Having Your Cake and Being Eaten by It, Too
Posted on | March 30, 2007
If ever there were a story that summed up America’s conflicted feelings about immigration, this is it. Our executive class loves cheap labor, while their pet politicians love pandering to our xenophobia. Sometimes the irresistible force loses:
The head of a California company hired by the U.S. government to help build a fence along the Southwest border to curb the flow of illegal aliens into the United States has been sentenced on charges of hiring illegals for the job.
Mel Kay Jr., 64, founder, chairman and president of the Golden State Fence Co., pleaded guilty in December in federal court in San Diego to felony charges of hiring the illegals and was sentenced Wednesday to six months home confinement, three months probation and 1,040 hours of community service.
Michael McLaughlin, 42, manager of the company’s Oceanside, Calif., office, who also pleaded guilty in December to charges of hiring illegals, was sentenced to six months home confinement…
The company, which built more than a mile of a 15-foot-high fence near the Otay Mesa border crossing in the San Diego area to protect against illegal immigration, agreed separately to pay $5 million on a misdemeanor count—one of the largest penalties ever imposed on an employer for immigration violations.
We might also imagine some mixed feelings among the editorial staff of the whorish Washington Times.
