U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 34 workers, identified as Mexican nationals, at Memphis International Airport working on the new Tennessee Air National Guard base. The various contractors who hired them will likely not be penalized because they’ll say that they didn’t “knowingly” hire the illegal immigrants. If the illegals showed even crudely fraudulent IDs to get hired, the employers are immune from prosecution.

In fiscal year 2007, ICE arrested 4,077 people on immigration charges nationwide. Considering there are approximately 14,300 ICE employees, that’s one arrest for every 3 1⁄2 employees. Must be a tough job!

Federal officials said that they are focusing immigration enforcement efforts on projects where national security is a concern. In other words, they have simply decided to ignore what the Commercial Appeal of Memphis describes as “battalions of immigrants from Mexico and central America..., an unseen force at the bottom rungs of the Memphis area’s most important industry, distribution.” The paper added that the major companies in the area, except FedEx, use the illegals and that there are hard feelings between the Hispanics and blue-collar blacks in the Memphis area, who would be the main beneficiaries if the Hispanic illegal immigrants weren’t there.

The companies that hire the Hispanics, such as Williams-Sonoma, Technicolor Home Entertainment Services (which distributes CDs and DVDs for Disney, Paramount, and Universal), and Microsoft, prefer hiring illegal immigrants because they can take on as many workers as they want each day and send the rest home; they don’t have to give any benefits; and they can hire workers for $7 to $7.50 per hour. Of course, none of the aforementioned companies “knowingly” hires illegal immigrants.

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