I do agree with you that the management of companies/corporations should pay a heavy price every time they are caught employing illegal aliens.

1. Businesses caught employing illegals should have to pay a heavy fine that acts as a deterrent to other corporations that consider doing the same thing.

2. They should be required to pay for all court costs and legal fees involving the illegal aliens they employed.

3. These businesses should be required to pay their former employees all the funds and provide the benefits that they would have received for labnor provided, had they not been in an illegal status.

4. Perhaps management should face jail time as well? I personally think excessive fines are enough to modify corporate behavior, though.

5. Beyond fines, these businesses should pay into funds that enable the county/state to develop jobs programs and enhance the social services of the area where the business is located (which are most likely overburdened because the illegal immigrants employed by the business often don’t pay into the system).

I guarantee that if the INS and the law focused on the employer, and made it more difficult to hire illegal immigrants in the first place, and extremely painful to be caught hiring undocumented workers, immigration would cease to be a divisive national issue in this country.

I currently live in Cumberland County, NC, and the counties around this one have unemployment above the national average. If there was an INS raid on one of the Hog farms, Chicken Processing plants, or the like that are major employers in the area, I have no doubt that there would be no shortage of legal citizens to take over on the assembly line.

No racism or ethnocentrism here, my friends. I just don’t believe it’s fair to American citizens, and people who went through the hassle of becoming naturalized or obtaining a worker visa, to have their livelihoods jeopardized by this system of employing illegal immigrants, and
paying them at levels that people with legal status cannot compete with.

It is exploitative for everyone involved, EXCEPT for the Business owners.

Sure, reform the system, make it easier to get a legal status to work here, and have sypathy for the exploited undocumented workers and their families. But the American middle class suffers from our broken immigration system as much as anyone else.

Target the employers of illegal immigrants, make it painful to hire illegals, and reform the system so it is easier for people to get worker visas, and this will be a huge step in alleviating the problems being faced by towns and counties across the country.

You wish to ban people you label hateful but you have been hateful yourselves from the very beginning by labeling us “wing nuts”. We are very angry Americans and this kind of blather makes us only angrier and will serve to lead to spilled blood on our soil over this issue. Your screeching, emotional debate only oils the gears of hate.

I don’t think I have read anything more hateful than this comment on this blog, ever. Please take a deep breath and a long look in the mirror. What are you really afraid of? (it’s not illegal workers) Quit trying to out hate everyone, have a cookie or some hot chocolate.
Stop lumping criminal acts like murder into the same charge as illegal immigration. It sounds like the worst kind of bigotry ( I am trying to allow for room that you may be able to consider this)
Hold your republican congresscritters accountable.
Clean up your own party.
You don’t get the common ground. Corporations with the support of government are playing both sides of this coin while cleaning up at all our expense.
Only fair treatment of all labor, while they are you know, working in the US, should be acceptable.
The very idea that keeping children (of illegal workers) with their families while in our country has to be defended is just nuts. We are better than that or at least we can be better than that.
Holding people in indefinate detention without a hearing is absolutely inhumane and unacceptable.
Threating violence (a definative act of wingnuttery, imo) belittles every result you hope for.

It’s about how we treat fellow human beings, citizens or not.

There is another way.

good bye

I’m willing to make a deal. I’ll support the detention of these illegal alien workers and their families (of whom many of the children are US citizens) if you agree:

the owners of the factories (and their families) that hired these people are interned in the same facilities.

the stockholders of these companies (and their families) are interned in the same facilities.

the consumers (and their families) of the products these factories produce are interned in the same facilities.

Deal?

Take it someplace where your screeds will be appreciated.

Thanks Zorro…

Absurd hate filled rants as the last two or three post of yours are the perfect example of the irrational fear that has changed your once great country in a very sad sight to be seen from the outside..

You have no truth to show, you have no understanding of life and the world beyond your fear and bigotry towards everything that does not comply with your short sight view of society…

Yes I would like to see you banned, not because your mighty “reasoning” skills and understanding of “reality” that could shatter my “dirty hippy” (..thanks Atrios..) approach to life, but because, “mister beacon of truth” I find everything you have to say on the matter dull and not interesting: you have no interest in discussing this important problem, you are only looking for an occasion to give us your stale right-wing talking points.

So yes, I think you do not belong here where people come because they want to use their head for something more that wearing a hat…

So you people consider yourselves rational? What a hoot! You come out of the gate calling us racists and Nazis and you can’t handle the reaction you get when we respond? What do you expect? We who support the ICE raids are patriots who want the United States to continue to be the great country it has been and will not continue to be if we don’t stem the illegal alien INVASION. Yes it is an invasion. Yes La Raza is racist. Yes Mecha is racist. Yes there are many “pro-Hispanic” groups out there which are clearly racist. There is a “brown agenda” to inflitrate this country and then they will open the flood gates of our borders to millions and millions of more illegal aliens. That is what you people here seem to want and it boggles my mind why you would want such a thing that the founding fathers clearly wanted to guard against.

You wish to ban people you label hateful but you have been hateful yourselves from the very beginning by labeling us “wing nuts”. We are very angry Americans and this kind of blather makes us only angrier and will serve to lead to spilled blood on our soil over this issue. Your screeching, emotional debate only oils the gears of hate.

There is a place where people can be compassionate about the innoncent children victims of the ICE raids without resorting to calling ICE a bunch of Nazis and the detention center a concentration camp. But you all have not found that place and thus you get this angry response to your leftist hateful rhetoric.

I feel sorry for the children of illegal aliens who are only pawns to their parents.. a ticket to citizenship. Then they drag them out and try to get sympathy when it suits them. The children are victims of their parents’ selfishness only.

I want to be very clear with my labeling. ;)

A @ 179

You mean besides implying that vast numbers of them are part of a Mexican conspiracy to take back the Southwest, and who don’t want to learn english (which, BTW, is something that could have been, and was, said about the Irish and Italian immigrants I was referring to, you people need to read more)?

Mecha, Maldef, La Raza, Lulac and more and not tiny, rare extremists groups. These are very large organizations with millions of supporters and members and hundreds of huge financial backers donating millions of dollars to their cause. This is easily verified.

I am called racist because I want our laws enforced and obeyed, while “la raza” means THE RACE. Mecha’s slogan is, FOR THE RACE, EVERYTHING. FOR THOSE OUTSIDE THE RACE, NOTHING.”

Yes, labeling people “illegal alien sympathizers” is such a reasoned argument. By the way, that’s the rhetorical fallacy of association, sometimes refered to as “labeling“. So far, you haven’t shown me any ability to critique someone else’s logic.

You’re being repetitve. I wasn’t trying to invoke an argument with this statement, but simply stating a fact. Are you not sympathetic to illegal aliens?

I haven’t seen any “logic” to critique.

Imagine my shock, more ad hominem. Where’s the reason? Where’s the logic? You wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up to you, kicked you in the crotch, and said “Let me introduce myself. I’m the truth.”

Is “more ad hominem” your blanket reaction?
I thought I was quite clear. I see no valid standpoints, only screaming “racist” and “wingnuts” at those who are anti-illegal. That seems to be the norm for anti-illegal sympathizers. btw, anti-illegal IS NOT anti-immigrant.

As a matter of fact, I do know the truth. It has kicked me in the crotch. I see it firsthand everyday. This invasion is not a pretty site. You will be seeing that for yourself very soon, I imagine.

Sorry, Cliff, we’re already seeing a rash of right-wing terror attacks inside the United States.

Exactly how many terrorist mailings involving powder sent in envelopes have occurred since the real anthrax was mailed in envelopes shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001?

Alberto Gonzales knows. The Justice Department knows. But they are keeping this information under wraps. Classified. Just like the Bush administration was downplaying the number and severity of attacks occurring in Iraq. What are they hiding? What are they afraid of U.S. citizens learning?

Five years ago in December 2001, I saw a CNN news blurb scrolling across at the bottom of the CNN screen which stated that the Justice Department was conducting 15,000 investigations into terrorist mailings. I was impressed…and shocked. However, this is the only time in the past five years that I’ve seen anyone mention how many investigations into terrorist mailings have occurred.

Could it be because 99 percent of the terrorist mailings have targetted Democrats and other “liberals” in our democracy? Planned Parenthood? Family planning clinics? Abortion doctors? “Liberals” in Hollywood? Democrats in Congress?

Is this why Gonzales and his Justice Department are keeping hidden the number of terrorist attacks involving powder being mailed in envelopes to patriotic, freedom-loving U.S. citizens?

Hopefully, incoming Democrats in Congress will conduct a thorough investigation into what Gonzales’ Justice Department has been hiding from us, with this Republican coverup of the number of terrorist mailings being just one of them.

I find it an interesting phenomenon that among the most recent legal immigrants are those who are very anti-immigration for anyone else.

My hairstylist came here legally from the Caribbean. I was surprised to learn that she is vehemently anti-immigration in general. Maybe it’s an issue of competition, or having her status confounded with other people? Would be interested in hearing an explanation.

Evidently a widespread phenomenon, e.

I worked a summer job at a large manufacturing concern that is 1/3 latino, 1/3 black and 1/3 white. I didn’t meet a single African-American that approved of illegal immigrants (and the plant had plenty).

At a Democratic regional party this spring, a representative from each district was called to make a brief statement regarding the needs of local citizens. One African-American gentleman railed against illegal immigrants.