RICOing Illegal Hiring At The Supreme Court

Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate, has an item about RICO [1]and illegals which was argued before the Supreme Court [2]by Howard Foster. [3]

The case is Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Williams, Shirley, et al. [4]

The question that was exercising the Court is this: are the employers of illegals full time criminals, or is this illegal immigrant hiring scheme, complete with the provision of fake Social Security cards just a sideline in their legitimate business.

Lithwick speaks admiringly of the defence lawyer's forensic skills, particularly

the amazing claim that handing out fake Social Security cards is somehow central to Mohawk's routine business purposes—and thus not a separate illegal enterprise—because "to do our business, we have to have ID cards … in order to fill out forms … required by immigration law." Thus, providing fake documents seems to "allow us to do our business."RICO-mania. By Dahlia Lithwick [5]

In my non-lawyer way, I summed up [6] the arguments for considering this kind of thing organized crime like this, in an article [7]on the Tyson case:

RICO is a brutal weapon. It has been misused in the past, for example to attack political dissent.

But these suits are legitimate:

1.A crime has been committed. If Tyson is guilty, they’ve violated the Immigration and Nationality Act in order to make money. The technical name for this is “enterprise crime” and of course, it’s “Organized Crime” even if they don’t have guns.

2. Tyson made money from it. Tyson has 120,000 employees. (Every dollar an hour that they can lower their average wages is worth roughly a quarter of a billion dollars annually.)

3. American workers lost money. (See above.)

4.They’re suing.

We at VDARE.COM wish them luck

Oddly enough, the Wall Street Journal [8]didn't, but you can't please everyone.