Burning Atlanta

This is kind of a "boo-hoo" piece. "Oh, those poor immigrants get prosecuted and tossed but the employers get a pass." Which is all too true. EVERYBODY knows the single best thing that could happen is to see jobs for illegals getting cut off and the best way to do that is nail the employer's asses to a wall. And it happens all too rarely.

Toss the gate-crashers, nail the employers.

A year after one of King County's biggest work-site raids, fully two-thirds of the 51 illegal immigrants arrested have either been deported or told to leave the country.

But no charges have been brought against Spherion, the employment agency that hired the immigrants, or UPS Supply Chain Solutions, the UPS subsidiary that operated the two Auburn warehouses where they worked.

Nationally, arrests of undocumented workers more than tripled between 2005 and 2007. And last year, while such arrests increased more than 11 percent from the year before, the number of employers criminally charged declined.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials explain that it's far tougher to build a criminal case showing an employer knowingly hired an illegal immigrant than to prove that an immigrant is working in the U.S. illegally.

That's in part because current federal law does not require employers to verify the immigration status of prospective workers, so many simply accept at face value the documents workers show them. Employers skate the system all day long. "We didn't know. They had documents. We're not immigration experts..." Also, as in this case, they buffer themselves by hiring thru an agency.

Five of her six children, ranging in ages from 5 to 21, were born in the U.S. and her 17-year-old has a child of her own. All would be out of place in Mexico, she said.

"My children were born here, and I wouldn't want to take them to a country they know nothing about," she said in Spanish. Total bullshit excuse, seen it a million times. Funny, not knowing anything about a coutry and not speaking the language didn't stop you from coming or bringing your DNA with you. Also, did you notice she spoke in Spanish, after being here how many years? Bitch.