With 400,000 employees using the same SSN, can you trust anything Bush says?

The WaPo's "Little Support for Bush Immigration Plan" has comments about his scheme from Mark Krikorian of CIS as well as from Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, referred to by the WaPo as "liberal". Let's consider this:
But sooner or later, under the administration's proposal, there would be an immigrant exodus of historic proportions.
Maybe it's just me, but I get the feeling they're trying to portray Bush as Herod. But, they needn't worry, for the reasons I outlined in Chertoff promotes "Temporary Worker Program" at Senate meeting.

The WaPo also points out that in last week's testimony:
...administration officials acknowledged that about 400,000 employees are using a single Social Security number, all zeroes. But there was little discussion about penalizing employers who accept such numbers, Krikorian said... "There's no effort to inform employers regularly of fake Social Security numbers," he said. "That's something the president can do [Saturday]."
Needless to say, the president didn't do it today. From whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051022.html :
To defend this country, we have to enforce our borders. When our borders are not secure, terrorists, drug dealers, and criminals find it easier to sneak into America. My administration has a clear strategy for dealing with this problem: We want to stop people from crossing into America illegally, and to quickly return the illegal immigrants we catch back to their home countries.
Despite what you might think, the president of the United States is not lying. Rather, he's simply trying to mislead you. You need to parse his remarks in the correct, Clinton-approved fashion. Note that he only wants to "stop people from crossing into America illegally". If millions of cheap laborers can cross legally, that would be OK with him. And, once they're in the U.S., he's clearly not going to do anything about it.

While many examples could be provided, consider that Bush gave the green light to employers to hire illegal aliens after the hurricane, and, as can be seen, employers did just that.

And, consider this: "GAO: ICE all but ignores workplace enforcement". That last report is also discussed in the recent "Report: Immigration workplace fines and arrests plummet":
Between fiscal year 1999 and fiscal year 2003, the report shows that the number of work-site arrests in the United States by government immigration agents fell by 83 percent, dropping from 2,849 arrests in 1999, to 485 in 2003, the last year for which Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided data to the accountability office.

Another indicator of the downward trend revealed in the report was the number of employers who were fined for hiring undocumented immigrants.

In 1999, the Immigration and Naturalization Service issued 427 "Notices of Intent to Fine" to companies across the nation.

But in fiscal year 2004, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was formed in 2003 to do the job of the INS, issued just three such notices in the entire country, according to the report.
It's difficult for people to realize that someone they like is just bs'ing them. But, I'm sure many of that small number of people who still support Bush will come to terms with it in time.

Comments

I posted yesterday in some detail on the TRUE Enforcement Act currently in the House. It's comprehensive and wide-ranging, dealing with everything from visa reform, IDs, barring mortgages to illegals, etc.

Come look at it. There's a snip of the first section, a link to the whole thing, and a link to Heather McDonald's outraged essay on the Mexican government's aggressive efforts to keep this going. It's not just the 16 billion in remittances, Vincente Fox wants "their" territory back...

Mr. President, Build That Wall!

"administration officials acknowledged that about 400,000 employees are using a single Social Security number, all zeroes. But there was little discussion about penalizing employers who accept such numbers, Krikorian said... "
This fact reveals the open contempt that employers have for immigration law. I wonder how many US citizens realize that workplace immigration enforcement is virtually nonexistent?