The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, March 22.
True to its focus on keeping down costs, Wal-Mart got off cheap by settling a federal immigration complaint for $11 million – or less than an hour’s sales.
For the government, the money was a mere bonus to the real prize – a symbolic victory over the nation’s largest retailer in a case involving the wholesale use of illegal workers as janitors.
The settlement, announced Friday, ends a case that began with a dramatic flourish 17 months ago with the arrest of more than 300 immigrants at 60 Wal-Mart stores nationwide.
Just as the $11 million settlement is but a drop in the corporation’s ocean of profits, the workers arrested were plucked from an enormous sea of 10 million illegal aliens who live in the United States today.
But rather than turn its back on the rampant illegal employment of immigrant labor, the government is obligated to send a message. And that message is all the more effective for the government’s pursuit of a big target and success in securing a settlement described as four times the size of the previous record.
If the news causes employers everywhere to sit up and sweat, bravo. And that pertains to those who use help supplied by outside contractors, as was the case with Wal-Mart.
The seemingly unchecked illegal immigration across our borders is one byproduct of the choice by countless American businesses to break employment law.
And with terrorists seeking breakdowns in our defenses, decisions driven by greed have more implications than on a company’s bottom line.
That fact is underscored by the federal agency that announced the settlement with Wal-Mart – the Department of Homeland Security.
(c) 2005, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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