http://www.mcall.com/news/opinion/anoth ... erview-hed

With illegal immigration, racial bias is a distraction
''Some employers have ignored or have intentionally broken the law to their financial benefit. They have done so in ways that allow them to hide behind flimsy technicalities to avoid prosecution.''

M. PETER STARK

Lehigh Valley Local Links
Mobile News | Subscribe Online | Order Reprints
I have been disappointed by the editorials and news stories in The Morning Call that frame the illegal immigrant issue as race-based discrimination, native Anglo-Americans versus both legal and illegal Hispanic Americans. While our society endures many individuals poisoned by racial bias, and many of them find illegal immigrants ripe fruit to sate their appetites, racial bias is a distraction from the true elements of this dispute.

The first element of the controversy needing correction is that while there is emphasis on Hispanic illegal immigrants, illegal immigrant labor from eastern European and Asian countries are also major parts of the illegal immigration problem. The issue is not prejudice against Hispanics.

A second fiction is that illegal immigrants come here to become Americans out of a desire to share our way of life. This lie is emphasized to influence popular opinion. Living in fear of arrest and being subject to the abusive demands of illegal employers in a foreign land is the opposite of freedom. Illegal immigrants willfully avoid legal immigration, desperate to earn as much money as they can, either to send it home to their families, or to save it and return to their homes away from America. These people have dreams, and they are patriotic to their home communities.

The motive for all is money. Illegal immigrant labor is a ready source of illegal profit for many segments of the American economy and for organized crime, just as illegal drug trafficking is profitable. Some employers have ignored or have intentionally broken the law to their financial benefit. They have done so in ways that allow them to hide behind flimsy technicalities to avoid prosecution.

Illegal labor has made some people rich and enabled large corporations to cut costs by eliminating American workers. Last month, federal authorities arrested almost 1,300 illegal immigrants working in the Midwest for one of the largest American meat packing companies.

These arrests at the Swift & Co. plants comprised 10 percent of its work force and more than 60 of those arrested were on felony identity theft-charges. This provides some idea of the real cost of open borders and the failure to enforce existing immigration law to Americans. Identity theft is a much more serious matter than simple use of illegal immigrant labor, and illegal immigrants make up and ever increasing clientele for stolen identities.

The Swift & Co. bust made headlines, but the arrest of 12 illegal immigrants in Hellertown, as reported in The Morning Call on Dec. 4, is an example of the more common business arrangements used to take advantage of desperate, poor, illegal immigrant labor. According to the district attorney, the Oak Ridge development where the illegal workers where arrested is run by Ashley Development of Bethlehem and is being built by Ryan Homes Inc. The sub-contractors were GS Carpentry of Whitehall, Ceylan Painting of Philadelphia and MP Flooring of Bellmawr, N.J. The district attorney alleges the illegal workers were employed by the three sub-contractors. Such an arrangement might enable Ashley and Ryan to profess innocence in this matter, and, in fact, the subcontractors were not charged. One of the illegal workers said he was being paid ''$20 a day.'' That's $20 a day for carpentry, flooring and painting labor ... on the night shift.

Does this sound fair to the workers, the companies that compete when bidding or the taxpayers? If those 12 jobs were ''legal'' the fair tax contribution to the community and economy would have been how much more?

If we were to enforce our laws, do you think the flooring, carpentry and painting work at Oak Ridge is ''work Americans won't do?'' Is the district attorney wrongfully persecuting these immigrants because they are Brazilian and Mexican? Would America be better off if our borders were totally controlled and our immigration laws enforced and obeyed? With illegal labor eliminated from Oak Ridge, free market American capitalism would set wages, and maybe 12 American citizens could do better than earn $20 a day. Those earnings would go back into our local economy.

The Swift & Co. arrests made big headlines, but the Hellertown raid is the more important story because it is repeated so many times a year across our country. Yet, when an Allentown city councilman speaks or when The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce speaks, those stories are page one. Funny that a story on how illegal immigrant labor is abused at $20 a day and that the district attorney does his job is buried at the bottom of page 4.

M. Peter Stark of Lower Macungie Township is a consultant in the commercial facilities and logistics industries.