And now in an effort to either remake America -- the Republican party that brought us Reagan is now untied in its belief that our greatest danger comes in the shape of those very strivers who built this country by arriving with hopes and dreams just two generations ago. America -- the land of immigrants -- is closed for business.
The ironies of this are many.
First of all - this is the same party that has more American soldiers on foreign soil any time since World War 2. We don't seem to have any problem tromping on other sovereign nations or crossing any borders to protect ourselves from the nebulous and often undefinable 'terrorist' threat. But perhaps most interesting is just how bizarrely out of step this Walled America vision is as we stand in a new century. Hasn't anyone gotten George Bush, John, McCain, Tom Tancredo, Jeff Sessions a computer with an internet connection to play with? If they had, They'd notice that all kinds of economic changes are shifting from physical borders to digital borders. Uufff, all They needs is to phone American Express and they'll find their billing questions are being answered from a phone center in Another Country. Unless their vision of their Border Wall includes blocking internet access to off-shore internet providers -- he's going to find that the increasingly flat world isn't going to best stopped by cement and barb wire.
How we treat each other today, what we call each other today -- not just brown/white but religious/non-religious, Northern/Southern -- is going to resonate for a long time." Which is to say the Republican's cynical decision to use Immigration as the lynchpin issue for 2008 may be good politics, but it is clearly terrible for the long term stability of the Nation.
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door
God Bless America.
U.S. immigration authorities released on their own recognizance 58 of the roughly 300 Undocumented workers arrested early Tuesday at a chicken processing plant in Greenville, South Carolina.
Nearly 100 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents looking for evidence of the hiring of illegal migrants executed a search warrant at House of Raeford's Columbia Farms plant.
"It's the result of a 10-month investigation and the gathering of evidence about the practice of hiring Undocumented migrants," ICE spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McDonald confirmed that the raid began before 9 a.m. during a shift change and that the employees were questioned to determine their immigration status.
According to The Greenville News, workers ran for the doors when they noticed the ICE agents, but by then the exits had already been sealed.
"They dispatched a lot of agents and even a helicopter circled the place. It was total chaos. The people felt as if they were looking for dangerous criminals or in a state of war," Rossy Bedoya, of Greenville's Latino newspaper.
On Sept. 24, a former plant employee pleaded guilty in a federal district court in Greenville for using false information to get a job at Columbia Farms.
McDonald said that in recent months immigration agents had reviewed more than 825 documents used by the plant's employees and found that 775 contained false information.
His boss, U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins, said the detained workers will be questioned, have their fingerprints and photographs taken, undergo medical examinations and face possible deportation.
Once they have been administratively processed, ICE will identify those eligible for release on humanitarian grounds - thus far a total of 58 individuals who must appear before an immigration judge.
However, authorities will keep in custody those individuals who used other people's documents, have a criminal record or had been previously deported.
The Charlotte Observer in February published a series of articles that denounced the "precarious" working conditions for the mainly Hispanic employees of the House of Raeford plants, which employ 6,000 people in the Carolinas.
The paper found that some of the managers of the chicken processing company were aware that illegal immigrants were working at their plants.
The firm, meanwhile, has said on several occasions that it has not deliberately hired undocumented workers and that it uses "outside consultants" to verify immigration paperwork.
Tuesday's raid in South Carolina is the latest in a series of operations carried out by ICE to apprehend undocumented workers.
In April, ICE detained 300 people at several Pilgrim's Pride chicken-processing plants in five states.
On May 12, another 389 Undocumented immigrants were arrested in an operation at the AgriProcessors Inc. kosher meatpacking firm in Postville, Iowa.
And last month, an ICE raid on electronic parts-maker Howard Industries in Laurel, Mississippi netted 595 undocumented migrants.
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