Did I read that right?
Today, the administration has unveiled an un-GOP-like new strategy for dealing with illegal immigration.
They're actually going to enforce on the demand side.
The Bush administration unveiled Thursday what it said is a new strategy aimed at companies employing illegal immigrants, illustrating it with a crackdown on the German-based firm IFCO Systems.
Law enforcement officials will "use all the tools we have, whether it be criminal enforcement or immigration laws to break the back" of businesses that exploit undocumented immigrants, said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at a news conference.
"We're looking at them in the same way we look at criminal organizations," he said.
It was crafty of them to go after a German-based company. And of course IFCO's probably not a player on the scale that it takes to buy one's own Republican.
Of course, they still rounded up and will deport everyone who was working illegally for IFCO.
So what is this? A token action designed to throw critics off the scent? Harbinger of an actually sort of sensible future strategy to reduce the incentives for illegal immigration, soon to be followed by tax penalties for outsourcing and new labor protections? Something that will never be enforced against any corp. that Bushco holds stocks in? Something that will be used to put a squeeze only on smaller businesses and to give opposition politicians nanny problems?