Bad News & Good News on Immigration

By David North on April 28, 2017

The bad news is that the immigration investor (EB-5) program will have one more week of life before yet another deadline.

The mini extension was carried in the continuing resolution passed by both houses today; it will keep the government funded for another week.

The good news is that an employer, a restaurant owner, has been sentenced to jail for two years for hiring and exploiting illegal aliens in her restaurant, and for committing tax fraud by hiding more than $400,000 in a foreign bank account. She is also to pay more than a half a million dollars to her former workers and to the IRS.

Both Yaowapha Ritdet, the restaurant owner, of Ukiah, Calif., and her employees are from Thailand. The PACER case can be seen at 3:14-cr-00215-EMC; it was heard in the Northern District of California.

The decision is good news because all too often employers of illegal aliens are given only monetary penalties while the workers are treated more harshly, losing their jobs and sometimes facing deportation.