Thread: Illegal immigration

Who is to blame for this?


The huge raid at the Michael Bianca Inc. factory in New Bedford Tuesday summarizes the sordid mess that is U.S. immigration policy.
On the same day that the state reported that the city's unemployment rate was the highest in the commonwealth and just one day after a historic copper company founded by patriot Paul Revere announced it will close its historic plant in New Bedford, hundreds of federal agents swept into the Bianco mill on West Rodney French Boulevard, arrested the owner and several managers, rounded up hundreds of undocumented workers and busted a man for providing phony documents allowing them to work.
Documents released in Boston tell a story of greed, lax oversight of Defense Department contracts, gross exploitation of the most vulnerable of people, and the betrayal of U.S. citizens who were shut out of jobs because the factory owners were pocketing millions in taxpayer dollars to equip American soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to government documents and background information, Michael Bianco Inc. was able to win government contracts because it could do the work cheaply, thanks to hundreds of illegal immigrants from Central America and elsewhere who took $7-an-hour jobs without benefits, paid fines every time they talked on the job or spent too long in the bathroom, and dared not complain lest they lose those jobs or face the threat of deportation. Most were women, many with small children; and they and their families now face uncertainty and possible separation from one another because of the whimsical nature in which the federal government enforces its immigration laws.
What was happening at the company was no secret, as a timeline published in yesterday's Standard-Times shows. Federal agencies knew there were numerous problems with the personnel records the company reluctantly submitted.
As early as February 2002, the Social Security Administration found that there were problems with the paperwork of nearly one in four of Bianco's 83 employees. Over the next several years, state and city police stops turned up Bianco employees who said they had purchased fraudulent documents.
And report after report, filed over a four-year period, to Social Security found wholesale problems with Bianco Inc.'s work force, including Social Security cards whose numbers matched those of dead people.
And yet, the company was awarded more than $100 million in federal contracts to manufacture gear for U.S. soldiers. To meet the demands of the federal contracts, Bianco quadrupled its work force from 151 in February 2005 to 646. The company even received tens of thousands of dollars from Massachusetts, apparently to train illegal immigrants how to do taxpayer-supported jobs for the U.S. military that should have gone to U.S. citizens.
Didn't the Social Security Administration communicate with the Department of Defense, Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs about what was happening at Bianco?
Doesn't anyone in the federal government attempt to match lists of companies bidding on federal contracts against lists of companies that appear to have grossly violated U.S. immigration law? Were Bianco's contracts with the government routinely audited to ensure compliance with U.S. law?
There are too many victims to count in this sorry tale.
The taxpayers who work hard and pay their fair share to Washington, whether or not they support our nation's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than 9 percent of New Bedford residents who can't find living-wage jobs because a company like Bianco Inc. doesn't pay a living wage or provide benefits, and apparently wanted to hire undocumented workers because illegal immigrants are powerless to demand better.
The children of illegal immigrants, who in some cases are citizens because they were born on U.S. soil to people here illegally, and who could see their families torn from them though no fault of their own.
It was horrible to see the terrified faces of the hundreds of people rounded up and sent to Fort Devens in Ayer for processing. Many will end up being deported, and it is painful to see the suffering and fear of illegal workers who are trying to make a living for themselves and their families.
To be sure, those people made a choice, knowing full well that they were violating U.S. immigration law by acquiring false documents. There are consequences to those individual decisions to take a risk and hope not to get caught.
The problem is that we, as a nation, have failed to enact and enforce a consistent immigration policy.
The reasons are many and complex. U.S. businesses have wanted the cheap labor that illegal immigration guarantees. In some cases, that cheap labor has allowed them to remain profitable in a global economy in which they are competing against cheaper foreign labor.
In any case, if the charges brought against the owners and managers of Michael Bianco Inc., as well as the New Bedford man charged with providing fraudulent identification to hundreds of illegal immigrants, are proven to be true, those responsible should face the most severe punishment the law allows.
But this is a story bigger than one New Bedford Company. This story is about our failure as a nation to enforce our own laws and our willingness to turn a blind eye to those who break them, especially businesses that profit from breaking it.
We have another chance to correct the problem in the new Congress, and we had better not ignore it, or what happened in New Bedford will be repeated in a thousand American cities.
Conservative Republicans blocked an effort last year by President Bush and Democrats to reform the system and allow millions of illegal aliens to secure legal status and, ultimately, citizenship. This will be rewarding those who broke our laws and most important set a precedent that will encourage more illegal entry with the hope of future amnesty. This was exactly the out come of the 1986 amnesty (IRCA).

Juan Reynoso
Txre1937@hotmail.com
210-481-9725
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But this is a story bigger than one New Bedford Company. This story is about our failure as a nation to enforce our own laws and our willingness to turn a blind eye to those who break them, especially businesses that profit from breaking it.

amen Juan!

this is just disgusting to read.