Immigration: The Social Conservatives Are Going To Lose

Obviously, the debate is on immigration is going to rage on though the end of this election cycle. What will happen then? If the republicans win, the social conservatives are once again going to be tossed aside for the benefit of big business. If the social conservatives think otherwise they should consider this from the Washington Post:

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.

The Bush administration has no intention of standing up to the big business wing of the party on this issue, period. That is a fact that is clearly borne out by these statistics, and it is unlikely to change if the GOP wins. The administration defends itself by saying the following. Also from the Post:

The administration says it is learning from past failures, and switching to a strategy of building more criminal cases, instead of relying on ineffective administrative fines or pinprick raids against individual businesses by outnumbered agents.

Okay, this is just utter bullshit. That would be like saying the war on drugs isn't working, (which it isn't) so we are going to halt narcotics prosecutions until we come up with something that works better, check back with us in about ten years.

Only in this case, the dealers have lobbyists that throw a lot of money toward the GOP, so despite any public outcry, they are going to get their way. All I can say is that if you're a social conservative, get used to it or get out of the republican party.