Writer observes anti-illegal hypocrisy
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Ron Charest
Published: April 17, 2008
Am I the only person who notices the hypocrisy of the “illegal is illegal” anti-immigration crowd? The same set of USCIS rules and regulations that require an immigrant to have work authorization in the form of a special visa also prohibits Americans from hiring people without work authorization.
In other words; It is illegal for a resident of Prince William County to hire a person who is not authorized to work in this country.
I have to wonder how many county residents demanding to have all “illegal-immigrants” arrested and deported are meanwhile hiring “illegals” for labor at below-market wages? I wonder if our Prince
William County residents hiring “illegal-immigrants” abide by labor laws and deduct federal and state income tax withholdings, Social Security taxes, Medicare and workman’s comp insurance?
I do have concerns about the number of people living and working in this county without proper visas. My concerns revolve around the basic human rights of receiving fair wages and treatment for an
honest days work. Under the present toxic environment, created in no small part by the actions of people including Corey Stewart and Greg Letiecq, receiving these basic human rights are probable at best for thousands in our county.
In my opinion, based upon my observations, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Letiecq and others of that crowd are merely using the excuse of “illegal Immigration” to promote discrimination and advance their personal careers. Instead of working to bring our community together, they have divided us. By demagoging our Hispanic community, Mr. Stewart and his enablers have wasted millions of our tax dollars at a time when the county is struggling to fund basic services, filled up the county jails with non-violent “criminals,” decimated local businesses, and badly damaged the reputation of our community across the
United States. All done under the banner of “illegal is illegal.”
Yet nothing is being done about our fellow citizens breaking the law by illegally hiring undocumented workers. I have to wonder: why?
RON CHAREST
Dale City
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Reader Reactions
Posted by ( willow703 ) on April 18, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I have problem with illegal immigration & with most who oppose it. Illegal immigration is a violation of US Civil Law, (not US Criminal Law)violators (illegal aliens) should be dealt with in accordance with the civil law. The illegal aliens who violate our criminallaws should serve the maximum sentence allowed.
They should then be deported, with full disclosure to the government of the country to which deported.
Those who hire illegal aliens should be
sent to jail or prison; fines, which are rarely paid, are not enough.
But first, our borders must be secured with more than fences, which can be and are cut through; climbed over; or tunneled under. The number of Border Patrol personnel is woefully short of the number required to patrol our borders. Less than 20 percent of the total is on duty, on patrol, at any time. Total personnel x percent on duty divided by miles of border; you do the math.
The 12-20 million illegal aliens already here must be dealt with justly &
humanely.
At this point I depart from most of those who rail against illegal aliens.
They refuse to pay for securing our borders. They would rather try throwing
water over the side of the boat faster than it comes in through the holes in the bottom than pay to patch the holes.
As for just & humane treatment of the illegal aliens, the ranters consider the illegal aliens no more human than the water they are bailing out of the leaking boat; with a leaky bucket because they refuse to pay for patching the boat, buying a new boat, or a new bucket.
Truth be told, these people do not want to solve the illegal alien problem, they just want to rant.
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Posted by ( PWCMom ) on April 18, 2008 at 4:42 pm
One of the ways that the County investigated cracking down on businesses was the denial or lifting of a business license for the business that was found knowingly employing these illegals. I am not sure of the status of that proposal, but they should start by looking at the license of the concrete company who had the raid in the past weeks. I seem to remember that several illegals were found-what is being done to the employer here? Is he being charged with violating the law?
I feel strongly that any attempt on cracking down on the illegal immigration issue needs to not only include something like the rule of law being enforced by PWCPD, but it needs to go further and hold those who are providing the jobs these people say they are coming here for responsible for hiring them in the first place. If you erase the demand, then you can continue to address the problem. The BOS and the Feds need to have the guts to do this…...
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Posted by ( RonCharest ) on April 18, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Barnun, PWCMom,
The USCIS recently conducted raids on local businesses that resulted in the arrests and imprisonment of dozens of undocumented workers. The owners of those businesses were neither fined nor arrested for illegal labor practices.
I’ve heard a lot of cheering from the “Illegal is Illegal” crowd over the raids and imprisonment of Hispanics, but - Nothing - about the fact that business owners were not treated in a similar fashion for conducting illegal labor practices.
When I hear you folks demand the arrests of businesses for illegal labor practices as loudly as I heard demands for arrests of the workers, calls for boycotts and picketing of those businesses, I’ll stop seeing hypocrisy.
Your ball.
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Posted by ( barnun ) on April 18, 2008 at 1:09 pm
PWCmom, I think all of the pro law group agrees with you. I’ve seen it stated by pretty much everyone that comments throughout these forums. pro illegal groups just continually cries racism and demands that we ignore the laws. As for mr charest, I think he is confusing local citizens with local employers. Most citizens are actually afraid to swing by the local 7/11 and pick up a truck load of men they cannot conversate with and take them to their home. If a citizen hires a legal contractor that employs illegals, that is not the fault of the citizen. I’d like to see Mr Stewart find a way to crack down on employers within our county, starting with the biggest names first like McD’s, Walmart, etc. There is nothing racist in enforcing the law.
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Posted by ( Godsaveus ) on April 18, 2008 at 11:20 am
No Ron Charest, you are not the only one, Mexico sin fronteras is with you, the Mexican consulate , Casa de Maryland, The council of la Raza they all are with you.
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Posted by ( PWCMom ) on April 18, 2008 at 9:33 am
I agree with TDawg. We DO need to take things a step further by heavily fining those who either don’t check or hire people without the proper ID or validity to work in this country. These businesses are really not doing illegals any favors-in my mind, they are exploiting those they hire by paying them less wages than their legal counterparts would earn for the same job. And all in the name of profits. Further, those illegals do not enjoy the same protections legal workers do. And this is OK to the pro-illegal groups?
The Feds could assist in this by granting across the board access by businesses to the Federal database. Yes, there may be problems right now with it, but as with all software, databases are created by humans and nothing is perfect. Corrections can be made and should be made as discovered. Until then, it is a tool that ALL should be using.
To clarify, I am NOT against legal immigrants working, living and taking advantage of the benefits this county and country offers. I welcome you provided you got here the LEGAL way, and show respect for our laws by abiding by them. It’s that simple-no ifs, ands or buts.
Although the pro-illegal crowd tries desperately to color their argument and deflect the true issue here with allegations of discrimmination and racial profiling, they still have NOT provided any defense to the fact that illegals have broken the law by failing to come here legally.
Until the time that the pro-illegal groups provide a legal defense to their constituents breaking the law, the rule of law enacted by the BOS should continue to be applied completely across ALL groups, as it has been as evidenced by Chief Deane and the statistics gathered since the implementation.
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Posted by ( T Dawg ) on April 18, 2008 at 8:08 am
HUH??? Whew, what porous reasoning. From my experience the ‘illegal is illegal’ crowd actually is supportive of immigration policy. It is the avoidance and evasion of that policy they are against i.e. the illegal-immigration, the crossing of sovereign borders without proper documentation. Secondly, I would imagine those actually hiring illegals for under the table work/pay would be supportive of ILLEGAL-immigration. Thusly they are able to save a buck for inferior workmanship, in other words they are cheap. The writers underlying point is well taken however, in that we do need to heavily fine and penalize companies that knowingly hire illegals.
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Posted by ( Mike ) on April 18, 2008 at 7:13 am
If you knew anything about Greg Letiecq, other then what this newspaper spoon feeds you, then you’d know he’s absolutely and unequivically for prosecuting those that use illegal labor. HSM promotes businesses in their newsletter that practice legal hire practices and slams those that don’t.
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Posted by ( raywilliams ) on April 18, 2008 at 6:09 am
Many PWC residents enjoy the financial savings when bypassing professional companies by using a private house cleaning services or Jose and his boys for mulching and lawn service. It is somehow wrong for a construction company to use off-book labor but for a private homeowner to have a crew work the weekend side job reroofing their home for cash is ok. Even further, shopping at national chains that don’t provide benefits to their employees in order to have ‘always low prices’. How would you like it if your boss said we’re cutting vacations and health care so we can lower prices to our customers?When there is competition for work, someone is going to find a way to shave costs to offer a lower price and shaving taxes is a great place to start.
Not to pick on cobra because I admire his son being astute enough to create a ‘business opportunity’ mowing foreclosed lawns in his neighborhood, but the snapshot is this tax-free ‘business’ does take away work from professional lawn service companies. This shows there is no pure black or white side of these issues but many shades of gray we need to accept and work together on to find a solution.
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