Thread: MA: After immigration raid, military contracts key to factor

After immigration raid, military contracts key to factory's business

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. The New Bedford factory that lost more than half its work force in an immigration raid is battling to stay in business.

Federal agents rounded up 361 workers in a March sixth raid at Michael Bianco, and arrested the company's owner and three top managers.

Unlikely allies have come forward in support of the company because of what's at stake -- 91 (m) million dollars in an Army contract and hundreds of jobs.

New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang says he wants the military contracts kept in the city.

The mayor wants Bianco owner Francesco Insolia to step aside and the company put under receivership in a bid to persuade the Pentagon that federal dollars are being well spent.

About 400 people have applied for jobs since the raid. About 30 of them have been hired.


Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.eyewitnessnewstv.com/Glob...3&nav=menu20_3

The mayor wants Bianco owner Francesco Insolia to step aside and the company put under receivership

IMHO, Mr. Insolia should be in prison and any company with military contracts that is caught employing illegal aliens should be banned from ever doing business with the US government again. -- Jaded

This is an article but I didn't find it posted. Sorry excuse for an American mayor imo.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbc ... S/70321008

Mayor asks for tolerance on immigrant issue

By DON CUDDY
SouthCoastToday.com
March 21, 2007 8:51 PM

NEW BEDFORD — Two weeks after the massive immigration raid at Michael Bianco Inc., New Bedford Mayor Scott W. Lang made an impassioned plea for tolerance at a meeting with city business leaders yesterday.
“I don’t see anyone in this room who can’t give me a date as to when their parents or ancestors came to the United States of America,” the mayor told about 60 business and community leaders during a breakfast meeting.
“There’s nobody here who’s not an immigrant,” he said. “My grandfather stowed away on a freighter sometime in the 1880s and promptly joined the U.S. Cavalry.”
The mayor’s comments came while attending a meeting of the Greater New Bedford Workforce Investment Board at the Wamsutta Club yesterday morning and were made in response to a remark by African-American activist Eddie Johnson, who described himself as “an America-first person.”
“There’s nobody in this city who is not ‘America first,’ ” Mayor Lang said. “We’re not defining ourselves as who’s America first and who is something else. America is America because we take values in a very thoughtful way. If anyone stands on the law and says, ‘That’s the law, and that’s why I’m doing it,’ I would ask them to consider all the laws we’ve had to change because they were dead wrong.”
On March 6, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the Michael Bianco factory in the South End, arresting company owner Francesco Insolia of Pembroke and several managers. Also arrested were 361 illegal immigrants, many of whom were separated from their families and flown to out-of-state detention centers where they now await deportation hearings.
In the weeks following the raid, debate about illegal immigrants and the treatment of those rounded up in the Michael Bianco raid has dominated local and national media, stirring emotional and sometimes rancorous debate.
The mayor told his audience yesterday that immigration is a national problem that must be resolved on the national level.
“Congress has to take the bull by the horns,” he said. “How do we deal with 15 million people who were allowed to come into this country with a blind eye? It’s not by setting up a straw dog. They came here, became part of our social fabric. Our kids played with them, their kids were born in St. Luke’s Hospital and all of a sudden they’re a villain?”
The mayor implored citizens to step back and begin to work together on these issues. He also called on business leaders to take a leadership role.
“I want you all to get up and stand up, regardless of your feeling on the immigration issue,” he said. “The last thing we need is to have New Bedford labeled as an intolerant city.”