More on the OJ

There's an interesting development in the illegal immigration debate.

LAKELAND -- A proposed U.S. Department of Homeland Security regulation could effectively prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants and greatly affect Florida agriculture.

The regulation would make it easier to bring civil and criminal penalties against employers for hiring workers without a valid Social Security number. Those workers, in turn, would lose their jobs.

So, Bush is for a Guest Worker Program but his Department of Homeland Security is going around Congress and him. Mas interesante!

How do Florida citrus growers feel about this?

More aggressive enforcement would threaten the ability of farmers to find enough labor to harvest the crops."On the picking crew side, where the percentage (of illegal immigrants) is very high, we would have difficulty finding labor," said George Hamner Jr., the president of Indian River Exchange Packers, a Vero Beach packinghouse that also manages about 4,000 grove acres, including harvesting.

The percentages are very high indeed, Carlton said. He pointed to a federal Government Accounting Office study on agricultural employment that found 52 percent of harvesting workers acknowledged they were in the country illegally."If 52 percent self-identify as illegal, we know there's a lot more here illegally. Anecdotally, evidence suggests as many as 80 to 90 percent of the workers could be undocumented," he said.

So, they're not happy since 80 to 90 percent of their workforce is undocumented and it will put a squeeze on their production. (sorry!)

But here's the money quote:

According to a June 10 Washington Times article on the proposed regulation, the Clinton administration issued 443 notices of intent to fine companies for violating immigration hiring laws. That fell to 16 notices in 2003 with fines falling from $2.7 million to $212,322 in that same period.

Tell that to all the Republicans who want to paint Democrats as being soft on illegal immigration. You can throw in the fact that we are down 90% in fines because of the party who calls themselves fiscally responsible.