Cato Daily Dispatch for October 24, 2003
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Wal-Mart Charged with Immigrant Work ViolationsSenate Moves to End Cuba Travel Ban
Senate Committee: Pre-war Iraq Intelligence 'Sloppy'
Wal-Mart Charged with Immigrant Work Violations
"Evidence including recordings indicates that Wal-Mart had direct knowledge of immigration violations involving its cleaning contractors at stores across the country, federal law enforcement sources said," according to the Associated Press.
"Federal agents raided Wal-Mart's headquarters and 60 of its stores across the nation Thursday, arresting more than 300 illegal workers in an immigration crackdown at the world's biggest retailer."
In "Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States", Dan Griswold, associate director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, argues that it is time to recognize the contribution that Mexican immigrants make to America's economic prosperity by legally recognizing those who wish to work in the United States. "Contrary to common objections, evidence does not suggest that a properly designed system of legal Mexican migration will unleash a flood of new immigrants to the United States, hurt low-skilled Americans, burden taxpayers, create an unassimilated underclass, encourage lawbreaking, or compromise border security."
Senate Moves to End Cuba Travel Ban
According to the Miami Herald, "The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted 59-36 to effectively end restrictions on Americans traveling to the island.
"In language identical to a House version passed last month, the Senate voted to block any government spending to enforce restrictions on travel to Cuba as part of a $90 billion spending bill for the Transportation and Treasury departments."
Proponents of sanctions against Cuba often claim that they encourage democratic reform; however, despite several decades of economic isolation from the U.S., Cuba remains a communist dictatorship with no end in sight. In "Report from Havana: Time for a Reality Check on U.S. Policy toward Cuba", Cato Research Fellow Jonathan Clarke and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow William Ratliff write that "the United States could help improve Cuba's poor human rights record and reveal Fidel Castro's regime as the main source of Cuba's economic troubles by lifting the trade and investment embargo, restoring the right of Americans to travel to Cuba, and rejecting any current or proposed official aid to groups inside Cuba."
Senate Committee: Pre-war Iraq Intelligence 'Sloppy'
The Washington Post reports that "the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is preparing a blistering report on prewar intelligence on Iraq that is critical of CIA Director George J. Tenet and other intelligence officials for overstating the weapons and terrorism case against Saddam Hussein, according to congressional officials.
"The committee staff was surprised by the amount of circumstantial evidence and single-source or disputed information used to write key intelligence documents -- in particular the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate -- summarizing Iraq's capabilities and intentions, according to Republican and Democratic sources."
Writing for Cato in "Building Leverage in the Long War: Ensuring Intelligence Community Creativity in the Fight against Terrorism", former chief of the CIA's Strategic Assessments Group James Harris lays out a new intelligence strategy for fighting the war on terror. "In the war ahead, the adaptable nature of the adversary will demand an equally agile U.S. intelligence effort," he writes. "More resources and better human intelligence will help. But an agile intelligence community will require something else: that the intelligence community at last dispense with the internal barriers that stifle communications and collaboration. Building an agile intelligence capability will require that internal communications improve, that robust and perhaps formal alliances with external centers of expertise be constructed, and that a genuine multidisciplinary analytic effort blossom and achieve a creative flair that is not typical of bureaucratic enterprises."
Christopher Kilmer, editor, ckilmer@cato.org
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