Private crime vs. public policy.(The Last Word)

Restaurant owner Stephen Metzler of Green Bay, Wisconsin, was arrested on June 15 during a raid conducted by local police and federal agents. Metzler was accused of providing false identities, including stolen Social Security numbers, to illegal immigrants employed in his small chain of family restaurants. Those involved in the seam apparently believed that the Social Security numbers had been assigned to people long since deceased.

Metzler allegedly charged each employee $1,000 for providing this service, deducting $50 from each paycheck. This scheme fell apart after the IRS notified a 31-year-old Texas resident that he owed $8,200 in back taxes for wages he had supposedly earned working for a restaurant in Wisconsin. An irate phone call from the victim to the restaurant triggered a police probe that led to the arrest of Metzler and 12 illegal immigrants employed by him.

Interestingly, a police spokesman said that the 12 illegal aliens were released from custody "because they do have ties to the community, they have established employment here, and we don't feel at this point that they are a threat to the community at large."

Those people--however hardworking or pure of motive they might be--are in our country illegally. Their community "ties" would almost certainly include people with whom they conspired to break our immigration laws, and (assuming the charges against Metzler are valid) their employment was made possible through an act of interstate fraud in which they willingly participated. Moreover, it's difficult to see how subverting our immigration laws could be considered anything other than "a threat to the community at large."

If guilty of the alleged offenses, Stephen Metzler should certainly be punished. That having been said, it's tempting to suggest that Metzler should consider mounting a legal defense describing his identity theft ring as a small-scale, privatized version of President Bush's proposed amnesty for illegal aliens. All he was doing, after all, was acting on President Bush's oft-repeated desire to "match any willing employer with any willing employee."

Granted, the method Metzler chose to carry out that vision created problems for innocent taxpayers. However, the same could certainly be said of the aftermath of President Bush's amnesty announcement last January, which triggered an "amnesty rush" that has yet to subside. This, in turn, has inflicted huge costs on border communities in California, Arizona and Texas, where hospitals, jails and other public facilities have been overwhelmed by wave after wave of illegal aliens eager to be on this side of the border ...