" That sounds like heaven to me, riposter."

I rather expected that it would appeal to libertarians. Of course this isn't heaven and unlike many who subscribe to your philosophical inclinations, I think policy should be grounded on earthly realities. This shouldn't be confused with carte blanche support of regulatory regimes, many of which are disturbingly misguided.

However barring a choice to open the borders, the completely understandable desire to come to this country is fundamentally at odds with policies that restrict immigration. Given that the people of the country want the latter and we have laws reflecting those wishes, enforcing those laws as well as an effective regulatory structure that stems from them is the only way the wishes of the people and the rule of law can be preserved.

Ken- Apparently, you also share Tim's libertarian bent. If the market is already enforcing a standard and that standard matches what is desired, then regulations would be superfluous. But as is often the case, people acting in their own interests can produce what those same people don't see as the common interest. That's why successful societies develop sound laws and rules to govern our interrelationships. Once again the rules should be sound and rational so that the market that functions within them produces the benefits that markets can. There is always a market, even in societies that we don't think of as market societies. But in those the product is often things that are unintended and undesirable.

Note to editors: Could you please post what tags are permissible on this blog. Thanks.

"If one were to extend that argument out we would abandon the entire regulatory structure of the government relying instead on consumers in the marketplace to achieve the ends embodied in those laws."

I think you may have hit on something there.

If the market is already enforcing a standard, to the extent consumers and other market participants want that standard enforced, then why have a regulatory structure?

"I would only place blame on the larger population or "us" if they failed to support the government doing it job to prevent such hiring, which widely acknowledged to be the only plausible strategy to controlling illegal immigration."

There are some obvious fundamental problems with enforcing those kinds of qualitative choices. If, as a consumer, you care more about inexpensive fast food, cheap lawn care and affordable child care, more so than you care about propping up wages for high school dropouts, ex convicts et. al., well I don't see why that's any of the government's business.

...I suspect that, intuitively, most of us think that government trying to influence an individual's decisions on things like that, well, we probably think that's pretty weird generally speaking, but somehow, when we imagine that it's just some business the government's messing with, in most people's minds, for whatever reason, that's supposed to make government meddling okay. ...but in the end, it's all about restricting consumer choices, right?

Market forces are just people making choices.

...but for whatever reason, we don't seem to make the connections, even when we're supposed to. When we hear about some big contractor or poultry processor or some other business somewhere getting raided for immigration related employment violations, do you imagine some people turn around and fire the guy that mows their lawn? I suspect that's what some would like to think, but I doubt anyone really does that.

Anyway, I was just kidding--I can't think of any good reasons why the government should monitor who people hire to mow their lawns or make carnitas or, for that matter, who they hire to build fences.

Just like the Times to bury the real story, the real story being that when the government subcontracts, taxpayers can save big money.

...oh, and we'l never see a real downturn in the immigration "problem" until the government gets serious and starts cracking down on the real culprit--consumers.

Don't tell me people don't know when they're eating in a restaurant that hires illegal aliens--maybe we should see if they still like "authentic" Mexican food after they've been sittin' in the pokey for ninety days.

Don't do the carnitas if you can't do the time. ...and keep your eye on the sparrow.

One point that cannot be denied is the blatant hypocrasy in Washington regarding ilegal immigration. With every paycheck, U.S. workers pay FICA taxes, destined for Social Security funds. But each year, millions of payments are made to the agency with mismatched names and numbers. The Social Security Administration has no idea who deserves credit for the taxes paid by those wage earnings -- so no one gets it. The amount of uncredited Social Security wages is now an enormous $420 billion, an amount that sits in what's called the Earnings Suspense File, an accounting limbo. During 2002, the year with the most recent figures available, 9 million people paid taxes with mismatched names and Social Security Numbers. Some were women who had failed to notify the agency that their name changed after marriage. Some were the result of typographical errors. But most -- between 50 and 80 percent depending on whom you talk to -- represent illegal immigrants using a stolen or manufactured Social Security number at the workplace. The only hope for citizens of the US is to hold politicians accountable for their hypocrasy. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6814673/

It's not usual with any aspect of the Time's coverage of immigration, including its blogs, to have the important story is obscured and one created that is more in line with its agenda. In this case a prosecution of a fence company, that had ironically worked on a border fence, for hiring illegal immigrants becomes the failure of a short border fence in San Diego to stop illegal immigration elsewhere, becoming implicitly an argument against building the recently passed fence. But all this ignores what should be an obvious context that is the real illegal immigration story.

Golden Fence Company is hardly unusual, neither in hiring illegal immigrants nor in being a repeat violator. If you look at the list of all the actions the federal government has taken against businesses in years past, and it's not too extensive, you will see many repeat violators. What happened to Golden Fence is that, after 9/11, the exception to the almost non-existence enforcement of the Bush administration appeared in order to preserve of its greatest political asset, national security, by focusing on what it termed "critical infrastructure sites." So most of the small amount of enforcement it did was done under those auspices. This is from a journal of the construction trade:

" "Protecting the integrity of military facilities and other critical infrastructure sites is a crucial component of our immigration enforcement strategy," says Assistant Secretary Julie Myers. Jobsite immigration sweeps are tighter and more prevalent on government projects, and the arrests illustrate the difficulties of working in a new world order and the increased pressure to improve national security. "

Copley News Service reported that Golden state "has been audited under a two-year program called Operation Safe Cities, which targets military contractors and other businesses deemed critical to national security. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Homeland Security Department, is involved in the audits."

So the company got caught up in the Bush's national security political agenda. And don't we all sleep better knowing that threat of terrorism from illegal immigrant fence builders has been removed? Golden State probably failed to understand this exception to the norm and in making what was undoubted a widely held assessment about the importance workplace enforcement to the government, had the additional chutzpah not just to continue hiring illegal immigrants but to rehire some of the same ones it had been caught with before. This pretty well shut them out from the huge loophole embodied in the term "knowingly" that's in the law that protects almost all employers from being criminally prosecuted for hiring illegal immigrants.

Even so it's worth putting their $5 million dollar fine in some context. Accord to some articles, Golden Fence did $150 million in business during 2004. The fine comes to 3.33% of that one year. Even more telling is this from the San Diego Union.

"The $4.7 million the family-owned company agreed to forfeit is an estimate of how much money it made using labor from workers without documentation. In addition, Kay agreed to pay a $200,000 fine and McLaughlin $100,000. "

So in one of the largest fines ever issued, the overwhelming portion of it is only giving up what it gained from breaking the law. In other word employers who risk little chance of being prosecuted can expect, in the worst case scenario, where they have even ignored staying within the convenient fiction of "knowingly," they will only have to forfeit their ill gotten gains.

The other big story this week about illegal immigrant employment was the Swift raids that were done because many of Swift's employees had stolen other people's identities and those people had complained. Those complaints were the real impetus for the raids. In comments about the raids, I heard Dept. of Homeland Security head, Michael Chertoff, say identity theft is serious problem for national security. If so, five years into the war on terror, why is an existing tool to detect it not being used? On All Things Considered Chertoff said:

“The law currently does not allow the Social Security Administration to refer to us instances where the same Social Security number is used on multiple occasions in multiple workplaces as a basis for obtaining jobs.”

Sneak and peak, warrant less searches, extraordinary rendition, suspension of habeas corpus, etc.; anything in the furtherance of national security except if it interferes with the mass immigration agenda. The government has possession of information that would point to the identity theft Chertoff claims is a national security risk and that creates nightmares in the lives of its victims, and it deliberately does not use it, because it allows illegal immigrants to work.

This points to the overriding factor concerning illegal immigration, the context in which any issue, such as border fences, must be considered. That factor is that those in control of the government have never shown any real intention or desire to control illegal immigration and could fairly be considered to have collaborated in its spread. If that conclusion is accurate, and I think there is ample evidence to support it, then talking about specific measures it undertakes ostensible to control illegal immigration diverts attention from the real issue of credibility. Obviously such diversions allow furtherance of the real agenda and in that respect they are well served by a media that generally shares in it.

So far, border fences were never meant to really stem illegal immigration. They are only truly effective if they are used in concert with real enforcement measures in the interior. So it not walls on the border that we need to be discussing; rather it’s the wall of deceit that the government, the media and the elites have constructed around illegal immigration.