Politics & Power Quote by Steve Israel

Steve Israel’s line is built to sound like enforcement without sounding like cruelty: a neatly symmetrical indictment of two culprits, the undocumented worker and the employer, arranged to imply balance and common sense. The phrasing matters. “Disrespected” frames immigration not as an economic system or a humanitarian dilemma, but as a moral breach - a matter of civic manners. That word quietly shifts the argument from policy outcomes to character, turning law into a cultural boundary: who belongs, who plays by the rules.

The second move is strategic triangulation. By pairing border-crossers with “businesses that hire,” Israel nods to a longstanding critique across the spectrum: labor demand is the engine, and employers often operate with wink-and-nod impunity. Yet the sentence also dodges the deeper indictment that would follow from its own logic: if employers are central, then immigration is not merely “lawlessness” but a regulated labor pipeline that politicians and industries have tolerated because it’s profitable.

Contextually, this is the rhetoric of an era when Democrats sought a narrow ledge between base politics and border politics: tough on enforcement, but not overtly nativist; pro-worker, but not openly pro-amnesty. The subtext is accountability, but the real intent is legitimacy. It reassures anxious voters that the speaker recognizes resentment about “rule-breaking,” while gesturing toward workplace enforcement so the message can be sold as fairness rather than punishment. It’s a slogan-shaped sentence that keeps the system intact by blaming its most visible participants.