While this situation is pretty screwed up, I find it more than a little amusing, as I always do when I see businesses of any size finding illegal practices, whether for “cost efficiency” or corner cutting purposes, coming back to bite them on the derriere.

Illegal immigrants who worked at Café Express in Houston and two other cities in Texas have sued the chain and Houston law firm Boyar & Miller P.C. for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud and other allegations related to the filing of employment certification paperwork.

According to the lawsuit, filed in Dallas Country District Court, Boyar & Miller and Café Express, a unit of Wendy’s International Inc., missed a 2001 deadline to file paperwork that could have allowed the illegal immigrants to become U.S. citizens. Wendy’s was also named in the suit.

First, the Wendy’s subsidiary had criminal aliens working on their payroll before some dimwit politicians tampered with our immigration laws to begin with, setting a filing deadline to grant legal status to illegal immigrants — basically trespassers, if you want to get technical — based on employer sponsorship.

Second, they subtracted money from these criminal aliens’ paychecks every week to cover the necessary representation by an American law firm.

Third, the law firm screwed the pooch by failing to file the documentation they were required by their clients to file by the deadline.

Fourth, even after the legal eagles missed the deadline, their paychecks continued to be debited for the representation they weren’t receiving.

Fifth, the Wendy’s unit, Cafe Express, took what they saw to be their only recourse and fired the criminal aliens involved.

My own feelings are mixed, here:

A) I don’t believe that people who aren’t even in this country, let alone working, legally should be entitled to sue in our courts, but,

B) Seeing as Cafe Express, and by extension Wendy’s, had these illegals on their payroll prior to any sponsorship filing legislation, knowing that doing so violated federal law, and

C) Failed to meet obligations for which they’d been taking these peoples’ money every week,

I believe that both Cafe Express and Wendy’s should get it up the kazoo, big time — there need to be both heavy monetary penalties and the folks who knowingly hired the criminal aliens need to go to jail, but at the same time I see no reason to allow the aliens involved to sue in our court system. I believe the law firm that shirked their obligations needs to pay some kind of price for failing to discharge duties for which they were, while not producing, continuing to accept fees, and that the criminal aliens involved need to be sent packing. After all, at the end of the day, the fact remains that they knew up front that they were here illegally.

Basically, that whole sorry lot needs a good, solid slapping down.

It will be both interesting and, to me, highly entertaining to see how this mess develops….