Thread: Border Fence Firm Snared for Hiring Illegal Workers

· A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company's work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.

After an immigration check in 1999 found undocumented workers on its payroll, Golden State promised to clean house. But when followup checks were made in 2004 and 2005, some of those same illegal workers were still on the job. In fact, U-S Attorney Carol Lam says as many as a third of the company's 750 workers may have been in the country illegally.

Golden State Fence built millions of dollars' worth of fencing around homes, offices, and military bases. Its president and one of its Southern California managers will pay fines totaling $300,000. The government is also recommending jail time for Melvin Kay and Michael McLaughlin, probably about six months.

It is exceptionally rare for those who employ illegal immigrants to face any kind of criminal prosecution, let alone jail time. Earlier this week, for example, immigration raids on six meat-packing plants netted almost 1,300 suspected illegal workers. But no charges were leveled against the company that runs the plants: Swift.

Golden State Fence's attorney, Richard Hirsch, admits his client broke the law. But he says the case proves that construction companies need a guest-worker program.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=6626823

This is rich. The hypocrisy never ends.

Our biggest problem is the businesses who are hiring illegals. The business executives are pretending to be ignorant when they claim that they didn't know their employees were illegal. If they can't speak English, and they go after jobs that they know will hire them, you can bet that they are illegal. The business executives have sold their souls to Mammon...the god of money.

Originally Posted by Cindy

Our biggest problem is the businesses who are hiring illegals. The business executives are pretending to be ignorant when they claim that they didn't know their employees were illegal. If they can't speak English, and they go after jobs that they know will hire them, you can bet that they are illegal. The business executives have sold their souls to Mammon...the god of money.

Too true. Sad. Really sad.

It's like selling military secrets to the country you are at war with! Traitors need to be punished for their crimes.

San Diego fence company faces criminal charges amid immigration probe

By Elliot Spagat
ASSOCIATED PRESS

10:22 p.m. December 13, 2006

SAN DIEGO – A San Diego fence-building company and two of its executives will be charged amid a long-running criminal investigation into whether the company knowingly hired illegal immigrants, officials said Wednesday.

Golden State Fence Co. was scheduled to be arraigned on criminal charges Thursday in San Diego, said Christine Friedman, a clerk for U.S. District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz. Also being arraigned were Melvin Kay, Golden State's president and founder, and Michael McLaughlin, another company executive.

It is extremely rare for a company to be criminally charged with hiring illegal immigrants, said Steven Camarota, research director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., a group that advocates tighter immigration controls.

“You have show a kind of criminal conspiracy,” said Camarota. “The mere hiring of illegals is not enough.”

Golden State, which is based in Riverside and has at least six other offices in Southern California, declined to comment on the investigation. The company said last month that it enrolled in a voluntary federal program to verify workers' immigration status in December 2005 and encouraged other fencing companies to do the same to create “a level playing field in the industry.”

Federal immigration authorities audited Golden State's employee records in 1999 and launched a criminal investigation after a second audit in 2004. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said last year that 100 employees at the company's Riverside office were unauthorized to work, including three who the company had been ordered not to employ after the 1999 audit.

Golden State, which currently employs 750 people, saw sales soar from $60 million in 1998 to $150 million in 2004, according to a biography of Kay provided by the company. Among its projects: construction of part of a 14-mile border fence in San Diego in the late 1990s.

contact info -Office of the Clerk
U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit
P.O. Box 193939
San Francisco, CA 94119-3939
(415)556-9800
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov

Do not call ! I was told all public comments regarding a case must be documented in a letter So, spend $0.39 and do it. Good luck and thanks.

Ask the judge to give serious jail time to this repeat offender. Fines and probation are not a sufficiant deterent

If it wasn't so pathetic it would be funny.