Immigration Raid

Oh, boo-hoo! Look at the spin in this article on an immigration raid:

Immigration raid cripples Ga. town
STILLMORE, Ga. - Trailer parks lie abandoned. The poultry plant is scrambling to replace more than half its workforce. Business has dried up at stores where Mexican laborers once lined up to buy food, beer and cigarettes just weeks ago.

This is meant to horrify us into stopping anti-illegal immigrant raids.

Instead, I am horrified that a whole town could be so infiltrated by illegal foreign invaders as to essentially be foreign territory within our own borders.

It is precisely such towns that should be reformed.

This Georgia community of about 1,000 people has become little more than a ghost town since Sept. 1, when federal agents began rounding up illegal immigrants.

The sweep has had the unintended effect of underscoring just how vital the illegal immigrants were to the local economy.

Vital? More like instrumental -- it was an illegal economy. So this town depended on exploitation, did it? Glad that's been fixed.

More than 120 illegal immigrants have been loaded onto buses bound for immigration courts in Atlanta, 189 miles away. Hundreds more fled Emanuel County. Residents say many scattered into the woods, camping out for days. They worry some are still hiding without food.

The argument that "but we can't deport them all" fails, because many more apparently self-deport when the crackdown starts in earnest.

Last month, the federal government reported that Georgia had the fastest-growing illegal immigrant population in the country. The number more than doubled from an estimated 220,000 in 2000 to 470,000 last year. This year, state lawmakers passed some of the nation's toughest measures targeting illegal immigrants, and Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue last week vowed a statewide crackdown on document fraud.

Seems to be working.

Other than the Crider plant, there isn't much in Stillmore. Four small stores, a coin laundry and a Baptist church share downtown with City Hall, the fire department and a post office. "We're poor but proud," Mayor Marilyn Slater said, as if that is the town motto.

The 2000 Census put Stillmore's population at 730, but Slater said uncounted immigrants probably made it more than 1,000. Not anymore, with so many homes abandoned and the streets practically empty.

You mean illegal aliens.

"This reminds me of what I read about Nazi Germany, the Gestapo coming in and yanking people up," Slater said.

Just bite me. You're exploiting these people economically.

The B&S convenience store, owned by Keith and Regan Slater, the mayor's son and grandson, has lost about 80 percent of its business.

"These people come over here to make a better way of life, not to blow us up," complained Keith Slater, who keeps a portrait of Ronald Reagan on the wall. "I'm a die-hard Republican, but I think we missed the boat with this one."

So they interview the mayor and the mayor's family who run the company store. Of course they're upset their little fiefdom has vanished.

Here is the unintentionally revealing money quote:

The poultry plant has limped along with half its normal workforce. Crider increased its starting wages by $1 an hour to help recruit new workers.

Oh, so your wages were below free-market rates, were they?

Bwahahahaha!

That's the real crux of the matter, isn't it?

If poultry costs me a little more for border security and an orderly process of admitting properly documented foreign guest workers -- who aren't part of some exploitive black-market economy -- I'm happy to pay it.

Indeed, I demand to pay it!