Government's unfair immigration plan is a threat to freedom

Nation's Restaurant News,  Sept 17, 2007  by Peter Romeo

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In the early afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, I, was sitting in the midtown Manhattan offices of my wife s employer, wondering if more planes would strike. The company, a financial-services giant with an outpost in the World Trade Center, had turned its boardroom into a relief center for staffers and the occasional significant other. It offered two things that were in short supply that day: fresh food and local news reception.

But no one was watching Brian Williams, despite reports that some airplanes were still in the air and might be part of the attack. All eyes were turned to the doorway, where employees from the World Trade Center office were arriving one at a time after hoofing the three miles uptown. More than a few were sobbing. Because cell phone service had been knocked out, their arrival was the first indication they were still alive. Sheer relief had their coworkers sobbing, too.

The company would lose eight people that day. My employer, pre-Nation's Restaurant News, was spared. But, of course, we in the foodservice industry would learn that at least 74 of our colleagues were among the thousands who died in the attacks.

Six years later I think of that time and wonder how the nation, never mind our business, can allow the terrorists to prevail today in their quest to undermine our way of living. Yet they do every time national security is invoked as a reason to throttle immigration, be it out of true fear or just as a rationalization.

Because so few of us came to America by walking across the Bering Strait, you'd think we'd appreciate an open door. But every day seems to bring new and craftier efforts to inhibit the influx of foreigners. And the clampdown on aliens who went outside the law to get here has turned uglier than anything we've seen since Arabs were attacked in a few U.S. communities on Sept. 12 and Sept. 13.

The low point so far is the Bush administration's scheme to crack down on illegal aliens by driving them and their families to soup kitchens. The White House wants to force them off the payrolls of restaurants and other businesses by giving employers a no-win choice. If a new hire has provided Social Security information that doesn't jibe with government records, the employee would have 90 days to correct the discrepancy. If that wasn't done--if the staffer presumably was using a bogus name or Social Security number--the employer either would have to can the individual or face a fine of up to $10,000.

No, people shouldn't use bogus Social Security numbers, and if workers do it, they deserve to be punished, alien or not. But how can they be reformed into law abiders while they can't feed themselves or their children? To survive, the immigrants would have no choice but to function in a shadowy world outside the law. Instead of focusing on getting legal, they'd have to concentrate on getting by.

Wouldn't it be better to foster a solution, a realistic fix, rather than meting out punishment of that magnitude?

And what about the problem of leaving restaurants and other businesses without the employees needed to keep the economic engine chugging so everyone gets paid?

Mercifully, in the true sense of the word, a federal court in San Francisco has blocked the plan temporarily. But the approach could be reinstated as early as next month, and if it isn't, the administration likely will concoct another initiative to make it look tough on illegal immigration. Plenty of businesses--not to mention those of us who recall that our grandparents weren't born here--would probably prefer that Washington strived to appear practical instead.

Maybe I'm overly sensitive because evidence suggests I'm the descendant of an illegal alien. My grandmother's legal status became an issue during World War II when my father, rejected for military service for health reasons, tried to do his part by landing a job in a high-tech weapons plant. On day one, he was turned away at the entrance because of gaps in his mother's records. She'd come from Italy, but the documentation was suspect, and we were at war with her birthplace.

I doubt she was looking to milk our social services or escape paying taxes and fees. Rather, she would have starved if she'd stayed in Italy, and government to her was a menace to be avoided by all means. Her perspective was otherworldly, and so, as many of you undoubtedly have learned from employees, is the perspective of many newcomers to our nation and trade.

Somehow, a way has to be found to lead them into a legal assimilation. Treating them like hardened criminals does nothing but play into the intentions of the fanatics who flew three airliners into buildings on that tragic day six years ago.

Read Peter Romeo daily in Nation's Restaurant News' blogs, www.nrnfoodserviceblog.com. He can be reached at promeo@nrn.com.

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