Thread: Howard Ind. MS bitter struggle for last jobs anybody wants

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20 ... body_wants

A bitter struggle for the last jobs anybody wants
ASSOCIATED PRESS / ROGELIO V. SOLIS

By DEBORAH HASTINGS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 7:00 a.m.

LAUREL, Miss.
"It's to shame me. That's all it was, to shame me. To make me look like a criminal."
ANGELICA OLMEDO,
about the electronic anklet she was told to wear until her
deportation

The work has always been stupefying and hard. Hour after hour standing on the line, soldering or welding or drilling in screws until tears join streaming sweat and hands cramp in pain.

Even in today's nightmare economy, most people would not want this daily grind that steals the soul in 12-hour shifts paying as little as $280 a week, before taxes.

Here in mostly rural Jones County, the area's biggest employer, Howard Industries, maintains a sprawling factory that builds electrical transformers and other big equipment behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. For a long time, Howard workers were poor blacks and whites in this town of 18,000. But in the past few years, immigrants poured across the Mexican border, eagerly applying for work on the Howard line and not complaining about long hours or menial labor.

Resentment began to take root in the hearts of some black and white residents, producing an odd alliance in a place that has seen racial hatred. Many blacks and whites claimed Hispanics were taking over their city and taking away jobs by not complaining about safety issues in a factory that faced $193,000 in federal fines last year for dangerous working conditions.

A disgruntled union member allegedly tipped the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, whose agents swept in last summer and staged the largest single workplace raid. As nearly 600 Hispanics were herded past black and white Howard employees, jeers and applause and wide grins erupted.

"Bye-bye," some trilled in falsetto, fingers wagging. "Go back where you came from."

And the assembly line rattles on. But now mostly blacks work it, with a smattering of whites, for the same wages paid to Hispanics. The plant, which has been working without a union contract since August, is mired in bitter negotiations over higher pay and safety issues.

Of the 592 people arrested, mostly for the crime of illegally entering this country -- more than 100, mostly women with children, were released pending the outcome of their cases. They wade through a long, confusing current of immigration hearings that will determine their futures. Many fear venturing out, lest they receive withering glances in the Wal-Mart aimed at the electronic monitoring devices on their ankles.

"We do the jobs no one else wants to do," says Ismael Cabrera, a 37-year-old father of two. "We just want to work."

He paid a smuggler $2,000 to walk him across the desert into Arizona. He paid $1,000 more to get a ride to Laurel, where he first worked in a poultry plant, wielding a small knife to slash the wings off dead chickens as they blurred past. His all-time high: 39 birds per minute.

"It's not that we took the jobs from other people," he says in Spanish. "It's that they don't want to work them."

He waits on deportation hearings that he does not understand. He weeps at the prospect of going back to his hometown near Mexico City.

"Sometimes I ask myself if it was worth it to come here," he says in a voice just above a whisper. "To gain insults and to be humiliated."

Blacks in Mississippi know plenty about humiliation. Laurel itself had long been Klan territory, where hooded, robed men carrying burning torches marched proudly down the main thoroughfare before the civil rights movement.

White Knights Imperial Wizard Sam H. Bowers, suspected in hundreds of attacks including the infamous "Mississippi Burning" murders of three voter registration workers, lived in Laurel.

These days, hate has a new target. "Time for Mexico and Mexicans to get the hell out!!!" blasts a recruiting message on a Klan Web site. In rallies staged in recent years in Laurel, Tupelo and other Mississippi cities, Klan members gathered to accuse Hispanic immigrants of being child molesters, job stealers and destroyers of the American way of life.

Angelica Olmedo, a 32-year-old single mother, has already decided what to do. She will volunteer for deportation to Vera Cruz, where her parents grow sugar cane. She hopes that decision will ease the way for her to someday legally return to this country.

Immigration officials have held out that hope to those willing to go quietly, she said.

Her 13-year-old son, who was 5 when she paid for him to be smuggled to Mississippi, will return with her. After she was swept up in the Howard raid, where she repaired forklifts for $10.25 an hour, she said immigration officials released her on "humanitarian" grounds because she was a single mom.

She was outfitted with an electronic ankle bracelet and told not to leave the state. It took about two months for Olmedo to realize that apparently no one was monitoring the devices. In time, the clumsy plastic device slipped off her foot. No one from ICE has said a word to her since.

"It's to shame me," she said. "That's all it was, to shame me. To make me look like a criminal. But I am not a criminal; I was only working."

Olmedo regrets she can no longer work and contribute to her sister's household. She baby-sits her two small nieces during the day as partial payment for rent and food. "I don't even like to go out," she says. "I feel like everyone is watching me and knows I was in the raid.

Yet Olmedo has met kindness from some former co-workers. "I had friends. African-American and white. They come and ask if I need money for food. I don't take it. They brought shoes."

At Howard Industries, where the day crew is just getting off, a freezing rain pelts workers walking to their cars, heads bowed to shield their faces.

They are mostly black and mostly male. Some carry the stooped shoulders of the bone-weary. Others bound toward the employee parking lot with the glee of the newly freed.

Larry Jones, 24, sits in his car with the heater blasting, sucking the life out of a Swisher Sweets cigarillo. He has been on the job as a coil winder for two months.

The African-American man had tried to get hired before the raid, he said. "I filled out an application and took the test, but they never called me back."

Now he makes $8.20 an hour. And he is thankful for the raid.

"In a way, I feel like it ain't right because these people are trying to better themselves. But on the other hand, we need jobs, too," he says softly. "A lot of folks 'round here were pretty happy about it, to tell you the truth. It was pretty much of a blessing for a lot of folks."

This story appeared in print on page A2

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We are being fed so many of these lame sob stories I think mist people are ready to just barf them all back up because they are sick of them. Go back and unite to fix your own country if its so bad.

"That's all it was, to shame me. To make me look like a criminal. But I am not a criminal; I was only working."

Pure ignorance

Sounds like an American wanted those jobs after all.

Duplicate

http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-144081-0.html