In yesterday’s Washington Times, their editorial board writes, Commonsense immigration enforcement:
This could be Maryland’s strangest immigration episode in quite a while. The state is currently in a tizzy over the fact that federal agents arrested 24 illegal aliens they encountered in a Baltimore 7-Eleven parking lot while the agents were taking a break from an unrelated assignment. The arrests happened shortly after the aliens made the mistake of soliciting the officers for work as they sat in unmarked vehicles.
The arrests are quite unlucky for the aliens, reportedly all Hispanic males, who redefine the phrase “Wrong place, wrong time.” But this is not the illegal “profiling” that CASA de Maryland and its supporters are trying to portray. To the contrary, if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers cannot arrest illegals who literally fall into their hands, then immigration enforcement would become bereft of purpose.
I will say that, while I am pleased to see the ICE agents rounding up criminals, I would feel better about it if I thought that (a) this was the beginning of a more systematic approach to the problem, and (b) the removal of a few more illegal migrants was anything but temporary. Remember that eight of those detained this week had been removed from the country before — one of them had been caught six times crossing the border.
Anyway, about 35 miles to the north, Jean Marbella of the Baltimore Sun writes, Lack of immigration policy hurts everyone:
Using one widely accepted estimate, the arrests of the Baltimore 24 reduced the number of illegal aliens still at large in the country to about 11,999,976.
Are any laws enforced more randomly than immigration ones? Surely some, if not all, of the unfortunates grabbed at the 7-Eleven at Lombard and Broadway were here illegally — but so are millions of others currently busing restaurant tables, picking crops, cleaning hotel rooms, watching the children of working parents and otherwise providing the cheap labor to which Americans have grown addicted.
Those rounded up on Tuesday only stand out because, well, they were standing outside.
They’re probably little different from the 40 or so men and women who by midmorning yesterday had come to a clean, well-lighted place in Wheaton, rather than a street corner or convenience store parking lot, looking for day labor. The workers’ center, in the first floor of an apartment building, is the second of two such offices in Montgomery County run by the immigrants’ advocacy group CASA of Maryland, which also has been trying to open one in Baltimore.
Note: This action in Baltimore actually just two days before the one-year anniversary of the Baltimore City Board of Estimates’ authorization of funding to CASA de Maryland for this planned day labor center. I wonder what could be the source of delay?
Speaking further of Wheaton,
The center offers an organized alternative to the often chaotic parking lot or street corner scenes in other cities where day laborers congregate to await jobs. Street hirings, of course, are notoriously problematic — some day laborers say they have been hired but not paid; some employers say the workers did substandard jobs; business owners, customers and nearby residents complain about the men descending on every passing car, jostling to be hired.
By contrast, employers who come to the center agree to pay at least $10 an hour, and staffers maintain two lists, for skilled and unskilled workers, that operate on a first-come, first-serve basis. (In true American fashion, there are ways of jumping the list — the two people who agree to clean the center at the end of the day are guaranteed the first two slots on the next day’s list, and those who speak some English have priority among employers who request that.)
And, as there are almost always more workers than jobs, what incentive do those not near front of the list have to hang around in the center? CASA asks workers to agree not to solicit work elsewhere, but it isn’t clear how well this is — or can be — enforced. This is one of the reasons why one sees so many day laborers hanging around on street corners within blocks of day labor centers; the restrictions that the centers place on employers is another.
I think that Ms Marbella starts out with a good point — that nearly everyone (with the possible exception of those who profit from exploiting immigrants) is harmed by the way we are dealing with immigration in this country. But feeling sorry for the day laborers — and spending money on sheltering them while they don’t get jobs — does very little to solve any systemic immigration problem. At best these efforts just dress up one of its more visible symptoms.