At 10:06 AM 8/6/96, Duncan Frissell wrote:
At 07:37 PM 8/5/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
But the law says, these days, that I must verify the legality of workers *if* they appear to be dark-skinned, Mexican, Latin, or the like. I say "if" because there are no requirements in general for ... Naughty naughty Tim. You're violating the Immigration Control and Nationality Act of 1986. You are supposed to check all employee's IDs even your own childrens' and fill out that I-9 form. You have to verify identity and right to work using a menu of documents ranging from passports and SS cards to Driver's licenses and "American Indian Tribal Documents" (I gotta get me some of them). And there are special provisions to punish discrimination against those who appear foreign. After all, there are loads of illegal Canadians and Irish here. People are always coming from the third world counties. <G>
The law also required that a commission study whether or not the "foreign appearing" were suffering discrimination because of the law and it reported a few years later that sure enough, they were.
On this last point, hardly surprising. After all, the "punishment" (risk, cost) for not checking an obviously-Caucasoid person of apparent American origins is effectively zero, while the punishment for hiring a Mexican who may have slipped over the border and gotten a forged credential is high. (Employers here in California have been penalized for hiring Mexicans whose credentials turned out to be phony...I guess the employer was supposed to have known this by some sort of ESP.) Simpler to avoid hiring Mexicans and other dusky folks. The law of unintended consequences... BTW, I am _not_ a supporter of the Prop. 187 issue in California. Nor do I in any way support the "deputization" of employers as agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. This is comparable to deputizing employers as agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency...though many companies have bowed to pressure from the narcs and "D.A.R.E." lobby and have drug-testing programs, they are not (yet) required by law to test all employees, except in some particular job funcitons, etc. As far as I am concerned, this country has never moved toward the general concept of a "work permit" (permission by the government to get a job), and it is a real danger of this anti-illegal-immigrant hysteria that we will soon see the effective equivalent of "work permits." This will of course give the authorities even more power. We're getting closer and closer to the world of "The Shockwave Rider." --Nicky Halflinger HOW TO MAKE A PIPE BOMB: "Buy a section of metal water pipe 1/2 by 6 inches long, threaded on both ends. Buy two metal caps to fit. These are standard items in hardware stores. Drill a 1/16th hole in the center of the pipe. This is easy with a good drill bit. Hanson is a good brand to use. Screw a metal cap tightly on one end. Fill the pipe to within 1/2 inch of the top with black powder. Do not pack the powder. Don't even tap the bottom of the pipe to make it settle. You want the powder loose. For maximum explosive effect, you need dry, fine powder sitting loose in a very rigid container." (more information at http://sdcc13.ucsd.edu/~m1lopez/pipe.html, or by using search engines)