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Immigration Destruction Under Obama
by Jacob G. Hornberger

In yet another effort to continue the policies of the Bush administration, the Obama administration is targeting American companies that hire illegal immigrants. But to demonstrate that being a compassionate liberal is better than being a compassionate conservative, Obama’s immigration gendarmes aren’t conducting violent publicity-seeking raids on the businesses. Instead, they’re sending written notices to targeted companies threatening civil fines and orders to fire the illegal workers.

The latest example of the war on immigrants — or should I say the war on American businessmen? — involves a Los Angeles company, American Apparel, which makes T-Shirts. The federal immigration gendarmes recently sent the company a letter advising it that about 1,800 of its workers appeared to be illegal immigrants. The letter threatened civil fines and told the company to fire the illegal workers.

Maybe if the gendarmes are successful, they’ll succeed in accomplishing what they accomplished with Agriprocessors, Inc. That’s the Iowa meatpacking plant that the gendarmes raided last year. After they arrested and deported 389 illegal immigrants, about half of the company’s workforce, and after they secured federal criminal indictments of principals in the company, the company went bankrupt.

Now, wasn’t that a wonderful result? Think about it: Here’s a company that ostensibly is privately owned. Its money supposedly belongs to it. It decides to use its own money to hire people who are willing to work there. Both the employer and the employees benefit from the exchange. We know this to be true because otherwise they wouldn’t have both entered into the deal. The company serves consumers by providing them with meat products that they’re willing to pay for.

In other words, everyone — employers, employees, and consumers — was benefitting, which is what a free market is all about. Then, along comes the federal government and accomplishes what it is best at: destruction, misery, and suffering.

Also, let’s not forget all those crops that were left rotting in the fields across America within the past two years because crop owners weren’t able to hire the illegal immigrants to harvest them. Like I say, destruction, misery, and suffering — it ought to be imprinted as a motto on business cards carried by federal officials.

Why can’t the federal government just leave people alone? Why must it be killing people and destroying society with its wars on Iraq and Afghanistan? Why must it be ruining so many lives all over the world with its war on drugs? Why must it be kidnapping and torturing people while denying them the benefits of a fair trial and due process of law with its war on terrorism? Why must it be destroying peaceful, harmonious, beneficial, hard-working businesses here in the United States with its war on immigrants? What is it that motivates U.S. officials to be the greatest engine of death, destruction, misery, and suffering in the world? Good intentions, no doubt.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, publisher of Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax by Sheldon Richman. Send him email.