Walt at Random

If you listen to public radio and your station carries the California Report, you may have heard this already. Otherwise…

I’m not providing the link for what should be obvious reasons, but there’s a charming website that fingers companies suspected of hiring illegal aliens.

Want to smear a company or individual? The site accepts anonymous accusations. You just have to make a case that the host considers plausible, and it sounds like the bar is pretty low. You know, someone who looks Mexican and doesn’t speak perfect English and can’t instantly produce a Social Security card…if it walks like an illegal alien and talks like an illegal alien, well…

Here’s the really charming part: To get a company or employer name removed from the site, the host requires absolute proof that there are no illegal aliens, and suggests hiring a private detective agency to do a full internal audit.

In other words, you’re guilty until proven innocent, and the basis for accusation is “sounds plausible to me,” while the basis for innocence is [expensive] proof. Of course, you can always sue the host, if you have a few tens of thousands of dollars handy, since it would have to be a slander-style suit, difficult to win in the U.S. (and the host could always claim that they’re just offering a site, ol’ Anonymous actually provided the content…so go sue Anonymous)

I wonder whether the host has a handy sheet of paper lising 205 vile employers engaged in unamerican hiring, or maybe 57, or maybe… [Oh, go look it up.]

No, I’m not calling for the site to be shut down. Just don’t ask me to shake hands with anyone involved with the site; they don’t make soap strong enough.

This work by Walt Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 11:59 am and is filed under Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.