Someone in the federal establishment has a perfect sense of the sublime. He or she caused the U. S. Immigration and Customs services to raid the Little Rock Country Club last week and arrest 11 immigrant employees, illegal aliens almost certainly, because they did not have good citizenship papers. Some had been working there or in the neighborhood for many years.
They are being held in the Pulaski County Jail, where scores of violent predators charged with felonies are being turned away because there is no room. The state Board of Pardons and Paroles this week declared an emergency so that hundreds of prison inmates can be released early to accommodate the huge backlog of criminals waiting to see the inside of county jail cells or the penitentiary. But the waiters and greenskeepers at the LRCC are safely in bondage.
Last year, the arrest of 199 illegal immigrant workers at the Petit Jean poultry plant at Arkadelphia, separating 30 children from their parents, gave people in that community a new perspective on the immigration issue. Gov. Huckabee denounced the raid. Unless our knowledge of the locker room and the men’s grill at the LRCC is badly amiss, there have been many maledictions there about illegal aliens soaking up their taxes.
In a way, the LRCC raid is a microcosm of this burning issue. It is the business class that has reaped the rewards of the vast influx of hard-working people who have poured across our borders looking for low-wage jobs. It may take a few more bucks now to get the tables bused and the fairways manicured at the CC.
