Immigration Bust at BMW
Seven Illegal Aliens Arrested

Wednesday, Jul 25, 2007 - 10:02 PM Updated: 05:08 PM

By Kristen Nastasia

Working in the Upstate illegally. Federal agents say seven people busted at BMW were all using someone else's identity.


The bust at BMW is only part of a bigger problem. Every day identities are being stolen so illegal workers can slip into this country without being detected.



Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rounded up seven people they say are here in the Upstate illegally. BMW says it knew about the bust, and worked with investigators.


The employees don't work directly for BMW, they worked for its dining contractor Eurest. The arrests happened Wednesday morning at BMW's training center where the company says it brought the workers to be arrested. That's across the street from the main plant on Highway 101 in Greer.



More and more ICE agents are hauling illegals into federal courthouses around the country. Because not only is more of this happening, but stealing your identity is easy and pretty cheap. I searched on the internet and within seconds thousands of hits popped up, ways to get identities and fake work visa cards for as little as $200.


ICE agents say all of these workers were here using stolen social security numbers and fake visas they used to get working papers. This crime has become so common more than 500,000 US citizens were victims of in 2005 according to the Department of Homeland Security. They were being held up for taxes they don't owe, and in some cases getting denied for jobs or passports because there's some one else already using them.


Many times children are targeted because they don't have any history attached to their number. In this case investigators say one of these people was using the identity of a 9-year-old boy.


The seven workers are now behind bars and likely facing prison and hefty fines along with deportation. Investigators say five are from Mexico and the other two are from Honduras.


So we wanted to get to the root of what the real issue is here. I talked to an international business attorney for some perspective on why so many people sneak in here illegally, making those of us with US citizenship almost targets.



"Getting a work Visa to work in this country is very time consuming and expensive, particularly for manual labor, unskilled workers. It takes 6-9 months and it's only good for a year and you spend a lot of money," said International Business Attorney Jay Rogers.



The dining companies released the following response to the bust:

We sincerely regret any disruption that may have occurred yesterday from the detention of foodservice workers employed in our café at BMW. Eurest is cooperating in full with all law enforcement authorities, and we will seek guidance and work with authorities to improve upon our internal procedures as necessary.



Eurest is dedicated to consistently delivering superior service to our customers and will ensure that those services remain uninterrupted despite the events of yesterday. We are working closely with our associates and customers to meet that commitment.




The problem is many of these fake documents look quite real so it's hard for many companies to combat this problem. We talked to Eurest, the dining services company that employed these seven people. They tell us they're working with the Department of Homeland Security on the case and will beef up their security measures as needed to try and prevent this. But the experts only expect this problem to get worse.



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