Think the GOP is tough on immigration? Here are some Dem talking points:

[kpete]

Illegal Hiring Is Rarely Penalized
Politics, 9/11 Cited in Lax Enforcement

By Spencer S. Hsu and Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 19, 2006; Page A01

The Bush administration, which is vowing to crack down on U.S. companies that hire illegal workers, virtually abandoned such employer sanctions before it began pushing to overhaul U.S. immigration laws last year, government statistics show.

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 claims of this administration and its commitment to interior enforcement of immigration laws are laughable," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group that favors tougher workplace enforcement, among other measures. "The administration only discovered immigration enforcement over the past few months, five years into its existence, and only then because they realized that a pro-enforcement pose was necessary to get their amnesty plan approved."


more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800613.html
via:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/18/222537/042