Comprehensive Discourse on Illegal Immigration

If you have ever paid attention to any article (by me or otherwise) that I have posted on "What Middle America Thinks..." (or if you ever do) you will know that there are two basic interests (beyond my family) that are of great importance to me: (1) Illegal Immigration and (2) the plight of the Working Class, two issues that go hand-in-hand.

Bill Handel of KFI640 has the most comprehensive discussion on Illegal Immigration that I have heard or read.

Listed below are three windows media files, covering three different rants by Bill Handel on Illegal Immigration to the United States of America. These files were recording in September, 2004, a few days after Time Magazine published "Who Left The Door Open."

It should be your obligation as a citizen of the United States to listen to these files...

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

A few important points from the "Who Left The Door Open" article, and, by extension, Bill Handel's discourse:

Washington's failure to control the nation's borders has a painful impact on workers at the bottom of the ladder and, increasingly, those further up the income scale. The system holds down the pay of American workers and rewards the illegals and the businesses that hire them.

In a single day, more than 4,000 illegal aliens will walk across the busiest unlawful gateway into the U.S., the 375-mile border between Arizona and Mexico.,,

The U.S.'s borders, rather than becoming more secure since 9/11, have grown even more porous. And the trend has accelerated in the past year. It's fair to estimate, based on a TIME investigation, that the number of illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. this year will total 3 million—enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners, or 60 flights every day for a year. It will be the largest wave since 2001 and roughly triple the number of immigrants who will come to the U.S. by legal means. (No one knows how many illegals are living in the U.S., but estimates run as high as 15 million.)...

Public-opinion polls show that Americans overwhelmingly favor a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Many big companies, which have an even clearer stake in cheap labor, aggressively fend off the enforcement of laws that would shut down their supply of illegal workers.

Because of the exploding illegal population, the money sent back represents the third largest source of revenue in Mexico's economy, trailing only oil and manufacturing. That figure reached a record $13 billion last year.

The highest levels of the U.S. and Mexican governments have orchestrated this situation as a kind of dance: Mexico sends its poor north to take jobs illegally, and the U.S. arrests enough of the border crossers to create the illusion that it is enforcing the immigration laws while allowing the great majority to get through.

Popular belief has it that illegals are crossing the border in search of work. In fact, many have their jobs lined up before they leave Mexico.

A single statistic attests to this. In 2002 the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) issued orders levying fines on only 13 employers for hiring illegal aliens, a minuscule portion of the thousands of offenders.

For nearly 20 years, it has been a crime to hire illegal aliens. Amid an earlier surge in illegal immigration, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which provided that employers could be fined up to $10,000 for every illegal alien they hired, and repeat offenders could be sent to jail.

For all the rhetoric about the perils of illegal immigration, Congress shows no interest in cracking down on employers. When the INS attempted in the past to enforce the law, lawmakers slapped down the agency.

Not surprisingly, the INS's employer-sanctions program has all but disappeared. Investigations targeting employers of illegal aliens dropped more than 70%, from 7,053 in 1992 to 2,061 in 2002. Arrests on job sites declined from 8,027 in 1992 to 451 in 2002. Perhaps the most dramatic decline: the final orders levying fines for immigration-law violations plunged 99%, from 1,063 in 1992 to 13 in 2002.

This notion was supported by evidence introduced during an alien-smuggling trial in 2003 involving Tyson Foods Inc., which describes itself as "the world's largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef and pork." In this secretly recorded conversation, a federal undercover agent posed as an alien smuggler who was taking an order from the manager of a chicken-processing plant in Monroe, N.C.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of having 15 million illegals at large in society is Congress's failure to insist that federal agencies separate those who pose a threat from those who don't. The open borders, for example, allow illegals to come into the country, commit crimes and return home with little fear of arrest or punishment.

The government's record in dealing with the 400,000 people it has ordered to be deported is dismal. A sampling of cases last year by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (oig) found that of illegal aliens from countries supporting terrorism who had been ordered to be deported, only 6% of those not already in custody were actually removed. Of 114 Iranians with final orders for removal, just 11 could be found and were deported. Of 67 Sudanese with final-removal orders, only one was deported. And of 46 Iraqis with final-removal orders, only four were sent packing. All the rest, presumably, were living with impunity somewhere in the U.S.

The U.S. government should "issue a single document that's counterfeit proof, that has an embedded photograph, that says this person has a right to work in the U.S. And that document is the Social Security card. It's not a national ID card.

It's a card that you have to carry when you apply for a job and only then. The employers run it through a scanner, and they get an answer in short order that says, Yes, you may hire, or No, you may not. That would cut off 98% of all the traffic across the border. With your work force of 10,000 border-patrol agents, you actually could control the borders.