Alterior Motives

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a federal judge in San Francisco has rule to keep the feds from prosecuting businesses for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. However, they would only be prosecuting those businesses that did not immediately fire an employees that did not have social security numbers that match numbers in the federal database. The judge has placed an injunction on the current "no-match law" so that a suit filed by labor unions will have time to be heard. Apparently the judge feels that this "no-match law" will have severe consequences on many legitimate California employees.

The reasoning of this judge seems to be flawed, because legitimate workers should have nothing to fear from a governmental background check. It seems to me that the real motive of this judge is to protect the California economy. It is a well known fact a crackdown on illegal immigration will have serious effects on industries like the agriculture. We're talking about a multi-billion dollar industry that could hardly function without illegal immigration. I may be being a little cynical, but it seems to be that this judge has more on his mind than the protection of "legitimate" California workers.