Judge botches immigration ruling

It was one thing when the federal government refused to enforce existing immigration laws. Now a judge has decided it's illegal for immigration officials to enforce existing laws.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits the Bush administration from launching a stepped-up enforcement drive against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Under the plan, announced two months ago by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the government would have notified thousands of companies through so-called "no match" letters which of their employees are working under a fraudulent or mismatched Social Security number.

Workers then would have had 90 days to resolve the discrepancy. If they couldn't, the employer would have had to fire them or face fines and criminal prosecution.

For decades, authorities have had the ability to identify these scofflaws with a simple records check -- some Social Security numbers have been listed on the W-2 forms of upwards of 40 people across the country. And no fewer than a dozen federal statutes specify penalties for using a fraudulent Social Security number.

Because officials have for too long been indifferent to these abuses, many illegal immigrants find it routine to obtain a fake Social Security card with a stolen or fake number.

When a popular uprising derailed congressional efforts to grant amnesty to millions of illegals earlier this year, the Bush administration recognized that the federal government could no longer turn a blind eye to the fiscal and social costs of allowing millions of foreign nationals to live and work here without documentation.

The "no match" initiative was the simplest, quickest way for the Department of Homeland Security to use existing law to crack down. And it satisfied one demand common from the Democratic side of the aisle: If you want to do something about illegal immigrants, make it more difficult for the employers who hire them.

But the political dynamics of this issue are hardly typical.

Some industries covet the cheap supply of labor illegals provide. Dying unions salivate at the prospect of organizing millions of workers under some kind of amnesty or guest-worker program. And liberal organizations view illegal immigrants as a powerful potential Democratic voting bloc.

So the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued to block the "no match" enforcement campaign. They couldn't very well claim that illegal immigrants have a right to remain in this country, so they claimed that the law might cause law-abiding citizens with slight discrepancies in their personal information to be flagged by the Social Security Administration database and summarily fired by their employers.

The plaintiffs shopped for their courtroom carefully. It worked.

Judge Breyer -- whose brother, Stephen, provides a solid vote for the U.S. Supreme Court's liberal wing -- decreed that the law could harm millions of Americans who would be unable to prove their identities to their employers "under the mandated timeline."

By the time Mr. Chertoff formulates an appeal, his administration will be out of office.

To be sure, the Bush administration's proposal was problematic. It put the entire enforcement burden on employers and provided no support from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If a company identified an illegal immigrant working under fraudulent documentation, it would not initiate deportation proceedings against that individual. He'd be free to walk away from that job and find another one under the same bogus taxpayer identification number.

But the enforcement campaign was a reasonable step toward ensuring that employers check the immigration status of those they hire -- something Democrats claim to support.

That the AFL-CIO, American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Chamber of Commerce would pretend with this lawsuit to be advocating on behalf of American citizens is disgraceful. But such dishonesty is typical for the country's ongoing struggle with illegal immigration.