Illiegal immigrants helping build the border fence

Doesn't get much more ironic than that... [ed. note - I actually had this post ready last Friday, just never got around to posting it. My bad...] SAN DIEGO -- A Southern California fence-building company and two executives pleaded guilty Thursday to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and agreed to pay a combined penalty of $5 million. The executives could also go to prison. The penalty is one of the biggest fines ever imposed in an immigration case, and the case represents a rare instance in which prosecutors brought criminal charges over the hiring of illegal immigrants. Golden State Fence Co. will pay $4.7 million. Mel Kay, 64, the company's founder, chairman and president, will forfeit $200,000, and Michael McLaughlin, 42, a manager in the company's Oceanside office, will pay $100,000. Illegal immigrants building a fence to keep illegal immigrants out of US... I guess you really can hire illegals for any job... literally... any job. What the article doesn't mention is that this is the fourth time this company has been cited for hiring illegal immigrants, so I'm not sure what's worse... that the company had to be fined 4 times or that the government hired them knowing they already been fined 3 other times.

Study says 272,000 illegal immigrants live in San Diego, Imperial, and Riverside counties

That's it? I'd have figured it'd be a lot more than that. NORTH COUNTY -- According to a new study, an estimated 272,000 illegal immigrants are living in San Diego, Imperial and southern Riverside counties, a figure that translates to nearly 7 percent of the region's 4 million residents. While the percentage of illegal immigrants remained in the single digits, their numbers are rising rapidly, according to the study. The number of illegal immigrants living in San Diego and Imperial counties rose 38 percent; in southern Riverside County, the number rose 18 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to the study commissioned by the American Immigration Law Foundation, a nonprofit in Washington that supports legal immigration. Those percentage in population increase sound right, but only 272,000 in those 3 counties? Imperial and Riverside counties are HUGE (over 16,000 square miles of SoCal) and some of the fastest growing areas as far as building expansion. And with San Diego and Imperial counties actually bordering Mexico, 272,000 illegal immigrants must be an extremely conservative estimate. The numbers are based on this study breaking down illegals per Congressional District. The methodology is at the bottom and says that they relied heavily on US Census Bureau stats. So basically it's a huge underestimation.