Editorial: Drive-through immigration

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007 | 7:29 a.m.

Immigration officials raided 11 Reno-area McDonald's restaurants last week and the offices of the franchise owner, hauling away 54 people and a cache of payroll documents. Immigration lawyers and civil rights advocates fear this is a sign of what is to come to Southern Nevada.

"This is something that's not going to go away," Las Vegas immigration attorney Peter Ashman told reporter Timothy Pratt in Monday's Las Vegas Sun.

Rex Velasquez, chairman of the local chapter of an association of immigration attorneys, added, "since immigration reform failed ... this is going to become a way of life here."

The raid culminated a five-month investigation that started after local law enforcement officers investigating a complaint of identity theft tipped federal agents to the possibility of illegal immigrants working at McDonald's. Activists are now protesting the federal action and threatening boycotts of Northern Nevada businesses. Meanwhile, the country is still no closer to a solution for immigration.

Since the raid, immigration officials have deported a handful and let more than half of the remaining suspects go free, pending a hearing on their status, for un specified humanitarian reasons. An immigration official said federal agents worked with Washoe County's Department of Social Services to provide care for the children of detainees.

Rounding up a bunch of low-wage workers at fast-food restaurants hardly seems worth the effort, much less the expense, but that sums up the nation's failed immigration policy. After Congress failed to overhaul immigration law this year, the government has embarked on a campaign of building fences and staging high-profile raids to bust and deport poor people. That is nothing more than an absurd waste of time and money.

Raids like the one on the McDonald's restaurants are becoming common and should be a wake-up call for Congress. Congress should take up the law again and find a way for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in America who haven't broken any other laws a way to earn legal status. It is beyond time this broken policy is fixed.