"I can see Mexico from here."

Challenge of the day…getting the head of a South Carolina state agency to answer the phone. Odds:  1 in 7 billion. Obvious question:  “Why do they even have phones?” 

But I digress.

Today I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the state’s laughable immigration bill (gee, I thought we already had national legislation). Oh, I forgot…the governor HATES the federal government, as do all right-leaning legislators. It makes much more sense to spend tens of millions duplicating federal laws and refusing federal grants.

A reality check: I happened upon a local construction project a few weeks ago. Had I not known better, I would have thought that I was in Tijuana.  Were all those workers brand, spankin’ legal?  In my opinion about as legal as our fine Hispanic, Mexican and/or Latino neighbors hired by some of the very same legislators who passed our current, impotent “reform legislation”, a bloated form of the initial attempt mounted in 2008.

Not to worry ye hirers of ‘undocumented’ alien types. If you get caught (pretty much dependent on your political and big boy connections), they put you on some kind of one-year probation (Oh, the agony; the pain). Hire south of the border cheapo and still undocumented labor again, and your business license can be temporarily suspended. Suspended that is until you fire the illegals and pay a reinstatement fee. OUCH!  That slap on the wrist really stings. Fall off the alien-hiring wagon a third time and by golly, your employer’s business license can be revoked. It’s apparently not a certainty that it will be. Do I smell a new attorney specialty brewing?

How will you know that your hard-working, albeit ‘from another land’ employee is legit? You dive for something called the federal E-Verify database, that’s how. A FEDERAL database OMG!!!  Police are also required to check the status of anybody whose skin tone varies from their own, er, I mean anybody they suspect is in this country illegally after “they have stopped that person for another reason.” Law enforcement at its most creative. It’s usually that non-working taillight, or wandering an 1/8^th of an inch into the other lane.

A new Illegal Immigration Enforcement Unit will be created within the State Police jurisdiction. Another layer of bureaucracy republicans purport to despise.

It’ll be interesting to see if a tough fed standard will apply when the handful of illegals is rounded up under this new state legislation. For the feds, any employer who fudges on paying income or social security taxes by filing false tax returns or actually phonies up SS numbers is subject to IRS criminal and civil sanctions. I doubt that will ever be a blaring headline in SC.

At the end of the day, this ‘crackdown’ is pure cotton candy. Illegal (as in low wage) aliens are here to stay. They’re hired by the thousands in SC annually and everybody knows it and shrugs their shoulders at the practice. But if a few pages of legislation and speeches of resolve and pseudo-concern make right-wing and blue dog politicians feel better on Sunday morning, have at it.

You can wink at the illegal alien in the same pew as you’re leaving.