Napolitano's New Worksite Enforcement Plan

I had mentioned earlier that Secretary Napolitano's emphasis was going to shift from raids on workers to holding employees accountable. Some analysis by Charles M. Miller:

The Obama administration, through Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, has signaled subtle changes to the worksite enforcement efforts of its predecessor. After the Bush administration failed to achieve its goal of comprehensive immigration reform in Congress in 2007, criminal worksite enforcement actions were emphasized, with nationally-publicized raids resulting in the arrest and detention of the employees of the targeted employers.

Secretary Napolitano’s announced changes in DHS guidelines continue criminal worksite case development, but with an expansion of humanitarian consideration for the discovered employees. The Obama administration policy is to develop administrative civil penalty assessments, largely ignored by the previous administration, while continuing to promote E-Verify, the joint Social Security Administration-DHS electronic verification system which faces an appropriations debate in the fall.

A New York Times Opinion adds:

That is a good idea, and a break from the Bush administration method — mass raids to net immigrant workers while leaving their bosses alone. The raids were tuned to the theatrics of the poisoned immigration debate, using heavy weapons, dogs and helicopters to spread the illusion that something was getting fixed.

But as policy, they were worse than useless. They netted about 6,000 undocumented immigrants, out of 12 million, and 135 employers or supervisors. They destroyed families, tearing parents and grandparents from children, many of them citizens. The fear they caused went viral in immigrant communities, driving workers further into the arms of abusive employers while bringing us no closer to a working immigration system.

So the new guidelines are smarter than cruel idiocy, but raids are still not a solution. They keep the country trying to arrest, prosecute and deport its way toward a working immigration system. Enforcement alone will never get us there. Workplace raids, no matter how sensibly or tactfully redesigned, will never fix immigration by themselves. Indeed, they make things worse.