Bush Admin cracking down on illegal workers

From the NY Times, we learn today that the Bush Administration is cracking down on illegal workers by requiring federal contractors to verify that their employees are legally allowed to work in this country.

President Bush has ordered federal contractors to participate in the Department of Homeland Security’s electronic system for verifying the immigration status of their workers, greatly expanding the reach of the administration’s crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Naturally, this is not that popular with employers.

The order expands the E-Verify program, which has been the target of criticism and lawsuits by employers’ groups and advocates for immigrants who say the Social Security database it draws upon to check workers’ status is riddled with errors that could lead to legal workers’ being fired or rejected for employment.

It's funny, I have long been under the impression that one of the basic, bedrock principles of conservatism is that excessive governmental regulation of business is bad, and that conservative politicians should either minimize the amount of regulation that is imposed on business, and, ideally, remove as much regulation as possible. But here we have a conservative Republican president imposing highly onerous regulations on many businesses. Health, safety, and environmental regulations restrict a business' freedom and impose costs, but those also have clear benefits. This kind of regulation does not have an immediate benefit, and places restrictions not just on how a business conducts its operations, but on the even more fundamental issue of who it can hire. That's going to have a seriously negative impact on many business' competitive advantage.

Oh, the irony. I'm just waiting for Democrats to start hammering home this point: Republicans are now the ones imposing excessive regulatory burdens on businesses.