You might be wondering what the nation’s policy on illegal immigration is these days.
The short answer is: No one seems to care.
Not even those who seem to.
Take the state of Georgia.
The state passed one of the country’s toughest illegal immigration laws in 2006 that requires public and private employers to take affirmative steps to prevent the hiring of illegal aliens.
But as we sit here today, no one knows whether state agencies are complying, local governments often don’t know it applies to them, and businesses hardly have anything to worry about.
“No one in state government is enforcing the law,” says The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “No one at the state level has checked to see whether governments and businesses are complying. And nothing happens to them if they don’t.”
In short, nobody’s minding the store — in Georgia, where border security and fighting illegal immigration has been a priority in recent years.
How lax must things be in other states?
Nor can we expect much improvement anytime soon.
Don’t look for Georgia to beef up its enforcement. That will take money, and now is not a good time to ask for it. Not even the immigration law’s chief sponsor, Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, plans action: He pushed an enforcement mechanism bill last year, and that is still mired in the state House of Representatives.
On the national level, some say the federal “E-verify” system that is relied upon by Georgia and other localities trying to enforce immigration law is unreliable. And don’t expect that or other immigration crackdowns to get much support from the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, even though the job market in America isn’t great, the domestic situation in Mexico has become dire: “Some U.S. observers say (drug) cartels now pose a direct threat to the Mexican government’s survival, and, by extension, a growing security threat to the U.S.,” writes The Christian Science Monitor.
More than more than 5,700 people died in drug violence in Mexico last year alone; the body count so far this year is more than 350, including a police commander who was beheaded in the state of Chihuahua.
The more Mexico spirals into chaos, the more pressure it will put on a U.S. immigration system that, itself, is buckling under the weight of severe neglect.
Post a Comment
