Burning Atlanta

Like many know, most business groups, Chambers of Commerce, etc... ALWAYS support a steady supply of CHEAP labor which means they oppose anything that threatens a supply of CHEAP labor. And they don't give a damn what that may cost this country.

Here's an investors site that is tuned in and has some sense of integrity. This is the online edition of Investors Business Daily. More business minded groups should feel the same way.

You Rock

Immigration: San Francisco's mayor makes common cause with cities that provide sanctuary to illegal aliens in violation of federal immigration laws. He may be violating federal law himself.

We're all for efforts to protect our borders with more technology, money and manpower. We're also for the enforcement of existing immigration statutes, such as employer-sanction laws dealing with businesses employing illegal aliens.

So we've been pleased to see Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stepping up such efforts. An example was last Friday's arrest of 13 foreign nationals working illegally at Oakland, Calif.-based Eagle Bag Corp., a packaging manufacturer with clients including the U.S. military.

The response by Mayor Gavin Newsom, however, has been to reassert San Francisco's status as a "sanctuary city," so proclaimed by its board of supervisors in 1989. On Sunday, Newsom declared that no San Francisco employee will cooperate with immigration enforcement efforts.

In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Under both statutes, state and local governments could no longer bar employees from inquiring about immigration status or tipping off immigration authorities. An appeals court upheld both laws in 1999.

Los Angeles also has a sanctuary policy, enshrined in "Special Order 40," that bars police from arresting anyone based solely on their immigration status, or from notifying immigration officials about an illegal immigrant. It's being challenged in the courts.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, the court challenge cites a 2005 Government Accounting Office study involving 55,322 illegal immigrants incarcerated in federal, state and local facilities in 2003. The study found they'd been arrested an average of eight times each, with 49% previously being convicted of a felony.

Having local gendarmes not cooperate with the feds puts us all at risk, and no place is that more evident than on our roads. Earlier this month, Bob Clark, director of the classic film "A Christmas Story," was killed along with his 22-year-old son in a head-on collision with a vehicle driven by Hector Velazquez-Nava, a Mexican national who was living in Los Angeles illegally.

Velazquez-Neva was driving without a license and was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.24, three times the legal limit. He'd been convicted in 2004 of soliciting a prostitute and was given 24 months' probation. He was not deported or incarcerated