From: Vincent Chiarello (e-mail him)

For those intending to reside in the Washington, D.C. area in the future, I would suggest that moving to anywhere but  Maryland.

Its tax structure is confiscatory, and for that reason the environment for attracting business is no better. Recently, the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, actually participated in a commercial aired in Maryland inviting businesses to move to Texas from Maryland and avoid the taxes and regulations of the Terrapin State.

 But if Maryland is bad on taxes, it is worse, if that is possible, on non-enforcement of immigration law. Under a Democratic Party regime which over the past few decades has established sanctuary cities and counties, Governor Martin O’Malley and his minions have decreed that no one will be arrested for illegal presence and deported, but a recent event has taken that one step further: the demand by unions that non-enforcement of current immigration law be included in as part of their working contract. 

Trash haulers in Montgomery County, the most affluent of Maryland’s suburbs, went on strike a week ago. The cause: the workers and union’s stated belief that  the company, Potomac Disposal, ...”tried to intimidate them during labor negotiations...with threats of immigration checks.” (Emphasis mine.) [Montgomery County trash collectors might end picket, go back to work, by Krista Brick and St. John Barned-Smith, Gazette.net, September 11, 2013]

The workers, almost all Hispanic, were supported by a union affiliated with Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Casa de Maryland, a state and federally supported organization that is nothing but a propaganda mouthpiece for amnesty for illegal aliens.

When told that federal law insists that workers “update the I-9 forms,” the predecessor of the E-Verify Program, their union representative, Jhunio (no typo) Medina, claimed that the workers were “threatened by the I-9 forms.” Such a statement would seem logical in Montgomery Country, where County Executive, Ike Leggett, and the entire Montgomery County Council have opposed enforcing immigration law and implementation of the E-Verify Program. One must also wonder if Potomac Disposal is totally innocent in hiring illegal aliens, but actions have consequences.

De minimus non curat lex – (the law does not deal with trifling matters) Perhaps that was once true, but such strictures do not apply to the officials of the State of Maryland whose  disregard of immigration law enforcement makes a mockery of the rule of law.

Chiarello is a retired Foreign Service Officer whose tours included U.S. embassies in Latin America and Europe. See Vincent Chiarello's previous letters to VDARE.com.