Herman Cain’s Sour Note on Immigration for Restauranteurs

Mary Sanchez writes for the Kansas City Star:

One could forgive Herman Cain for grinning like a Cheshire cat during Tuesday night’s GOP debate.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry attacked Mitt Romney, calling him a hypocrite because undocumented workers for a landscaping service once worked on his lawn. A couple guys with leaf blowers?

Cain went unscathed.

Yet the pizza king led the National Restaurant Association as CEO and president. You’d be hard-pressed to find an industry more dependent on immigrant labor — field to kitchen, [documented or undocumented].

It’s why the group supports comprehensive reform, workplace enforcement and border security, but also “a path to legalization for many currently undocumented employees.”

For all the righteous GOP talk about “enforce the laws we have now,” the association makes an important distinction: Current laws don’t provide adequate workers for our labor needs, not legally.

That’s a far more nuanced reply than its former leader has been providing.

Cain, you might have heard, popped off his mouth last weekend. He wasn’t satisfied to call for a cost-prohibitive and geographically unfeasible fence at the southern border.

He said it should be electrified. Zap the dishwashers?

He’s backed off a bit, claiming it was in jest. Read more…

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