Obama Administration Focuses Employers Hiring Illegals, Rather than the Illegals

A brief discussion of:

Nicole Busch, Company Audits Up, Illegal Worker Arrests Way Down Since 2008, FoxNews.com, Aug. 23, 2010.

Recently, we have been hearing about the Obama administration's commitment to immigration reform.  Whether it is expanding on former legislation or providing new strategies, at least the effort is there to remedy America's immigration issues.

This FoxNews article, reports that, "under President Obama, the numbers of arrests and deportations of illegals taken into custody at work sites plummeted by more than 80 percent from the last year of the Bush administration."  Id.  Despite the apparent decrease in work site enforcement under Obama, John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE"), assures the public that no administration in the nation's history has removed more illegal aliens than the Obama administration last year.

According to Fox, the Obama administration is seeking to isolate the employers for enforcement.  The hope is that prosecuting the people in charge of hiring the illegals will help to curtail other employers from doing the same; or at least influence them to take more care in determining a prospective employee's immigration status.  Julie Meyers, former ICE director under Bush, says she agrees that auditing and targeting employers is the right track, but that it falls short.  According to Meyers, the administration should have continued to charge the illegals, too, instead of turning a blind eye and letting work site enforcement drop 80%. 

Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, gave FoxNews his impressions by defending the Obama administration's strategy: "rather than high-profile raids that target workers and let employers off the hook this administration has decided to focus on criminal and bad actor employers."  Id.  He continued that, "[n]o one is talking about giving a free pass for fraud, or ID theft is to be taken lightly [sic], but we know the vast majority of the workforce did not commit any crime."  Id.  Perhaps Mr. Fitz is unaware that applying for work without meeting proper immigration requirements is a crime.

Information in this article was obtained courtesy of FoxNews.com.