MEXICANS IN THE RECORD BOOKS

I see that the Bucks County PA Recorder of Deeds is under attack in the media and in communication to the Board of Commissioners. The complaint is being brought by a New Jersey company called Foveonics, located in Toms River. As usual with complaints about government contracting, there is a hint of pay-to-play unrequited love, not to mention maladroit procedure. Someone needs to rethink meeting with unhappy contractors at County GOP headquarters. This may seem damning, but given that the HQ is literally across the street from the county administration building, it easy to see what happened.

But the central issue is that a company engaged in important government document work hires non-English speakers who appear to those working with them to be illegal aliens. The complaint alleges that the Recorder of Deeds asked, “...Why Foveonics had Mexicans running around putting books back incorrectly and scanning microfilm,” and whether “they were here legally.” Both the Recorder and a County Commissioner who was also present deny saying this.

My question is, why wouldn’t they have asked that? According to the Bucks County Courier Times, the premier press organ of the area, “Whichever company is hired, the contract calls for the creation of an index management system to include all recorded documents and indexes from the years 1684 to 1980, according to to the county. Approximately 1 million images from books and microfilm are to be scanned.” This, in the immortal words of our Vice President, “Is a big *#&@ing deal!” At least it’s a big deal to anyone wanting to buy a house or property in Bucks County. It’s also a big deal to Historians and other scholars who will want to refer to accurate records of our past. Try doing that with deed records rendered into a puzzle by workers whose last employment was cutting into agave plants with a machete.

We are at a position now where you might get into legal difficulty for hiring people who one strongly suspects are here illegally, but you can also end up in court for trying not to hire illegal aliens. If Bucks County officials had a concern about the legal status of contract workers, why not insist that the contractor take steps to demonstrate their legal status? Is it against the law to ask? Perhaps it is. US Senator Menendez claimed that he had no way of verifying the legal status of an illegal alien child molester on his staff. Of course, he never tried either.

This is an example of what some call Anarco-tyranny; a state in which the government actually turns a blind eye to dysfunction while punishing the upright. Try running a business, and the government is prepared to tax, regulate and prosecute you. But sneak into the country and take jobs from the natives, and the government grants you amnesty.

Finally, what about the old saw that Illegals just do work that Americans won’t do. With unemployment running at 7.9 percent in Pennsylvania, I’m sure there are plenty of local Americans who are more than capable of accurately and literately recording our heritage for the future.

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In an other local news, Congressman Fitzpatrick has introduced a bill before the House to better record and share the identities of all our lunatics in order to prevent them from buying firearms. Given his concern, I wonder if this information might also be shared with Boards of Election around our great country. Then, might we try to get our laws changed back to bar the certifiably insane from voting into office other people of their ilk? Just a thought.

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