GWB Reluctantly Gets It

It appears that the BushBoyzzz have decided to reflect the will of the People in the future.

The Bush administration announced plans Friday to enlist state and local law enforcement in cracking down on illegal immigrants, which previously was largely a federal function.

The administration unveiled a series of tough border control and employer enforcement measures designed to make up for security provisions that failed when Congress rejected a broad rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws in June.

...In one of the most interesting revelations, the plans call for the administration to “train growing numbers of state and local law enforcement officers to identify and detain immigration offenders whom they encounter in the course of daily law enforcement.”

“By this fall, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will have quintupled the number of enforcement teams devoted to removing fugitive aliens (from 15 to 75 in less than three years),” a summary of the plan states.

This "late conversion" did not go un-noticed by cynics in the Senate.

“The biggest message that emerged from this failed immigration bill is that if immigration reform is to happen in the future, they must first restore the American people's confidence that the federal government is serious about securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws,” said a Senate Republican leadership official. “Frankly, this should have been addressed several years ago.”

Under "Things That WILL Make a Difference" we find

Employers will face tough new scrutiny and requirements. “There are now 29 categories of documents that employers must accept to establish identity and work eligibility among their workers,” the summary says. “The Department of Homeland Security will reduce that number and weed out the most insecure.”

“The Department of Homeland Security will raise the civil fines imposed on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants by approximately 25 percent,” the summary continues. “The administration will continue its aggressive expansion of criminal investigations against employers who knowingly hire large numbers of illegal aliens.”

There will also be some revisions to H2A and H2B (ag worker) permits which will make them much more flexible and "ag-industry" friendly.

We'll see how long this actually lasts. As mentioned before in this blog (and as reported in Human Events,) there are a few major employers who accumulate hundreds of thousands of false Social Security number reports every year.

Nailing THEM would be a very good start.

HT: The Cafeteria Is Closed