workers on his street

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Meg Whitman, the GOP nominee for governor of California,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], is clearly a hypocrite on illegal immigration. While she has run on a platform of cracking down on employers who hired undocumented workers, it’s now clear that she employed a illegal immigrant for several years ― and knew about it.

Eight members of Congress, including Republicans Saxby Chambliss (then in the House) and Jack Kingston and Democrat Sanford Bishop, signed a letter to then-Attorney General Janet Reno complaining about the raid and a “lack of regard for farmers.” The INS backed down.
But Whitman isn’t the only hypocrite on illegal immigration. Most Americans are. The economic boom of the 1990s was powered by a mighty assist from illegal immigrants ― who landscaped lawns, cooked and cleaned restaurants,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], took care of babies, picked vegetables and worked on construction sites ― keeping the costs down for the rest of us. They were exploited and ill-used, but few people cared about that.
State Rep. Chip Rogers was ensnared in the hypocrisy controversy in 2006, when he spearhead legislation to crack down on illegal immigrants. Mundo Hispanico ran a photograph showing an illegal immigrant doing work on the home of one of Rogers’ neighbors:
Despite the revelation the next day that she herself had employed an illegal immigrant maid for nine years ― unbeknownst to her, she says ― Whitman repeated the admonition in a second contentious encounter with Brown on Saturday at Cal State Fresno:
But Whitman is no more a hypocrite than all the Georgia citizens who enjoyed the benefit of fresh produce, cheap chicken and readily-available carpeting ― industries that hired plenty of illegal workers. As I wrote in a recent column:
Whitman made herself into a very large target at UC Davis when she declared: “We do have to hold employers accountable for hiring only documented workers, and we do have to enforce that law.”
Jerry Brown, Democratic nominee for governor, went after Whitman for her hypocrisy in a recent debate. From the LA Times:
Whitman at first ungraciously suggested that the letter was intercepted and tossed by the maid, Nicandra Diaz Santillan. Then the maid’s media-wise attorney, Gloria Allred, produced a copy of the letter with the husband’s handwriting on it: “Nicky, please check this.” The couple’s response was that they had no recollection.
She couldn’t have teed it up better for Brown.
“Ms. Whitman obviously didn’t crack down on herself,” the Democrat replied. “This is a question of talking out of both sides of her mouth.”

“If we don’t hold employers accountable, we will never get our arms around this [illegal immigration] problem.”
The housekeeper issue also really isn’t about whether Whitman and her neurosurgeon husband, Griff Harsh, received a government letter in 2003 warning that the maid’s Social Security number and name didn’t match.
The package included a photograph of an undocumented worker doing construction on the home of one of Rogers’ neighbors. Rogers’ house could be seen in the background but we didn’t identify it as such because we wanted to protect his privacy.
“[Rogers] has talked a lot about the changes in his area, and he’s been the driving force behind this legislation. We wanted to go by his neighborhood and see what he sees every day — workers on his street, Hispanic people working at a golf club he’s joined and a wall where workers wait for work that is on the way to his kids’ school.”
Her claim that she didn’t know her housekeeper, Nicky Diaz, was in the country illegally was blown out of the water by the revelation of a letter from the Social Security administration.:
These days, most Americans support a crackdown on illegal immigrants. But ten years ago, most of us were enjoying the fruits (no pun intended) of their labors.
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During the go-go ‘90s, construction managers, agricultural concerns and carpet manufacturers demanded the cheap, pliant labor that illegal immigrants were happy to provide.
In 1998,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) conducted raids on Vidalia onion fields at the beginning of the harvest season. Crews scattered, and the harvest was stalled. Farmers freaked and called their congressmen.
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