Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) have sent a letter to Tom Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), asking him to back off of his agency's recent press to revitalize worksite enforcement efforts to ensure that jobs are actually going to Americans and lawfully authorized workers, about which I recently blogged.
In the spirit of this month's first day, the CHC's letter is reproduced here:
Dear Director Homan,
We are asking you in the most genteel way possible to tell your agents to "deprioritize" their worksite enforcement against American businesses too big to fail, such as the dozens of Seven-11 stores they recently raided in California.
We think that these efforts are misguided and will harm the economy. We don't actually have any empirical proof that this is true, but it's the way we want to spin it because our "base" is mad as hell and demanding that we do something — and we are, frankly, shocked that you just don't seem to be getting the hint from places like California that have passed laws making clear that they just don't want you doing business anywhere in that state.
We know that we haven't got the chance of an ice cream cone in Hades of actually convincing our fellow members of Congress to repeal the immigration laws already on the books that make it unlawful for aliens without permission to work, and for employers to hire and retain such people — so we come to you instead, asking if you can't just see your way clear to ignoring those laws.
If it was good enough during the Obama administration to just pick and choose which laws to enforce, why isn't it good enough for you, too? Look, this is important to us in getting out the vote for the upcoming midterm elections. So won't you please help?
Sincerely yours,
Congressional Hispanic Caucus
P.S. Oh, and by the way: If you actually accede to our request and focus solely on alien criminals, don't expect us to cut you slack, because then we'll complain about those efforts "breaking up families", not to mention our concern with your agents expecting state and local officers to help them do their jobs by actually cooperating.
Okay, okay. I admit that I've just dealt you a heaping helping of Fake News a day late. The letter didn't read quite like that. But it might as well have, for all the sense it made (or didn't, as the case may be).
The real letter can be read here.
Actually, I liked my version better. For "fake news" it was actually more honest and to-the-point than the real deal, wasn't it?