http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/forsale/scimags/sc36.gif Detail from "Today's Chemist"A national disaster is approaching that will affect 17.8 million people. It is being provoked by the Department of Homeland Security - in its attempt to stop undocumented immigrants. James Jones, former Ambassador to Mexico just spoke on C-Span that this would be a good thing because the employers would face stiff penalties and would stop hiring undocumented workers. Perhaps, but there are many complications. There are three problems:
1. Its a humanitarian issue; what will happen to the millions who lose their jobs? They are already settled in the U.S., have famlies; have children who are American citizens; have purchased homes.
2. How will agricultural growers and other businesses replace their lost workers?
3. What about the 4.1% error rate in Social Security records? How many U.S. citizens and documented immigrants will be aversely affected by this?
A previously NY Times article likened it to a hurricane. Watch it come ashore in a few days...
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Editorial
The No-Match Non-Solution
New York Times
Published: August 13, 2007
Who kept telling the country that immigration reform through enforcement alone was doomed to fail? President Bush, for one. “All elements of this problem must be addressed together,” he warned, “or none of them will be solved.” So what can be said about Mr. Bush’s latest stab at a policy, which fixates almost entirely on barricading the border, rooting out illegal workers and punishing their employers?
Maybe he forgot.
...Hard-liners are cheering. Employers across our immigrant-dependent economy are bracing for hardship and chaos. But not all of those 1.4 million workers are lawbreakers. A report last December by the Social Security Administration’s inspector general found that the database is plagued with a 4.1 percent error rate: data entry mistakes, misspellings and name changes involving about 17.8 million records. Those are the records on which no-match letters are based, making them a dangerously unreliable indicator of someone’s immigration status or authorization to work.
It is impossible to know how many workers will be unjustly driven from their jobs by the no-match crackdown and stepped-up workplace raids. In a climate of bureaucratic confusion and fear, workers with no-match problems could be summarily fired by employers who don’t want to bother resolving them. The presumption of guilt will be an invitation to discriminate against native-born Latino and Asian workers, too...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/opinion/13mon2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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