Burning Atlanta

This is expected. As the noose draws tighter the illegals are scrambling for a means to avoid detection so they can continue with their law-breaking lives. No doubt, this isn't only a problem in Houston. Bogus ID mills are busted all over the country. A couple of the stories mentioned in the article are events that I've blogged about in the past but one needs special mention.

Put them under the jail as traitors to this nation.

Illegal immigrants fearful of being caught in stepped-up workplace raids are fueling a growing market in Houston for phony immigration and work documents.

The result, experts say, is a glut of false, altered and counterfeit documents that are easily obtained at Houston-area flea markets, businesses and clandestine printing shops set up in homes and apartments. The bogus documents include counterfeit Texas driver's licenses, fake Social Security and "green cards," and even worthless international driver's licenses sold here and in other states.

"You could put all of HPD full time on this thing, and I don't think we could put a dent in it," said Lt. Robert Sells, with the Texas Department of Public Safety's driver's license fraud unit.

The demand has been so strong that law enforcement officers in Texas have been bribed in recent years to sell the valuable documents, and several dozen have been caught.

The most significant recent case involved five immigrants from India and the Caribbean who were fooled by immigration agents posing as crooked law officers. Three were videotaped in a Houston government office last summer as they handed over $15,000 apiece for green cards, according to court records. Oh, those poor starving immigrants.

Houston federal prosecutors last month charged two local men and four others with securing fraudulent H-2B work visas for 80 unskilled workers recruited in India. The foreign workers, who paid between $20,000 to $80,000 each for the visas, arrived in Houston but were not required to work for the construction company that applied for their visas.

Instead, the Indian workers simply scattered across the country.