Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo and all their immigrant-bashing friends must be apoplectic right now. A federal judge ruled against the Bush plan to target illegal immigrants:
A U.S. federal court judge on Wednesday blocked a key part of the Bush administration's stepped-up efforts to crack down on illegal immigrant workers and those who employ them.
Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction against a program that would force employers to verify Social Security numbers and fire workers whose numbers did not match official records.
The federal program developed by the Department of Homeland Security is at the heart of a new crackdown on the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, after Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
But the "no-match letter" program was challenged in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO and other labor groups claiming it was unlawful and hurt all workers, including legal ones affected by errors in the data base.
