Is it Bad Policy?
Or is it Enforcing the Law
By Daniel Muniz

Now what part of illegal alien do you not understand? And what part of identity theft do you also not understand?

This incident occurred in Portland Oregon at the fruit and vegetable processing plant Fresh Del Monte which employed around 165 illegal aliens through the American Staffing Resources (ASR) contracting company. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested the illegal immigrants along with three managers who knowingly supplied the workers with bogus identification and other documents like fake green cards.

The raid was the result of a six month investigation. Using undercover informants posing as illegal immigrants who were looking for jobs, the ICE agents were easily allowed to obtain employment at the food processing plant through the temporary agency.

In the raid, about 90 illegal aliens had bogus social security cards that were based on real people.

The ASR managers would recruit the workers who were in this country illegally and either provided them with the false documents or they knowingly accepted their bogus identification. This scam provided a source of cheap labor to a big corporation and because the company used a temporary service, they could publicly assert that they have never hired any illegal labor. On the surface, the assertion is true because the illegal immigrants were never employees of Fresh Del Monte but it is still duplicitous because they knew full well that this labor was artificially cheap.

However, the mayor’s righteous indignation is totally misguided.

First, identity theft is not a victimless crime.

There are hundreds of thousands of citizens who will gladly testify that having your identity stolen is not a good thing. Although there are certain illegal aliens who will only use another person’s identity strictly for employment purposes, there are also plenty of others who have absolutely no qualms about fraudulently opening up credit cards and running up outrageous bills based on someone else’s name and social security number. Such crimes are now becoming increasingly commonplace with illegal immigrants.

Although the Federal government is improving safeguards to prevent this from happening, such measures are still in their infancy and they are still crude at best. But most important of all, it is nowhere near close to identifying the 12 million illegal aliens who are already here in this country. As a result, there are millions of illegal immigrants who are shamelessly using someone else’s identity to gain employment.

Now what about the illegal aliens who were arrested that have families to support but now they are ripped apart from them by being deported?

First of all, what they are doing is illegal.

And just like committing any other crime, there are consequences involved. If you are not going to play by the rules, you are going to be punished and being an illegal alien doesn’t exempt you from that. However, there are thousands of municipalities like Portland who intentionally look the other way when it comes to people who are in this country illegally and some even provide refuge.

It is unfortunate that a parent is being torn away from their loved ones but that is merely the price to pay for breaking the law. The parent made the decision that placed him or her in a precarious position in which something like this could happen. But the bottom line is that it is not law enforcement’s fault that they did their job just like it isn’t the policeman’s fault for giving anyone a speeding ticket. If you break the law, then you are going to pay for it although the price might be a lot higher than you expected, especially if you are an illegal alien.

Then what about the children of illegal immigrants?

The fault clearly lies with their parents. It is their parents who made the decisions that allowed the chain of events to occur and it is solely their responsibility for the outcome.

As for all of the arrests from this raid, it is not bad policy but an attempt to enforce the law. For far too long, illegal aliens have been blatantly abusing our laws and too many employers have been brazenly exploiting this cheap labor. It is has been going on for decades and it is time for this abuse to stop.

We are a nation of laws and it is time for those laws to be enforced.

Any opinions or views expressed herein belong solely to the author and does not represent any employer, organization, political party, governmental agency, or any other entity and do not necessarily reflect the views of the site owner or its participants.