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  1. #1
    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    Immigration raids empty New Bedford fish plants

    http://www.boston.com

    Immigration raids empty New Bedford fish plants
    By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | December 7, 2005

    A waterfront sweep by the US Coast Guard and immigration authorities that resulted in the arrest of 13 men has sent panic through New Bedford's large immigrant community, causing workers at seafood processing plants to stay away from their jobs.

    When workers at the AML International fish processing plant arrived for their shifts at 7 a.m. Monday, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were waiting for them. Eight of the men, who could not provide identification, were handcuffed and loaded into a van. Officers arrested five more men at other plants.

    After the arrests, cellphones all over the waterfront started ringing, and fish cutters and packers from Central America, who make up the bulk of the workforce at the city's fish processing plants, fled the squat seafood warehouses.

    ''It didn't take long with the cellphones," said Frank Ferreira, plant manager at AML International. ''The whole city emptied out, all the plants.

    ''People were just leaving because they didn't want to get in trouble," Ferreira said. ''Even the legal ones left. Nobody knew what was going on. It looked like an invasion."

    Business owners and immigrants in New Bedford are still reeling from the arrests. Only six of AML's 40 workers showed up yesterday to cut the day's catch of monkfish, skate wings, and dogfish.

    And many in the city were wondering whether the raid marked a new crackdown in this period of intense national debate over immigration.

    ''This is going to start happening more often," said Helena Marques, executive director of the Immigrants' Assistance Center in New Bedford. ''It's only a matter of time. People are getting picked up, and then you'll see a lot of people going underground."

    The men arrested -- seven from Guatemala, three from El Salvador, two from México, and one from Honduras -- were taken into custody because they did not have legal immigration documents. Ten were released pending a hearing before an immigration judge, said Paula Grenier, an immigration and customs spokeswoman.

    Two Salvadorans, Jorge Merino Flores and Nelson Palacios Martines, were being held at the Suffolk County jail because a judge had previously ordered them deported. Another man, whose name Grenier would not release, is being held because authorities suspect him of being connected to the international gang MS-13.

    Louis Juillard, owner of AML, said the immigrants who worked in his plant had documents showing they could work. They were employed through an agency, he said.

    ''We have no way to find out if they are legal or not legal," he said. ''They give us the paperwork; we suppose they are legal. To verify the Social Security number and everything, it is not possible."

    Companies found guilty of employing undocumented workers can be fined up to $11,000 per worker, Grenier said. She declined to say whether that fine would be levied on AML or on the employment agency.

    The fish processing industry in New Bedford has become increasingly dependent on immigrant labor, particularly on young men from Guatemala. At least 3,000 Guatemalans, most of them undocumented, work in the plants, cleaning, cutting, and packing seafood. They send hundreds of dollars a month to their families in Central America and repay loans to smugglers who bring them to the United States through México.

    Workers at AML make about $700 a week during the summer when the catches are bigger, Juillard said, and about $300 a week in the winter, when the work is less consistent. Some of the men arrested had been working at AML for as long as 10 years.

    ''If they are not there, the industry will die," Juillard said.

    ''The worst-case scenario is playing out," said Corinn Williams, executive director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts. ''Immigrants have come to this city and filled jobs Americans are not willing to take."

    Panicked immigrants have been calling local social service agencies since Monday morning, Marques said.

    ''A lot of people are afraid to come back to work, and a lot of people aren't going to be showing up at fish plants," she said.

    Juillard and Ferreira have been calling workers to coax them back to the waterfront.

    Critics of the nation's immigration system have been calling for sweeps like Monday's. An upcoming report from the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter immigration policies, finds that the past five years have brought the highest levels of immigration in American history and that almost half of the immigrants who arrived in the United States in that period crossed the border illegally.

    Many analysts, activists, and politicians agree that the immigration system is in need of an overhaul; however, they disagree on what should be done with the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the country.

    You cannot ''have an enforcement-only policy to deal with an immigration system that is broken," Williams said.

    Yvonne Abraham can be reached at abraham@globe.com.
    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at http://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  2. #2

    Join Date
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    what a knob!

    You cannot ''have an enforcement-only policy to deal with an immigration system that is broken," Williams said.

    Williams is correct, however we have a system for dealing with persons who wish to acquire visas and legal status in the US. It's called Legal Immigration. We would use it in addition to enforcement.

    Imagine this bureaucracy has buildings and phone numbers and includes personnel to run it. What a concept, that as an immigrant I might want to have something to do with this end of the equation.

    CLOSE THE PLANTS DOWN!!! The fish aren't going anywhere, straighten it outand I guarantee that workers in the plants will get better wages and fishermen would likely get a better price for their product. The inherrent illegality attracts ne'er do well outfits(processors) that overall hurt the industry, as they pay low fish prices, as well as exploit illegals.

    cheers glenn

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