Federal Government Abandons No Match Rule - For Now

No one really liked the government's crack down on illegal immigration through the no-match system.

And now the Bush Administration has thought better of it. The New York Times is reporting:

The Bush administration will suspend its legal defense of a new rule issued in August to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants, conceding a hard-fought opening round in a court battle over a central measure in its strategy to curb illegal immigration, according to government papers filed late Friday in federal court.

Instead, the administration plans to revise the rule to try to meet concerns raised by a federal judge and issue it again by late March, hoping to pass court scrutiny on the second try. The rule would have forced employers to fire workers within 90 days if their Social Security information could not be verified.

Here's hoping that the government just drops this initiative all together.

PS