A Year Without a Mexican
Undocumented workers were the economic lifeblood of small towns like Postville, Iowa—until the immigration cops showed up.
It all began with the whir and flicker of helicopters on May 12, 2008, an incongruous sound in a tiny Iowa town tucked amid cornfields. All over Postville, people craned their necks from orderly lawns, phones rang, and gossip flew. Reverend Stephen Brackett, the town's Lutheran pastor, was on his day off and didn't hear the helicopters at first, but when his church secretary called to tell him something unusual was happening, he at once suspected what it was. For years, there were rumors that the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant at the edge of town was under scrutiny by immigration authorities. Later that morning, Brackett's wife called with confirmation: She'd spotted two helicopters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in jackets and flak vests down by the slaughterhouse.
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Southern Inhospitality: Playing the Immigration Issue
Congress may be deadlocked on immigration, but municipalities across the nation are working to make life as difficult as possible for illegals.
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The Immigration Hot Potato
Globalists and nativists square off over reform plans.
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What Does the Public Want on Immigration?
Sorting out the current political debate
Brackett quickly drove to the hulking plant, which had been cordoned off by scores of ICE agents, state troopers, and sheriff's deputies. The authorities soon began to emerge from the building escorting workers, hundreds in all, and many in shackles. Mostly Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants, they were loaded onto white buses emblazoned with the Homeland Security logo, and taken away for detention and trial. Watching from the safety of his car, the bespectacled, redheaded pastor knew the day would mark a low point in Postville's history. "It's like saying we'll take the 15-plus years of progress that we've made trying to gel this community together," Brackett told me, "and overnight we'll throw that away."
Indeed, the 389 arrests eliminated more than one-third of the meatpacker's workforce and nearly one-fifth of the town's population. It also prompted an exodus of hundreds more Hispanic residents who were either afraid of being targeted or simply opted to escape the town's inevitable tailspin. Postville's businesses began to suffer almost immediately. Even the Wal-Mart in Decorah, a half-hour away, called Postville mayor Robert Penrod with concerns about the economic impact. Penrod, who stepped down as mayor this month, can recall an eerie calm settling over the town, as though it were part of some Twilight Zone episode. "Before, it was all hustle bustle, and you'd see people walking up and down the streets and driving and listening to music," he told me. "Then all of a sudden, boom! I mean nobody was walking the streets."
Harder to quantify, but no less real, was the damage to an unusual multicultural experiment in America's heartland. It had begun back in 1987 when ultra-Orthodox Jews came to Postville to turn the defunct Hygrade plant into the nation's largest kosher meatpacker, which promptly became a beacon for immigrant labor. Postville proudly dubbed itself "Hometown to the World," and despite the company's recent attempts to recruit legal replacement workers from as far away as Palau, the motto has acquired an ironic ring. Ten months after the raid, the meatpacker, having declared bankruptcy, was operating at half-steam with a ragtag assembly of workers, and the town's economy remains a shambles. Back in October, Mayor Penrod told CNN that Postville was living a "freaky nightmare." And it still isn't over.
Postville's troubles reflect the collateral damage wrought by an escalation in workplace sweeps over the past several years. As part of a comprehensive multiyear strategy to increase interior enforcement, ICE sought to eliminate the "jobs magnet" that attracts undocumented immigrants from across the border.
The agency reported 5,184 workplace arrests in fiscal 2008, more than seven times the 2004 figure. Its raids have included others on the scale of Postville—sweeps resulting in the dislocation of entire immigrant communities. Last October, ICE arrested 330 workers at the Columbia Farms poultry plant in Greenville, South Carolina. That came on the heels of a massive sweep of Howard Industries, an electronics maker in Laurel, Mississippi, where agents netted some 600 workers. The year before, 300 employees were picked up at a Massachusetts leather manufacturer, and raids in late 2006 on Swift meatpacking plants in Nebraska and five other states led to 1,300 arrests.
These high-profile busts, former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff explained, were meant to remove incentives to illegal immigration. "What is the economic magnet that is bringing people into the country to work illegally? The answer is jobs," he said at a press briefing last February. The magnet metaphor was no accident. In the view of the immigration bureaucracy, these factories comprise a mosaic of magnets that lure the undocumented from poor countries. Because the raids inevitably get big play in Spanish-language media, ICE officials know their get-tough approach will reach its intended audience—on both sides of the border.
The tactic would seem to have little chance of surviving in the current presidency were there not some evidence that it has worked. Since 2005, according to an October report by the Pew Hispanic Center, the number of people entering the country illegally has declined to about 500,000 a year, on average, from about 800,000 during the four previous years. While the faltering US economy—particularly in housing and construction—has certainly contributed, politically powerful immigration foes credit the ICE raids for turning the tide.
To be sure, on the campaign trail, then-candidate Obama derided the workplace raids as publicity stunts. Speaking to an anchor from the Spanish-language Univision TV network, he said he would focus on targeting exploitative employers and promised to act on comprehensive immigration reform. But on February 24, one month after President Obama took office, ICE raided an engine factory in Bellingham, Washington, where agents arrested 28 undocumented workers.
Facing criticism from the left, new Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano promised an investigation, insisting she hadn't known of the raid in advance. Whatever becomes of that probe, last month's raid underscores the difficulty of navigating between opponents of heavy-handed enforcement and immigration foes who agitate about undocumented foreigners taking American jobs—an old argument that could gain new appeal as hundreds of thousands of workers receive pink slips.
Supposing ICE's strategy is indeed effective; there's a separate question policymakers may want to ponder: How have these raids affected the communities involved? The woes of the arrested immigrants are well documented: families torn apart, workers caught in bureaucratic limbo or slapped with souped-up identity-theft charges. But less examined are the impacts on towns and cities that the workers and their families leave behind, and on the Americans whose lives and livelihoods were intertwined with those of the newcomers.
Like many Midwestern communities, Postville was historically at the mercy of the up-and-down agricultural economy. Locals here haven't forgotten the dark 1980s, when a farm crisis plunged families into debt and set the stage for a bloodletting of population from rural America. As Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Cougar Mellencamp tried to drum up support with the Farm Aid concerts beginning in 1985, places like Postville were dying. Adding insult to injury, big-box retailers were gnawing at Main Street business. Small cafés, sporting-goods stores, and meat lockers were going extinct, not to mention general stores—those Midwestern institutions with their pickle barrels, rough wooden floors, and panned candy on the counter.
Pastor Brackett remembers visiting town in the 1980s with his wife, Susan—a Postville native—and seeing the same houses for sale year after year. "It seemed like every time we came to visit, either another mainstay of the business community had closed or there were rumors that they were going to close," he said.
Postville's revival began with the 1987 reopening of the old meatpacking plant, shuttered since the 1970s. Its new operators were members of a Hasidic Jewish sect known as Lubavitchers. Founder Aaron Rubashkin, a Brooklyn butcher, quickly built Agriprocessors—just "Agri" to the locals—into the nation's largest kosher meatpacker, origin of brands like Aaron's Best, Rubashkin's, and Supreme Kosher. At its peak, Agri controlled 60 percent of the kosher beef market and 40 percent of kosher chicken sales.
At first, the production lines were manned largely by undocumented Eastern European and Russian immigrants, writes Stephen Bloom, an Iowa journalist and author of a book called Postville: a Clash of Cultures in Heartland America. But as the Ukranians, Kazakhstanis, and Russians drifted away, Agri came to rely on a ready supply of Hispanic labor. Postville became a destination for villagers from rural Guatemalan and Mexican hamlets like El Barril, San Miguel Dueñas, and Aldea del Rosario, where word soon spread of job opportunities in an Iowa town with superficial similarities to their own tight-knit rural communities.
The meatpacker expanded, and by the time of the raid boasted nearly 1,000 employees. Rabbis supervised the slaughter and Lubavitch managers oversaw the business end, while white Iowans found jobs as administrative staffers or floor-level supervisors. But the bulk of the bloody work was done by Guatemalans and Mexicans who processed tens of thousands of chickens, thousands of turkeys, and hundreds of cattle daily. (The Agri arrest figures would have been far higher, in fact, had night-shift workers been present for the raid.)
Before long, the Hispanic influx was revitalizing Postville. By 2001, Reverend Paul Ouderkirk over at St. Bridget's Catholic Church was celebrating a Saturday mass in Spanish and had created a Hispanic ministry to cater to immigrants' spiritual needs. Several Protestant evangelical congregations also sprouted up to accommodate the workers, meeting in halls lent by the Presbyterians or Lutherans.
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There's hope
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi has valiently spoken out against these raids, so there's some real hope that Congress will get to work on real immigration reform this year. Please contact Pelosi, John McCain, and your Congressional representation and encourage them to get moving on this issue.
real reform
By "real immigration reform" I suspect you mean blanket legalization. I disagree. The solution isn't to keep backtracking on our immigration laws. That's what we did in 1986, which is why we're in the situation we are now. A better answer would be to encourage the development of decent economies in Latin America. Legalization would have exactly the opposite effect by eliminating much of the impetus for change and helping to ensure that the status quo goes on.
But, is it KOSHER meth?
Rabbi Herschel's now-infamous 'kosher' meth lab and steakhouse 'blew it' 3 different ways, drugs being manufactured on the property, potentially contaminating any other product such as beef cuts with either the drug or chemicals, very illegal, people without work visas being employed on the premises, very illegal, and finally, in the sense that this was supposed to be a 'kosher' production facility, presumably held to a higher standard of cleanliness and supervision to comply with dietary requirements of orthodox Jews, highly immoral. So, apparently, the place was not being well-managed. It needed to be shut down.
What will the town do for income? Something NOT that, but I had read in a followup story that they had found replacement people to be employed there, who at least had a work visa. Did they also find a replacement rabbi, and a drug dog to check the place, now and then, just to prevent any problems?
Klaatu marachas necktie
The rub
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So here's the rub...I agree that comprehensive immigration reform is needed, but not until regulation, strong enough to strangle the life from abusive business practice, is enacted and the enforcement jobs appropriately filled. Even then, only regular and aggressive diligence will avert the exploitation of inadvertent loopholes, and the intentional exceptions quietly placed by the congress at the behest of lobbyists. Business needs to be castrated...it's "personhood" (14th amendment issue still encumbered by legal/constitutional arguments) rescinded and the individual rights of the immigrant worker protected and assured through proper access to union representation or association with umbrella labor regulation. Business often whines that their capacity to make money is inhibited by such regulation. I believe we see what they meant by our current economic problems. Business, is by nature, predatory, and lacks a sense of moral obligation to the community at large. It serves only the perverse interest of those CEO's and their corporate "gangs" to plunder and pillage with impunity. It is time to take back this country, provide a proper reform of immigration and stem the rampant exploitation heaped upon the interdependent economies of the world. There is a place for immigrant labor, that pays them well, benefits their growth within the goal of a living wage, assures the right path to citizenship when desired, and allows for fair exchange of goods and services in both direction. The standards of safety of the host economy are paramount, and the employment market need exhibit need through a transparent metric. Business has repeatedly demonstrated that it simply cannot be trusted to self regulate itself.
Please just look at wal mart
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Please just look at wal mart they are hiring legal workers within the legal laws and look how they are handling their business. read complaints made by their former employees, its not just the companies that hires illegal need to do some reform, its just the whole America and its cheap consumers.
http://www.consumertesting.org/speak-out/stories/c/scheduling/P25/
towm without mexicans
The Mexicans come to the USA because there are jobs.
It is not their fault they come but the companies the employ them.The pay them less than the legal limit so they can make more profit. Like I said before " We are a religious nation but not a Christian one.
SB
$/hr
The packing plant need not have seached far and wide for workers - it just needed to pay living wages. The reason they couldn't find workers is they were unwilling to pay sufficient wages.
living wage reply
You are correct that the workers were screwed by management but they did it in some ways to themselves. They set up such a low wage structure for themselves and being illegal they could/would not report it. The company took advantage of this and cut the AMERICAN WORKER out of the mix. The American worker would not have stood by while his check was taken BY THE COMPANY to pay for living expences.
I have NO SYMPATHY FOR THOSE WORKERS for they did take MY JOB from me. They came to work, I was let go ! They worked for less and did not complain about conditions. No sympathy for them, only contempt!!
to Neil1017: These workers
to Neil1017:
These workers accepted lower wages because they were in a much more vulnerable position. When one's family is starving, one takes what one can get and does what one needs to do. You are probably somewhat more fortunate, since you obviously had some alternative options that allow you to not petition for your job back at a lower wage, as evidenced by, for example, your access to a computer and the internet. You most likely have someplace to live other than company-provided hovels. You are not living in circumstances that give your employer complete control over your life - for example, you won't be sent to either jail or a place with even fewer jobs if your employer decides they think you're too uppity. You could be fired, but that's the worst they could do. I'm sad you have no ability to envision what it might be like to wear the other's shoes.
Pelosi - lobbyist for Mexico
Pelosi openly condemned I.C.E. for enforcing U.S. immigration law. She lauded illegal immigrants as heroic and disparaged our laws as "un-American."
Everything you need to know about immigration and what to do about it humorously told.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBw1nUlf38I
(Roy Beck and NumbersUSA are the "gumball" heroes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQ
"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent." - economist and ethicist Adam Smith
What Pelosi Said...
She said she finds breaking down doors in the middle of the night to take parents from their children to be "un-American." I have to agree. With limited resources, it makes sense to go after violent criminals, smugglers, and aweful employers like Agriporcessors, not tax-payers, workers, parents.
The groups you support are for the mass expulsion of more than 12,000,000 people and their 5,000,000 US citizen children and regardless of whether you'd like that to happen, it is not going to happen. The opponents of immigration reform don't seem to have a plan B beyond this mass expulsion fantasy.
Pragmatic solutions -- get people in the system and on the books, allow for legal immigration within reasonable limits with rights and visas rather than smugglers and no rights, prioritized enforcement to make our country and our communities safer -- these approaches enjoy popular support in and out of government. Now we just have to get the defenders of the status quo, like NumbersUSA, to move aside so the rest of us can solve this issue.
Really?
Are you really equating Mexican immigrants with nazis? Seriously?
Shannon from Brooklyn
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/home.html
The american way
indenture and enslave, wages and credit for the companystore only. Why blaming the immigrantworkers - blame the management for setting up a racket.
I agree with americanway.
I agree with americanway. These meat packing jobs used to be pay well before "union-busting Ronnie". Blame the employers if they were paying a living wage and benefits there would be no shortage of legal workers to take these jobs.
American workers need to get
American workers need to get together, UNITE, form unions and make them strong, and relegate the memories of "union busting Ronnie" to the trash heap where those memories belong. The employers have no regard for the people who really do all the work and should get most of the blame for this. George W. Bush was a horrible president, but the whole MESS was started by the "saint" of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, his stupid reliance on laissez faire economics, and his "trickle-down" economics (which trickled UP or stayed put in the pockets of the poor). Union members need to step up and not let themselves be "busted" again.
Fewer Complaints, More Solutions
If you want solutions, let's end the fantasy of mass expulsion. If you want to end illegal immigration, support legal immigration within reasonable limits, which we don't have now. If people had realistic ways to come legally or become legal once they were here, they would do it and it would give us more control over immigration, more people would be in the system rather than floating outside of it, employers would have a harder time cheating immigrants or non-immigrants, and we would have more people playing by the rules of taxes, labor laws, immigration laws, OSHA, etc.
The opponents of legal immigration are standing in the way of an orderly system that makes the black market obsolete. Then they rail against the illegalities, which I find hypocritical.
Immigration is happening, we want it to be legal, immigrants want it to be legal, and the opponents of legal immigration are preventing reform.
Why people are coming illegally
Why does no one ever talk about encouraging reform in the countries from which illegal immigrants come? The fundamental reason why people come here illegally is that their own countries are largely dysfunctional relative to the U.S. Why not start pursuing a solution that gets to the root of the problem?
No sympathy
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Sorry, no sympathy here for anyone involved. The meatpacking company knew what they were doing was illegal. The wetbacks sure knew they were here illegally. The landlords knew they were renting to illegals, etc., etc., etc.
If I were an ICE Agent In Charge of one of these raids, there would be no one left in town when I turned off the lights. Owners, managers, workers, landlords, priests, ministers, anyone and everyone helping illegals would go to jail.
I realize this would be very expensive, so I have a cheaper solution;
Step 1: Bring our National Guard troops back from the God-forsaken middle east. Step 2: Line them up on the Mexican border, shoulder to shoulder.
Step 3: Kill anything that crosses that border.
Step 4: Go to each Social Security office and each welfare office. Arrest anyone who doesn't speak English.
Problem solved.
I agree Illegals would not
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I agree Illegals would not be here if they were not protected by American Corporations
Illegal means just that It is a crime and whoever is involved is just as guilty as the illegal Send them home anyway ya can
Big Dave is not an American,
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Big Dave is not an American, he is a Fascist with very little understanding of modern day US law.
Now aint the time for your tears
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I've seen a lot about this company over the years. Yet, the tone of this article doesn't sit well with me. The plant revitalized a town and economy by exploiting immigrant workers and not paying a fair wage. Thus the need to bring people in from so far away. Say what you will, but there are plenty of out of work people in this country who should be considered for these types of jobs, but they don't want to be taken advantage of and ripped of while dismembering animal corpses. Employ people close to home and pay them a fair wage and stop this nonsense about crying for people who are part of the problem. I have compassion for a person who comes to this country to work a crappy job because they cannot make a living at home, but they are the reason why there is so much exploitation in the first place. They undercut the local man/woman who demands a fair wage, safe work environment, etc. The illegal immigrants make miserable working conditions and poor wages part of our economy, part of this country. That needs to stop, and this country needs to employ its own. And P.S. Way to go, owner of the plant, it's nice to see some people are still so eager to live up to cultural stereotypes.
Confusing
Earlier in the article it says that the landlords were suffering because there were no renters after the raid. Then it talks about replacement workers living in substandard housing without running water or electric and being forced to pay $475 in rent to the company.
So were the illegals really living well in their own apartments or were they forced to live in barracks like something out of the Grapes of Wrath? Why is this company not paying a living wage? Seems to me the government did the right thing here by stopping this illegal, abusive situation.
Big Dave you are
Big Dave you are entertaining with your biased stand on what is just another example of capatialism at its finest.... similar to wall street Big Dave, do you get the picture or shail I continue to spell it out for you...
Illegal is illegal
As a nation, we MUST defend our border...it is our right AND our responsibility. Citizinship is the most valuable thing we own as a nation...let us not give it away to anyone and everyone who sneaks in looking for low-wage jobs.
We have plenty of US citizens looking for work today. Simply pay a livible wage and you will have more applicants at your door than you will ever need. The solution is simple.
Bottom line: I have no sympathy for a company that wants to save money by paying low wages, and then complains when illegal immigrants are arrested and/or deported....and no sympathy for a town that suffers from the same actions. I think it was all summed up with the statement about the 'local Wal-Mart being concerned about the impact' of removing the illegal workers. When Wal-Mart moves in, that is often the begining of the end for legitimate local businesses and economies alike.
Funny thing is how is it
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Funny thing is how is it illegals are able to make a living wage on their salary and legal workers just can't do without higher wage?
Perhaps if you want the company to give out livable wage, then you should be prepare to pay more for the same food that is on your table.
Simply said: legal workers just can't handle the hard work that illegals are willing to do, they complaint from every bit of little things.
Read some article on wal mart legal workers and they complaint about being emotional and mental abuse working in a grocery store! (from what I can see its better than meat packing plant)
http://www.consumertesting.org/speak-out/stories/c/scheduling/P25/
Yo Big Dave
You forgot Step 5 of your plan: Submit to the fascist authority.
OK, we have illegals. We
OK, we have illegals. We also have cities filled with black, brown, white, and all other people, who are unemployed. We need to find a way to employ OUR citizens in such plants, not find a way to bring in thousands of illegals. What does the illegal trade do?
It undercuts US wages. It allows Mexico to continue its EXTREMELY skewed economic system, in which 5 % of the country is fabulously rich, the rest are poor as can be. If the poor stayed there, there might be a revolution, and wouldn't that be fun.
human rights and immigration
The ICE raid in Postville was tragic and plain mean-spirited. Regarding human rights and immigration, I highly recommend Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid (City Lights Books, 2008) by Joseph Nevins.
Illegal Mexicans
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The employer is unlawfully hiring and benefiting by paying low wages, so why is the employer never prosecuted? They know they are illegal when they hire them and they do their little I-9 song and dance. If we don't want them to come here then prosecute those that hire them. End of story! No jobs for them to come to, then they won't come!
Maybe we are just pretending? How can you want their cheep labor and at the same time not want them here? That's just nuts!
ICE: cold
whenver i read a story like this - and there are far too many -- i flash back to a poll some news orgniazation's web site offered recently. the queston was something like "are race relations better/worse/the same as they were x years ago?" i chuckled and clicked the "the same" box. i know that for some they are worse, especially with that neofascist ICE organization in play. but race relations will remain pathetically the same as long as we refuse to stand up for one another; as long as we remain uninformed; as long as we substitute name-calling and anger for reasoned thought and constructive dialogue; and for as long as we believe anyone who speaks another language doesn't belong here.
i have been a union
i have been a union construction worker for 30 years...Every time I sign up to go to work on a new project I have to show proof of citezenship, s.s.card, drivers license,
birth certificate,union card,etc....I am told that this is the law of the land if you want to get hired you have to do this...even though the forman that is hiring me
some times will be some one I went to school with 30 years ago....how is it then the owners of this meat packing plant did not have to do this?....I`ll say this they broke the law in their hiring practices and probably broke many other labor laws along the way!...The owners if they are legal Americans, then they are bad Americans in that they think the laws that rule us do not apply to them , and the people they are hiring by their illegal practices are illegal immigrants....I am not against legal immigrants but immigration in all countries is regulated by the goverment and limited to people who have skills that that country is in need of....
Having said that I`ve heard the same old sorry arguement from people that illegal immigrants are only taking jobs that Americans don`t want to do....To this I say bull
there are more than enough Americans to do these so called undesireable jobs....The main thing is that they say that they want to get paid a livable wage not what an illegal hiring slave like company that this article talks about wants to pay!....While I know that paying higher wages will lead to higher prices and maybe less profits for owners, what people in this country need to wake up to is that our good paying manufacturing jobs are being all exported to over seas conmpanies all for the sake of profits and the middle class is shrinking smaller and smaller in this country!....And when you say something to these companies about it they will say that it is to assure low prices for the imports they are bringing in.....To this I say bull....I live in this country I want to by goods made in this country by legal tax paying citizens of this country the way it used to be....I am tired of being told by grifter politicians that we need NAFTA and world trading pacts...this is just a ploy to form a one world government of socialists and that is against our constitution and against Americas whole way of life!....I am not an isolationist but we can and need to have more stricter control of immigrants that come here along with tougher control of good jobs being sent overseas so that billion dollar companies can continue to make billions in profits with no benefit to those in this country....Why do people think that so many foreign cars are built in this country nowadays....Because if they are imported they have to pay an import tax so it is more profitable for them to give Americans a job and build them here!....THIS needs to be done in other industries like electronics etc....PEOPLE WAKE UP YOU NEED TO MAKE YOURSELVES HEARD TELL THE POLITICIANS TO GET ON THE BALL,
AND WHENEVER YOU CAN "BUY aMERICAN!"
systemic
The only problem with the declaration that US nationals would work meat packing jobs if the wages were better is that 1) it doesn't appear to be true at $10/hour in this case, and 2) not all low wages are a result of chiseling management. Low wages are part of cost containment, which has been a primary approach to profitability over the last few years. Make that universal, and everyone has an interest in keeping other people's wages low (for cheaper prices) while complaining about their own wages not being higher.
If we want to go down the path of inflating wages across the board to the point that someone might pick up and move from an inner city to a mid-western meat-packing plant as a way of reducing the incentive to hire illegal immigrants, fine, but I doubt it will increase the actual buying power of workers.
did someone put "kosher" and
did someone put "kosher" and "ethics" in the same sentence? now THAT'S funny! why not import Palestinian workers? works great in the Middle East!
Immigration
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Immigration issues don't have political situations. Immigration arises from socio-economic needs on each side of the border.
A truly comprehensive approach requires changes on both sides. One, the US needs to accept the fact that Americans will work only for higher wages and benefits. Efforts to undermine worker pay result in lowered and absent loyalty. We saw this happen in manufacturing plants of the midwest with the decline in the quality of American cars. Two, Mexico needs to re-do its social and political structures so that there is opportunity to develop business and get ahead domestically. That will cut down on: immigration, divided families and communities, and drug violence.
In order to do this, we must individually and together work to see these reforms are enacted. Without them, this vicious cycle will continue and wrsen.
Reply to Story
There are a lot of things that I don't like about our government, but enforcing immigration laws is not one of them. If the United States government would have been doing their jobs (that we, the taxpayers, pay for) at the border for all of these years, with no amnesty every few years for all of the illegals from Mexico, the illegal alien problem in this country would not number in the millions. There are people in foreign countries all across the globe that cannot walk here on foot, and most wait patiently for their opportunity to come to this great country of ours, LEGALLY.
When we turn a blind eye to employers hiring an illegal alien workforce, and are so gleeful to reap the economic "benefits" that trickle down around this kind of illegal activity, should we be upset with the authorities when these violators are caught? The consequences are built in. Should we get all upset with our government when they step in and thwart this kind of illegal activity, in an effort to keep the illegal hiring practices of these employers from becoming a beacon and a safehouse for the tsunami of illegals workers that will be sure to follow, or for enforcing the laws that we ourselves put into place? Would this country be better off if there were no immigration laws? . . . Ever stop and think why there are even immigration laws at all?
The problem of illegal aliens working in this country is an old one. I have drove a truck for around 30 years, about 19 of those years in Chicago. I have delivered to many businesses that have no english speaking people whatsoever, except the one or two americans necessary to communicate english to the public that they do business with, and that don't speak spanish.
I have been to businesses in the deep woods of Wisconsin, only to walk in and the place is full of mexicans . . . the deeply tanned ones with that "deer in the headlights" look, and that don't have a clue where they're really at on the globe. My first thought used to be (when I was yet naive) was "How could you guys possibly find this place?"
One of the "greek" owned restaurants in our area has a "circuit" of illegal mexican busboys and cooks that they rotate continuously to avoid the authorities.
The problem is very widespread in the U.S. The people have stood by for way too long. Instead of getting all mad at Big Brother for stepping in to curb the problem of illegal aliens, we should give them our support. I believe that one solution might be to seize the assets of, and swiftly deport employers that knowingly hire illegals, to serve as an a harsh example to others, and eventually shutting off the job supply for the illegals, thereby making the US a place not worth breaking in to to work and to live. . . probably way too harsh a concept for most of us.
We americans have a tendency to "clean up" words and terms so they don't sound so bad. We used to call them "illegal aliens", now we call them "undocumented workers" . . . now don't that sound a lot less threatening?
The bottom line is, the illegal aliens from Mexico send most of their money home to Mexico! They live 15 to 25 people to an appartment. They work cheap and with no benefits. These illegals are NOT good for the long term future of any community. I cannot see the term "illegal" being incorporated into any good business model.
It is too bad what is going on in some of our communities. The town of Postville "settled for" the illegal hiring practices of the largest employer in their town. We should use the town of Postville, Iowa as an example of what NOT to do for the vision of a long term future in Smalltown, USA. There are other ways to deal with economic hardship aside from sacrificing our integrity as americans, and settling for an illegal labor workforce employed by yet another bunch of wealthy businessmen, that are going pull up stakes and leave town when caught by Big Brother, leaving Smalltown high and dry and expecting Big Brother to fix it.
Time to wake up.
illegal immigration breeds contempt
+Maybe the people in the town should have opened their eyes as to why a "Kosher" meat packing plant in the middle of nowhere hiring all spanish speaking workers. Could it be to be under the radar and detection of Immigration ?.? Those people traveled thousands of miles for a job ?.? Isn't that why the plant closed in the first place NO CHEAP LABOR.
..Did anyone in town think of the fact that they were here illegally or that they were no allowed to work in the United States -.- a silent conspiracy against the people of the United States -.- now it's pity the poor immigrant -.- pity the poor town -.- pity the conspirators..
....THERE IS A PRICE TO BE PAID -.- AND EVEN PELOSI WITH HER PANDERING WILL NOT CHANGE THAT...
..Study: Wages rose after immigration raids
Published: March 19, 2009 at 8:11 AM
March 19 (UPI) -- Wages and employment increased for legal workers after raids on six Swift & Co. meat-packing plants in several U.S. states in 2006, a study indicated.
Noting that the plants raided were back in production within five months, Jerry Kammer of the Center for Immigration Studies said there was "good evidence" that the number of U.S.-born workers increased, concluding that the plants "could operate without the presence of illegal workers," The Hill reported.
The non-partisan center examined what happened after raids on Swift & Co. facilities in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas and Utah, in which 1,300 undocumented workers were arrested. Another 400 workers without authorization to work in the United States were found through company screening.
The study estimated about 23 percent of the plants' employees weren't authorized to work in the the Washington publication said.
Swift didn't provide information about how its workforce changed, Kammer said, adding that the meat-packer also recruits a large number of refugees who are legal immigrants.
"At the four facilities for which we were able to obtain information, wages and bonuses rose on average 8 percent with the departure of illegal immigrants," Kammer said.
Kammer said Swift used pay increases and signing bonuses to staff the plants after the raids.
© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The company is to blame fair
The company is to blame fair and square. They don't want to pay and now they cry foul because they can't find new slaves.
There are plenty of workers in this country. The owners of the company should be the first ones in jail. They should have to pay $10,000 to each family that was being relocated. The blame lays with the company; no one else.
I personally do not eat meat. I refuse to give these meat packers any of my hard earned money.
Please Watch
Please Watch this.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA
Illegal immigrants
I believe we should shut illegal as well as legal immigration down. Companies need to charge more to allow a decent wage for legal residents, not bring in illegals and call it an act of humanity. The bleeding heart liberals, the churches and the greedy CEO's love to paint the tragedy of the world-wide desperate people and how we should help them by handing out work visas without any thought to the human footprint already here. That day is gone. Our own people, now desperate in need of help are broke and in need of a job and affordable housing. We need to put a “NO VACANCY” sign at all airports, docks and borders. Let’s show some humanity here at home.
I hope folks upset about
I hope folks upset about illegitimate humans arrived here legally. After all the land was empty for the resident natives did not really count. As far as I can make out, TX, CA etc belonged to Mexico, there were natives just about everywhere, killed legally to make room for u.
Of course life is cheap: other people's.
Many highly qualified Indians, with US papers, who put spaceshuttle into space, invented telescopes, practically created and ran IT, invented and made hotmail usable for everyone, invented tetracycline, with patent afte patent, etc etc are returning to India. The Indian mathematicians who worked on large prime numbers which render your credit card usage safe could not get a visa to simply attend a discussion although MIT had honored them. Where is your gratitude or at least simple acknowledgement for what immigrants/foreign visitors offer?
Just remember the most illegal occupation and usage of America has been by white people, not today but historically. I waited 14 years for my visa, in spite of being Harvard educated, and was then told my child was over 21, to apply again. Yes, he is still waiting ten years later.
Meanwhile he makes a million in the UK which gladly welcomed him and offered citizenship almost as a matter of course. No, few Indians would dream of doing anything illegal. However I do feel sympathy for desperate people: whether Palestinians forced to work for Israel, Jews facing the Holocaust, Mexicans simply seeking a livelihood, often taken away from them by big companies. The question relly is how do we solve a problem: with a final solution or with wisdom and care ?
I'm with the above responder
The company and company owners are to blame and should go to jail for hiring illegals. If it cost the employers substantial jail time to get caught hiring illegals, they'd quit hiring. If they quit hiring, the illegals would quit coming. Our borders turned into highways during the Bush administration's war on the middle class. It is foolish to keep allowing unskilled, uneducated, illegal laborers into the country while we are losing talented legal immigrants due to the pitiful state of our economy. This isn't a place for whiny leftist philosophy, it's the economy stupid.
Illegal Immigration an Intractable Problem
For the US, illegal workers are like a drug addiction. They force companies to waver between greed (better productivity at a lower price) and fear (fines, imprisonment, or destruction of a business). But with an estimated 20 million illegal workers in the US today, enforcement of the existing laws will destroy businesses, and cause a total reconstruction of the economy, as illustrated in Postville. Paying workers a decent, living wage does not happen in the US. If and when it does, say goodbye to cheap restaurant meals, drycleaning, lawn care, re-roofing, etc etc.
So there is not an easy option. The problem cannot be addressed without serious consequences, no matter which option you choose - make everyone legal, or start to enforce the existing immigration laws.
Put this issue along side crushing consumer debt due to reliance on credit cards, the belief that housing prices will always rise, and the dependence on free enterprise to deliver health care.
I don't know of any illegals
I don't know of any illegals willing to work for less than minimum wage...
The problem I see is legals not willing to work for minimum wage because it's too easy to get disability or other assistance. Go to Puerto Rico and you'll find a majority on SSI, with labor mainly from Dominican Republic. Same thing is happening here, with much labor from the illegal immigrant pool...but hardly less than minimum wage.
If govt. scrutinized govt. assistance recipients better, we'd have a much wider pool of labor. Why should anyone work for low wages when you can get on the dole with free medical, etc...?
Slave labor
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tagged as:
- solution
Nations have always been dependent on slave labor to keep the price of certain products or commodities down, and ours is certainly no different. Whether you call it indentured servitude ( how some of my ancestors got here ), slavery, feudalism, or utilizing undocumented workers, the principles are the same. If we want to pay people a living wage in this nation we have to create and nurture a market that will require us to pay more at the burger stand and the grocery store. If we are not willing to pay more, then the producers are incentivised to keep costs low. It requires buy-in from consumers and from regulators to put pressure on producers to raise costs. This is counter-intuitive and does not function well in our economy. We can use the organic food industry as an example here. While people like me are willing to pay the extra bit, we're still pretty cagey and do a lot of homework on our producers. Some of them still currently use undocumented labor. Why? Because it's still cheaper.
We have in my neck of the woods an overage of undocumented workers. Many are returning home because the jobs aren't there anymore. They came because while they aren't getting paid what we think the job is worth, they are getting paid a heck of a lot more here for the same job they would otherwise be doing down south. They are not taking jobs from American workers.
American employers are taking jobs from American workers. American employers are disconnected from American ethics, American civil discourse, and American patriotism. They complain bitterly about paying taxes and say it's bad for the economy, but oh, don't they love their mercantilist military adventures? Don't they love a strong police force and missile-killing satellites? They embrace fascists and deplore communists, despite the glaring similarities between both systems.
I can't say that all American employers are bad, in fact, the majority of businesses I've worked for over the years have been American employers. I can say that my employers have been focused on the quality of the product and the service that goes with it. There is less of a tendency to exploit the poor and the ignorant in the quality market than there is in the price market. I'm not saying it's not there, just less likely.
I don't care for the heavy spin on this story, especially as it applies to a company that runs like an Industrial Revolution concern. The preponderance of undocumented labor is a direct result of unpunished, unregulated, unwatched capitalism as practiced by the new robber barons. They assault Labor and Patriotism and Public Health once again. I am far less concerned with the presence of the Vasquezes than I am with the unethical and inhuman treatment they receive at the hands of our proud Capitalists. Anyone who justifies their treatment by saying "well, it's better than what they would have gotten at home", misses the point entirely. Our businessmen need to be reminded that they will conduct their businesses ethically and humanely, or not at all.
Collateral Damage of Raids?
The writer talks about the immediate devastation to the local economy resulting from immagration raids on businesses. Hum? I hear nothing about the gradual devestation to middle class wages resulting from business recruitment of cheap labor into this country. Componded with off-shoring and weakened labor laws the standard of living in this country has been raided over the last 30 years.
I really don't buy the
I really don't buy the argument that ICE, by enforcing the law, was doing something inequitable or unjust. Agri's deliberate decision to actively avoid employing legal labour or offering a living wage or decent conditions (which might have attracted that labour) is the problem here.
As far as the evil system of immigration controls, the argument that immigration should be encouraged or tolerated merely because it exists or there is some incentive for it (people want to work/live in America; American companies want to drive down labour costs), is truly sophmoric. Any form of regulation, or civil or criminal law which regulates human conduct can be attacked on that basis.
For example - should the state punish paedophile child rapists? The professional 'deregulationist' might argue "Why bother? They'll just rape kids anyway. And we're missing the opportunity to charge a handy-dandy licence fee for the privilege and kick-start the nation's sex tourism business. Look how busy and vibrant Patpong is - that could be Postville tomorrow!" See how easy that was?
Immigration laws exist for a variety of well-understood present and historical reasons, some good and some not so good at all. If they're going to be criticized or reformed, let's not do so on the basis of the facile reasoning above.
Does anybody know what happened to the managers and directors
of AgriProcessors?
For a while after the raids it was only the workers who faced consequences of law breaking; the directors of the company who made most from breaking the law were only questioned later.
Then I read that they were facing prosecution; correctly in my opinion.
ICE is very effective at heavy handed/expensive raids, seemingly less effective at dealing with either the perpetrators of the immigration crimes or the unintended social consequences of headline raids that close towns.
Hopefully, now that America has a president with a brain, US taxpayers will start to see joined up immigration policy.
They call it racism if you
They call it racism if you want to keep your people and its territory intact. Well, that worked for a long time, but I'm living proof that it can backfire. Instead of tossing out my love of my people to prove I'm not racist, I'm tossing out wanting to prove I'm not racist so I can keep love of my people. Force a dilemma and sometimes people will make choices you don't like.
India for India (check); Japan for Japanese (check); Israel for Jews (check); China for Chinese (check); Saudi Arabia for Arabs (check); sub-Saharan Africa for sub-Saharan Africans (check); Europe for Europeans (bzzzzt!); European-America for European-Americans (bzzzzt!).
Something's very wrong here. Nobody else has to explain himself when he wants space for himself; just European man.
This is wrong. Even the United Nations tacitly admits it's wrong:
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Article 8
1. Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.
2. States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for:
(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of forced population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of forced assimilation or integration;
(e) Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite racial or ethnic discrimination directed against them.
Of course, we may quibble over what is and is not an indigenous people. One may not include European-Americans, whose ancestors have been here three centuries, but may include Amerinds, whose ancestors came here thousands of years ago across the Bering Land Bridge. On the other hand, Europeans are certainly indigenous to Europe.
But don't all peoples deserve these rights? Shouldn't we all have the right to exercise ethnic sovereignty, as we perceive and wish it, over ourselves, our communities, our territory? Going further, isn't Self-Determination the right of all men? Isn't Self-Determination a collective right as well (the right to come together to form communities as we see fit?)
Think of an ethnic group as a very large family. Would you tell a family it couldn't decide who lives in its home? Who may enter its yard? Who gets to drive the car?
Then why does anyone get to tell an ethnic group these things?
The question is not whether these things are "nice," or "proper," or "polite." The question is whether I have a right to be sovereign over myself; the question is whether I have a right to come together with like-minded individuals, whether we collectively have the right to be sovereign over we.
P.S., "racism" cannot be a problem within an ethnically homogeneous entity.
