A facsimile ofenforcement

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It happened last week, and it was nicely timed. One week later -- about now, in fact -- the U.S. Senate was to reconvene to discuss an immigration bill. The bill proposes to amnesty most of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and to admit millions more legally as guest-workers. It is a controversial measure, strongly promoted by the White House and both party leaderships in the Senate but opposed by most Republican congressmen and a large majority of voters. Something was needed to break the log jam of opposition.

President Bush was scheduled to speak in favor of the legislation yesterday while on his California trip. Given his most recent poll figures (33 percent approval rate and falling), however, a presidential speech might not be enough to turn the tide. Action was needed -- tough, forceful and popular action -- or at least the appearance thereof.

So a week ago yesterday, federal agents "swooped" on plants in 26 states belonging to IFCO, a U.S. subsidiary of a Dutch company supplying wood pallets and plastic containers to industry, and arrested 1,187 illegal immigrant workers. Seven former and current IFCO managers were also charged with employing illegal aliens.

Next day -- last Thursday -- Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff addressed a press conference to stress such tough enforcement of immigration law, internally as well as at the border, would now be the rule. Having established its willingness to crack down on illegality, the administration's political machine crossed its fingers and hoped this display would now help passage of the "Not an Amnesty" law.

All this was not only timely; it was powerfully symbolic. What it symbolized, however, was not the tough enforcement of immigration law but its colander-like leaky ineffectiveness.

For even before Mr. Chertoff had spoken (but not before the shrewd blogger, Michelle Malkin, had predicted it), four-fifths of the illegals arrested had been released; 275 of them were deported. The rest were sent away in return for a promise to return for a court hearing. Many, probably most, will now disappear. And since the government's computers were "down" at the time, their brush with immigration enforcement may not even be officially recorded. They are home dry -- well, dry anyway.

How long has this been going on? In a recent column I suggested -- wrongly, my apologies -- there had been little or no enforcement of employer sanctions since the 1986 amnesty law was passed. All enforcement had been at the border, rather than internally throughout the U.S. Once an illegal reached a major city such as Los Angeles, Phoenix or Chicago, he was safe from official interest and could work unmolested.

That was not quite accurate. President Clinton had been nervous of immigration as a political issue since he had lost the governorship of Arkansas following the "Mariel" incident. He blamed his defeat on a voter backlash to Fidel Castro's emptying the Cuban jails onto a ship headed for Florida and to the sanctuary of the U.S. He was cautious thereafter. "Internal" enforcement of employer sanctions under Mr. Clinton was patchy but not wholly lax.

For instance, in the years 1995, 1996 and 1997, there were between 10,000 and 18,000 work-site arrests of illegals annually. In the same years about 1,000 employers were served notices of fines for employing them. Under the Bush administration, work-site arrests fell to 159 in 2004 when there was also the princely total of three notices of intent to fine served on employers.

Three. (My apologies again, incidentally. I had erroneously cited the figure of "four" such notices in my recent column. )