Thread: Illegal Immigration Undercuts Working Americans

Illegal Immigration Undercuts Working Americans
Monday, July 28, 2008

Earthside Comments: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a skilled meat cutter could make a top wage of about $20 an hour. Today, a meat cutter might make about $11.50.

In Iowa an illegal immigrant meat cutter might make $5.00.

We make this observation in light of the protest this weekend in Postville, Iowa, against the May 2008, immigration raid at the Agriprocessors plant. The illegal, released women protesters in Iowa are way out of line; they allowed themselves to be co-conspirators in perpetrating identity theft and in undercutting decent standard of living for citizens.

This on-going story illustrates why illegal immigration is so corrosive to working class Americans -- it illustrates how corporations shamelessly exploit illegals.

Especially as unemployment rises because of the deepening recession, we hope that those thinking about crossing the border into the U.S. illegally will reconsider ... and we hope that ICE and other agencies of the government will arrest and vigorously prosecute company management that exploits illegal immigrants out of sheer greed.

Link: Hundreds Protest Immigration Raid in Small-Town America | AFP

Led by 43 women with electronic tracking bracelets on their ankles, hundreds of people from around the country marched down main street here Sunday to protest the biggest immigration raid in US history at a kosher meat plant that has split this tiny Iowa town asunder.

Released from jail so they can take care of their families, the 43 women out front were among 390 mainly Guatemalan and Mexican workers arrested by federal agents May 12 at the Agriprocessors meat factory and charged with identity theft.

It was the biggest raid on a workplace in US history, as part of the government's crackdown on illegal immigration, a hot-button issue nationally three months ahead of the US presidential election.


Link: Two Alleged Supervisors Arrested at Agriprocessors in Postville | Al Dia Newspaper

Two alleged supervisors at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville, Iowa, were arrested today on various criminal immigration and fraudulent identity charges. U.S.

Attorney Matt M. Dummermuth, Northern District of Iowa, made the announcement; U.S.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is conducting the investigation.

Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, 35, and Martin De La Rosa-Loera, 43, were arrested this morning at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant. Both Guerrero-Espinoza and De La Rosa-Loera were charged with aiding and abetting the possession and use of fraudulent identity documents, and encouraging aliens to illegally reside in the United States. Guerrero-Espinoza was also charged with aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft. ... MORE


Link: The Story So Far | Chicago Tribune

May 12: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials raid Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant. The raid, during which nearly 400 people were arrested, was the largest of its kind in U.S. history.

June 10: U.S. Atty. Matt Dummermuth of Iowa says 300 of the people detained after the raid had pleaded guilty and been sentenced on felony charges.

July 3: Two Agriprocessors supervisors are arrested and charged with encouraging illegal immigrants to reside in the U.S. and aiding and abetting the possession and use of fraudulent identification

Saturday: Dozens of Postville residents tell a visiting congressional delegation that the raid has scarred their small northeastern Iowa town and torn families apart and they ask that the members of Congress do everything in their power to stop federal Immigration raids.


Link: Lords of the Meatpacking Manor Busted for Exploiting Immigrants | Robyn Blumner/Salt Lake Tribune - July 13, 2008

The list of allegations against the Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse, recently raided by federal officials for its use of illegal immigrant workers, reads like a story collectively written by Upton Sinclair, Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, is at the center of page after page of sickening accusations. These are contained in an affidavit for a search warrant filed by a federal agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

* Undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico were paid as little as $5 per hour - below minimum wage.

* A supervisor made a side business of selling the workers used vehicles, sometimes threatening them with loss of their job if they didn't purchase one.

* A supervisor duct-taped the eyes of an employee, who was then hit with a meat hook. The employee declined to report the incident for fear of being fired.

Then there are the safety issues that have dogged the operation. The Des Moines Register reviewed the latest available worker-injury reports. It found that in 2004 there were 120 injuries, such as workers suffering chemical burns and broken ribs. In 2005, there were 103 injuries, which included hearing losses.

Also in 2005 there were three amputations by Agriprocessors machinery. The paper reported on Carlos Torrez, a father of four, who was working a 60-hour week when a mechanical saw used to cut up chicken parts took off a finger.

For these multiple amputations, the company was fined $7,500 by state regulators.

Safety equipment was another way to extort money from workers. According to the Register, a memo from the company's vice president included an ''equipment price list.'' Workers were charged $30 for pants and $30 for jackets if they wanted to protect themselves from the caustic chemicals they handled.

Women workers were particularly at risk. A Catholic nun reported that females were told that sexual favors were the barter for a promotion or shift change.

Company officials routinely refused to allow safety inspectors on the property without a court order.

Then, on May 12, an immigration raid occurred and more than a third of Agriprocessors' workforce were detained as suspected illegal aliens. There are now some 270 workers, most from rural Guatemala, in federal prison on charges of using false identity documents.

Federal agents have also arrested two low-level supervisors, including one who is alleged to have charged workers $200 for new documents so they could continue working at the plant.

This is a start, but the arrests need to continue up the chain to the plant's top managers and owners. These overseers have been running a modern-day plantation or workhouse - or whatever one might call today's hell-on-earth equivalent.

Their denials about knowing they were employing an illegal workforce are implausible. For years Agriprocessors has been receiving letters from Social Security Administration telling the company of discrepancies between employee names and their stated Social Security numbers. In 2006, the plant was told that at least 500 workers had such discrepancies.

''Agriprocessors is a poster child for how to use a broken immigration system to exploit workers,'' notes Scott Frotman, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Company officials were able to keep their workforce helpless due to the undocumented status of so many. The result was inevitable: lousy pay, a disregard for safety, and workers cheated at every turn.

This is why I support the federal government's newfound vigor in investigating industries that rely on illegal-alien labor. This is why we need to mandate that employers verify the legal status of their workers, with tough penalties attached for those found with undocumented employees.

Meatpacking at a unionized facility was at one time a ticket to a middle-class life. Today, thanks to absurdly lax enforcement of immigration laws, the same type of work buys a peasant's existence.

Illegal aliens are peasants-for-hire, and their exploitation is something too many companies relish when given the chance. We have to stop giving them that chance.

The list of allegations against the Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse, recently raided by federal officials for its use of illegal immigrant workers, reads like a story collectively written by Upton Sinclair, Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
http://www.earthside.com:80/earthside/2 ... rds-o.html

Peasants for hire is an understatement. How about serfs, slaves or something of that ilk. Close the borders so we don't get any more of these people that are mostly illiterate and can't speak English, much as they have no idea what crime they are committing when their coyote sells them (or sends them to someone who will) a false identity and SSN.