Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who were in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina told blogger Debbie Schlussel that the agency hired illegal aliens during the relief efforts.
According to the web site, ICE “serves the public by removing unauthorized aliens from the United States.” One of their core values, according to the site, is courage. “We will be accountable for our actions; we will do the right thing even when it is not the easy thing; and we will always fulfill our duties with courage.”
But they illegally hire illegal aliens. This is why I’m sick of politics.
By the way, there were thousands of people in the immediate vicinity displaced by the hurricane. We saw them with our own eyes. Weren’t some of them willing to work for ICE? Were they asked but refused to work?
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La Shawn,
Can you check the Debbie Schlussel link? I am getting Not Found error.
Fixed it. Thanks, Renee.
I am old enough (by quite a bit!) to remember a very quaint, but useful custom: “illegal” was a word that meant “it is against the law.”
Now here is the clincher: if an officer of the law caught some one doing something illegal, the officer arrested the perp! Hey, I not kidding!
Furthermore, if the officer knowingly permitted or abetted the perp with the illegal act, the officer was in some deep doo-doo.
But that was then and this is now. I can still have my fond memories, can’t I?
Heliotrope, you must be almost as old as I am if you remember when legal behavior was actually valued. [sigh]
Sorry off topic, but heard the news on Little Green Footballs that you will be a part of the Pajamas Media. Congrats La Shawn! Lots of great comments about you on the LGF post.
OT just like Jeff — I was just at Roger Simon’s and saw the link to your Pajamas profile. Congrats La Shawn! And 3 cheers to an effective, long-lived PJs Media.
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents returning from New Orleans say that the agency employed illegal aliens to serve ICE agents food during the ongoing relief efforts”-Debbie Schlussel _
I dont doubt this report but it would be a lot more credible and useful if names were named. It seems to me this is a case where the Freedom of
Information Act could be employed successfully.Maybe a FOIA requesting names of ICE agents who employed food servers in New Orleans, the names of the food servers, and the proof of citzenship should be made. Im sure there are binding regulatios on the ICE agents not to do this.
Why shouldnt they lose thier jobs if they dont do them?
I was delighted to find your blog after a PM bio on LGF.
I am with you on this one. I wondered why the guv’mint didn’t employ the evacuees. They would have been my first choice. It would give them something to do, as well as a paycheck. It makes perfect sense.
Just had a long conversation with the head of Austin’s ‘day labor’ program who commented that citizens were concerned when the city placed a day labor site in their neighborhood (which by the way was a low income, racially mixed neighborhood near my house)…Critical of their concerns, he mentioned tolerance and diversity as one would expect from a good ‘liberal’ who doesn’t ‘get it’ that the people may be concerned about their property values as well as crime rates. So, I asked him whether it might not make more sense to put such a facility in a wealthy neighborhood with homes at least $500,000 and up, where the property owners could more easily absorb a hit to their appraised values? He sputtered and said that those people would not stand for a facility in their neck of the woods. Gotta love the concept of compassion on someone else’s doorstep and out of someone else’ wallet! Those are the same people that are very concerned about the rights of child rapists to live anonymously, because they know that most ex-felons cannot afford to live anywhere near their children….
I also asked him about a government entity supporting what I thought was an illegal activity. He says that the day labor site is available to any citizen, and that they do not make any determination about the legality or illegality of those who seek work there….How’s that for avoiding reality?
I asked how easy it would be for me son to get a job(he’s very fluent in Spanish), and he said that it actually might be difficult as employers far prefer Hispanics.He said that this is one of the reasons that the black unemployment rate did not lessen even with a surplus of jobs, as more Hispanics simply filled the void. Perhaps this is what happened in New Orleans….
From a very apropos article:
….In his book, Vaca describes the demographic wave overtaking black America as “the Latino tsunami” that will alter minority politics. The new axioms of power, he writes, are that Latinos outnumber African Americans, that they will compete for jobs and resources, that Latinos have their own history of oppression, and, most pointedly, that “because Latinos are not responsible for the plight of African Americans, they come to the table with a clear conscience.”
….Hyperbolic, perhaps, but the pattern is plain to Hutchinson. “The vibrant new ethnic group in America are Hispanics,” he said, while the interests of African Americans “are falling by the wayside.”
Hey, but wait a minute . . . isn’t that the fiscally conservative thing to do? Hire illegal aliens at half the cost of salary and not pay them any benefits?
Jeff;
I read that book by Vaca, though in truth, ‘Hispanics’ do not come to the table with a clear conscience if they examine all of their history. Leaving that aside….
When I read about the tsunami taking over the concerns of the African American, it highlighted something that has been on my mind for some time. So often, when there are discussions of affirmative action, blacks blow it off as of little consequence to whites, because they don’t realize the sheer enormity of the new numbers, now that so many groups are competing for a slice of that finite pie.
Illegal immigration hurts blacks AND new immigrants significantly. Leaders of both groups promote it simply to enlarge their power base, but they do so at the expense of their people.
I thought that I read that New Orleans had to lay off 3,000 city employees. It would have seemed obvious to me that this would have been the employee pool that ICE would have first tapped. I presume that they are legal.
Kevin said: “…isn’t that the fiscally conservative thing to do? Hire illegal aliens at half the cost of salary and not pay them any benefits?”
That’s what chaps my hide. We don’t hire illegals. We go through the required checks and fill out the cute little I-9 form with ID info to prove that new hires are legal. Take a guess what happens to that verification work and the I-9 form. If you said that it all goes back into a file cabinet and is never, ever reviewed by anybody from the INS, you win the cigar.
We could hire illegals all day long if we wanted to do so, and the odds of getting caught are slim to none. Sleazy employers are banking on just that governmental abdication of responsibility.
Border control is essential, but along with that must come enforcement at the employer level. If the sleazy employers become afraid to hire illegals, then the incentive to swim the Rio Grande goes away.
i’m putting a sign in my car window that will say: “ask first—avoid businesses that employ illegal workers.” it may not be much but it’s my way of taking a stand, albeit a small one. and there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for government agencies to hire illegal workers for anything, even if it’s to just work a shovel!! people need to start complaining (as opposed to whining).
By the way, there were thousands of people in the immediate vicinity displaced by the hurricane. We saw them with our own eyes. Weren’t some of them willing to work for ICE? Were they asked but refused to work?
The answer to your questiong is “Yes, they were asked but were unwilling to work.” We personally know two New Orleans residents that work for us only in the winter when we bring our business down there that were hired for $700/week plus food that walked off the job after a day – too “smelly”. They are now residing in Red Cross-funded apartments with no jobs and no intentions of looking for one as long as the “government” is footing the bill.
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