Finally, a Sign of Rationality at Homeland Security

dday brings us good news on immigration.

Today's Washington Post reports on a policy shift toward punishing the businesses who hire the undocumented rather than the individual workers themselves.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces in recent weeks, asking agents in her department to apply more scrutiny to the selection and investigation of targets as well as the timing of raids, federal officials said.

A senior department official said the delays signal a pending change in whom agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement choose to prosecute - increasing the focus on businesses and executives instead of ordinary workers.

Worksite raids, particularly as they were used in the Bush Administration, were unnecessarily harsh, separated families and in some cases violated due process and other civil liberties. The employers are just as responsible for breaking the law, yet during the Bush years they were almost never charged. This shift in operations at DHS and ICE not only makes sense on a moral and ethical level, but is likely to be more successful in deterring companies from hiring and exploiting undocumented labor.

I know immigration isn't a front-burner issue right now, but there are better priorities than the government operating like commandos and taking workers away from their families, while recognizing that the only way to truly solve the problem is through comprehensive reform.

Amen, Hallelujah and About Fucking Time. As bad if not worse than middle-class taxpayers funding billion-dollar bonuses to economy-destroying Wall Street gamblers is the way factory owners around the country have gotten away with treating immigrants as slave labor, with immigration officials from Homeland Security acting as whip-wielding overseers.

Janet Napolitano, unlike Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, seems to understand that it's the workers who make this economy run, and the corporations who fuck it up.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....