filipinos in Kuwait, Chinese and Koreans in Japan, the braceros in the U.S. and (my personal favorite) Pakistanis in Norway. In every case, substantial numbers of those who came legally, but 'temporarily', never left but remained illegally: the same economics that attracted them to come compelled them to stay.

For another, all guest worker programs are subsidies. (Milton Friedman himself told me that.) When you subsidize something, you get more of it. JR doesn't seem to know it, but his own reporting bears this out -- how did Swift react when they lost their illegal workers? They raised wages.

And what does a guest worker program or tolerance of an illegal foreign workforce do for citizenship?

The fact is, a guest worker program is simply a highly regulated, government-supplied labor force which cannot compete with an unregulated illegal job market. H2A workers brought in to work legally picking strawberries take higher paying, ILLEGAL jobs, cutting up meat: QED. Yet those jobs pay illegal workers LESS than the market would require (Swift's example) for legal ones: it's a subsidy for employers and lawyers -- a subsidy AGAINST citizenship.

You can go round and round on this all ya like, trying every politically-correct hobbyhorse on the ride, but you still wind up here: to make "yes" meaningful, you have to make "no" effective.

That's why it's worth a damn to correct JR here: he's missing the real story, which is astonishingly plain.

The Bush administration's centerpiece for worksite enforcement of immigration law was VOLUNTARY participation in the Basic Pilot. Swift was a participant -- how'd that work out for 'em?

Even more tellingly, the Bush administration has just given up on the principal border control mechanism (other than the popular but porous fence idea), US-VISIT, a check-in, check-out system for temporary visas.

That's why it's damned important that reporters who write about immigration policy make the effort to understand what they're talking about: 9-11 happened in large part because the same folks who fought to prevent worksite enforcement ALSO fought against enforcing the rules on foreign "students" -- like Mohammad Atta.

But to let terrorism to drive immigration policy is letting the tail wag the dog: American immigration is about CITIZENSHIP. Look back at where the kind of reporting JR has been practicing has led the public 'debate' about these issues -- with 150 indictments in a national criminal conspiracy investigation, and JR says "it is increasingly clear" that it's a failure.

And he's never written a blessed word about, for example, why the minimum wait for a legal permanent resident who married his high school sweetheart from back home to sleep in the same country with his wife was SEVEN YEARS, as of this past fall. (NB -- that's longer than most marriages last.)

We can do better than this sort of uninformed and tendentious 'debate' -- but writers like JR have to TRY harder to get it right.