Thread: After show of raid, what next?

May 18, 2008


Basu: After show of raid, what next?

Rekha Basu
rbasu@dmreg.com

When the dust settled in the wake of the largest immigration raid in U.S. history, some likened it to a natural disaster sweeping through Postville. Schools superintendent David Strudthoff described it as "a tornado that wiped out an entire part of the town."

Postville Mayor Bob Penrod was grimmer. "This literally blew our town away," he said.

Nearly 400 workers from the meatpacking plant were gone. So were a third of middle and elementary school students.

The local officials' laments were echoed widely. By the landlord who said, "You came into town and rousted out our neighbors, our friends." By the teachers who said, "They had stable lives with housing, a solid job and many friends." By the Catholic nun who worried about children left behind when their arrested parents were too scared to talk about them.

So what was gained by rounding up people like animals, handcuffing and detaining them in cage-like warehouse cells in Waterloo's Cattle Congress? Does it make America safer? Does it give Americans back decent jobs and workplaces? Will it make a dent in the 12 million undocumented immigrants?

Of course not. It's political showboating that fixes nothing. Rather than shut down businesses and anger owners and political allies, the federal government is aiming at a few hundred easy targets. It gets press and placates critics, yet leaves the principals unscathed.

By Thursday, 135 people from the raid were charged criminally for fraudulent IDs or Social Security numbers. But Agriprocessors' owner, Sholom Rubashkin, a big GOP contributor, had not been charged.

Illegal employment is a dance that takes two. It's a federal offense to employ immigrants without proper working permits.

The company knows something about undocumented employees. It employed them in New York, but didn't make an issue of it until workers tried to join a union. Then the company plugged their names into a federal database, found missing or fraudulent IDs, and fired them.

The Washington Post has chronicled a government retreat from workplace enforcement in the 20 years since it became illegal to hire undocumented workers. It reported that between 1999 and 2003, work-site immigration enforcement operations were cut 95 percent. In 2003, four employers were prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants, down from 182 in 1999. The fines shrank from $3.6 million to $212,000. In December, the Post reported the government in the previous year arrested nearly four times the number from years earlier, but only 2 percent involved criminal charges for hiring the workers.

Frank Sharry of the nonprofit immigrant advocacy organization America's Voice, says the administration regards raids as a way to show conservatives they're serious about enforcement, so they'll come around to supporting immigration reform. "I say, 'You guys are giving an alcoholic a drink and they're going to get sober tomorrow?'"

The December 2006 raid on the Swift plant in Marshalltown resulted in 99 arrests. But only one plant official, Christopher Lamb, a human resources manager, was charged. He got a year of probation for helping a worker to file false paperwork. A union rep also was convicted.

On Tuesday, buses were already arriving in Postville with replacement workers. So, while families and communities get decimated, the plants stay open and make money. And the dance continues.

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http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/p ... BUSINESS04

So what was gained by rounding up people like animals, handcuffing and detaining them in cage-like warehouse cells in Waterloo's Cattle Congress?

The Des Moines Register itself published photographs of the rows of cots for the detainees--there were no cage-like warehouse cells--it resembled a gym.

So what was gained by rounding up people like animals, handcuffing and detaining them in cage-like warehouse cells in Waterloo's Cattle Congress? Does it make America safer? Does it give Americans back decent jobs and workplaces? Will it make a dent in the 12 million undocumented immigrants?

Yes, it will make a dent...one step at a time. It's gotta start somewhere.