Shikha Dalmia,[Email] an immigrant from India who writes for Reason Magazine, writes about the Chertoff crackdown, in which she seems to be following Mickey Kaus's theory that the Administration is trying to promote amnesty by making crops rot in the fields:

Curiously, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who joined Chertoff in announcing the crackdown, doesn't deny any of this. "We do not have the workers our economy needs to keep growing," he readily admits.

So why drive out the workers we have? Employer sanctions have been on the books for years. Why enforce them if there are no upsides for national security—only downsides for the economy?

One explanation is that the administration is hoping that this campaign will prove to Congress how much the economy depends on undocumented workers and force it to once again tackle comprehensive immigration reform. Reason Magazine - All Politics, No PrincipleAugust 28, 2007

However, she thinks there's an even worse motive—the Republicans are pandering to the wishes of...the American people! Yes, they're doing this because voters like it!

The only plausible reason is that the administration has not just abandoned rational immigration reform, which would be understandable under the circumstances. It has actually made a conscious decision to embrace its opposite to win back its lost base before next year's elections. In short, its immigration policy now is driven neither by conviction, nor the needs of the economy—but naked political calculation, even if that involves targeting "willing employers" and "willing foreign workers," the very victims of that policy.

That is a new low.

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