Florida Sheriff Targets Illegals
by Jeff Davis
Now that the Senate Amnesty Bill is dead, some local authorities feel free to enforce this country’s existing immigration laws. A recent news article reports “The sheriff’s department (for) Panama City, Florida has developed a remarkably effective - and controversial - way of catching illegal immigrants: Deputies in patrol cars pull up to a construction site in force, and watch and see who runs. Those who take off are chased down and arrested on charges such as trespassing, for cutting through someone else’s property, or loitering, for hiding out in someone’s yard, or reckless driving, for speeding off in a car. U.S. immigration authorities are then given the names of those believed to be in this country illegally.”
A simple yet effective technique which can be adapted and used in any community.
The same article continues “‘It’s not wrong for them to run, but it’s not wrong for us to chase them either,’ said Sheriff Frank McKeithen, who created his Illegal Alien Task Force in April to target construction sites in this Florida Panhandle county….Immigrant advocates say the technique is repugnant, and the ACLU says its constitutionality is questionable.” Of course they do. Any attempt to enforce immigration laws is “repugnant” to the far left ACLU.
But apparently, this new tactic is working as the article notes “Illegal immigrants are leaving town. And builders are worried the crackdown will deprive them of the labor they need to take part in a building boom in which Panama City’s …cheap spring-break motels are being torn down and replaced with high-rise condos.” Well, you know, there IS a solution to that–hire LEGAL AMERICAN LABOR and PAY A LIVING WAGE. This solution has apparently escaped these dubious “contractors” though.
The news article continues “The sheriff said the raids are justified under a long-standing Florida law prohibiting employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. His department has conducted dozens of these raids over the past three months, sometimes using five or six patrol cars, and has reported more than 500 people to immigration officials since November. The Mexican American Legal Defense Fund is investigating the arrests because ‘the intimidation factor is of great concern,’ said Elise Shore, regional counsel for the organization.”
The article also reports “As the debate over illegal immigration plays out in Washington, McKeithen is among a growing number of state and local officials taking it upon themselves to enforce immigration laws that up to now were regarded as a federal responsibility. For example, Farmers Branch, Texas, is trying to prohibit apartment rentals to illegal immigrants in the Dallas suburb. Georgia passed a law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of all new employees….Mexican illegal immigrant Jose Madrid, 28, said he has been unable to find a construction job over the past six weeks because of the crackdown, and hasn’t been able to send money to his parents and his 7-year-old son back home. ‘We immigrants, we are leaving Panama City. People are afraid they will be deported,’ he said. ‘The companies don’t want to hire illegal people. Now they’re only hiring those with papers.’”
It should be noted that Florida is one of the toughest states on illegal alien workers. Florida orange growers were not able to hire cheap illegals like the agri-businesses in other states. Did they go out of business? No. They bought mechanical harvesting machines, which were able to do such an efficient job that Florida oranges were able to compete with oranges from Brazil.
We DO NOT NEED illegal aliens. We need agri-businesses to upgrade to mechanical harvesting and we need building contractors to pay a wage that will attract ordinary Americans to that sort of work. Sure it will cut into their profit a little bit, but every illegal alien they bring into the US costs taxpayers a fortune. Public schools and county hospitals have been driven toward bankruptcy thanks to illegals and still our politicians are more concerned with big business than with the tax burden on the voters. The fact that America is being turned into a Third World country also seems to have escaped the notice of the politicians and building contractors.
We need to clean out every single politician who is not on our side when it comes to the illegal alien problem. For a list of traitors in the Senate, simply check the list here and pass it around to your friends during the next primary and general election.