Fine the companies, cut off the jobs and watch the crime rates skyrocket. There just has to be more than fine these companies.

1. Are the parents responsible for getting their kids into this mess?
2. Did the DHS not take proper precautions regarding the kids?
3. Should Swift have been fined?

Those are all separate arguments, with separate answers. If #3 is true, that does not mean that #1 is true or not true.

Comment #102 also didn’t understand what I meant by intentional.

And that’s not good enough.

If the employers get off free, as they invariably do, they have a huge incentive to continue to hire illegal, easily exploited, workers. Even if they get a llittle fine, the asymmetry between their resources and those of their workers is still such that they have an incentive to break the law. The only way to prevent the modern, international form of the old worker-intimidation technique known as “busing in scab labor” is for the law to punish employers so much more harshly than the workers that it’s the workers who have the blackmail card in their hands.

No government that consistently behaves in a way designed to continue encouraging the employment of illegal workers can be telling the truth when it says it wants to stop it, and no supporter of that government can be telling the truth either, unless they really haven’t thought the logic through. Like I say, American Hawk is just a lying Republican shill, but there are people who haven’t thought it through, and they should.

So you want to enforce it selectively? Don’t waffle; that’s exactly what you said. I hold that the employers are most responsible; most of the illegals come because they’ve heard that these jobs are available and pay. How do they hear? Word of mouth from friends and relatives who are already here. Company recruiters, too: do you really think these jobs are advertised in Mexico? It’s a lot better here than in some village, or worse, a cardboard shack in a slum in Mexico City or one of the border towns. we here, we legal residents and citizens, we are so damn lucky to live, and we don’t think about it. We merely have people, in and out of government, who think that no one else should come, even though it’s okay for us to go to their countries and tell them how wonderful ours is, and export our TV shows and movies to ‘entertain’ them – you think they don’t see them, and believe that those are the way everyone lives, and want to come here for that reason alone? (There are people, natives, citizens, who believe that ‘90210′ and ‘The OC’ are the way everyone in Southern California lives. Should we expect people who are less familiar with this country to know better?)

[/rant]

It’s like if the police arrest somebody in the process of robbing a bank, and then got criticized because they took away some kid’s only parent. WTF are they supposed to do instead?

This is a very good point if those in question were engaged in a violent felony instead of just trying to survive in a world where the chips are stacked against them.

It would also probably be a stronger point if in fact the police had intervened the first time “the bank was robbed” and not after it had been “robbed” 12 million times, just saying.

American Hawk:

Come on boy, tell us, yer really a dumb blond in disguise, right?

If not, do yerself a favor and quit breathin’ fer 10 minutes, it’ll clear yer head.