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Posted on 05/18/2008 11:41:44 AM PDT by Reagan is King
POSTVILLE, Iowa -- Antonio Escobedo ran to get his wife Monday when he saw a helicopter circling overhead and immigration agents approaching the meatpacking plant where they both work. The couple hid for hours inside the plant before obtaining refuge in the pews and hall at St. Bridget's Catholic Church, where hundreds of other Guatemalan and Mexican families gathered, hoping to avoid arrest.
"I like my job. I like my work. I like it here in Iowa," said Escobedo, 38, an illegal immigrant from Yescas, Mexico, who has raised his three children for 11 years in Postville. "Are they mad because I'm working?"
Monday's raid on the Agriprocessors plant, in which 389 immigrants were arrested and many held at a cattle exhibit hall, was the Bush administration's largest crackdown on illegal workers at a single site. It has upended this tree-lined community, which calls itself "Hometown to the World." Half of the school system's 600 students were absent Tuesday, including 90 percent of Hispanic children, because their parents were arrested or in hiding.
Current and former officials of the Department of Homeland Security say its raid on the largest employer in northeast Iowa reflects the administration's decision to put pressure
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
No, we're mad because you snuck into our country illegally.
"They don't go after employers. They don't put CEOs in jail," complained the Postville Community Schools superintendent, David Strudthoff, 51, who said the sudden incarceration of more than 10 percent of the town's population of 2,300 "is like a natural disaster -- only this one is manmade."
I agree that CEO's need to be locked up but perhaps he's just mad because the loss of students will cut his schools per student funding. It doesn't sound like he's happy the laws are finally being enforced.
workers fear a chain of empty apartments, falling home prices and business downturns. The main street, punctuated by a single blinking traffic signal, has been quiet; a Guatemalan restaurant temporarily closed;
Oh cry me a river, that's what happens when you build your town up around illegal aliens.
and the storekeeper next door reported a steady trickle of families quietly booking flights to Central America via Chicago.
I thought the raids didn't work? If they're booking flights home I guess it does!
unemployment will become less than 4% when this is finished.
So much for the nonsense that you can't deport them all.
Make it difficult enough for them, and they'll go back on their own. And make it difficult on employers, and they won't come here in the first place.
Attrition by enforcement works!
“. “Are they mad because I’m working?””
They really don’t get it do they?
Yo! Antonio, if 10 million US Citizens bounced over your border and demanded the Mexican government (at YOUR expense) raise their anchor babies, educate them, provide medical care and took your kids’ jobs, and kill 25 of you a day...would YOU be mad?
Here this dirt bag is, stealing from the American tax payer and he wants to know if we are mad. You are damn right, now go the H home.
“Attrition by enforcement works! “
It’s sure working in Oklahoma, oldbill.
Never has so many been paid so much to do so little. That is the full description of home land security.
“.....and the storekeeper next door reported a steady trickle of families quietly booking flights to Central America via Chicago.”
I wish.
They’re booking flights here, to “Sanctuary Seattle.”
Please don't buy into such left-wing nonsense. Law enforcement is not the job of some guy who runs a meat packing factory, or other business. It is not his job to determine whether papers shown to him are counterfeit or not; or whether the social security numbers he is given by people he hires are legitimate. (I would agree that paying people "off the books" is an evasion of the law.) In today's AliceInWonderland environment though, he could probably be sued successfully for damages for not hiring someone who appears to be a Mexican if it would turn out that that person were here legally.
No. If the Law Enforcement folks know that the business owner has illegal aliens working for him, that means they know who the illegal aliens are. Let's deport them, and not criminalize businesses that need unskilled labor.
ML/NJ
Holy shi'ite Batman! The author referrred to the undocumented worker as an "illegal immigrant."
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All CEO’s and hiring managers that repeatedly and knowingly hired illegals should be locked up too.
These sob-story articles appear like clockwork after any illegal employer gets raided. Like pushing buttons on a jukebox.
Oh please. These companies know exactly what is going on. They advertize the jobs in Spanish language media, and everybody on the floor speaks Spanish. And they are located in states with traditionally almost no Hispanics. And they are the first to protest increased enforcement.
And yes, I really would like to see what “papers” they have on file. How many workers are using the same Social Security number? How many have valid drivers licenses from the state they are located in? Or are they accepting Consular Metricula cards?
Does that mean that gun dealers will also not be required to do a back ground check. If it is fair for one it is fair for the other.
Put the plant owners and the board of directors in jail, and make them pay personally all unpaid medical bills at the local hospitals for the past twenty years..
Come on. These numbers are filed on a regular basis with the IRS. That is, the Federal government. If they want to check for duplicates and frauds, they are the ones with the ability to do so. But they don't, I guess, and you would rather see the bureaucrats go free and jail the businessman. Count me out. Why don't you instead look to jail some bureaucrats. It would help us all.
ML/NJ
I'm against gun background checks. I think they are exceedingly stupid.
How about background checks for being able to drive on the Jersey Turnpike. Or maybe to buy food? That way we could annoy even more law abiding citizens.
People like you who want to punish businessmen really belong over at du.com.
ML/NJ
No I want business owners to care for the country and the people who built it, above the almighty dollar. Not too much to ask is it!!!
But we don’t like you illegals here.
Bye
Hillary. Is that you? (Maybe all business owners should be forced to serve in the military too?)
ML/NJ
But what did the find in the jars?
So are you saying that American business men should not care about their country. Do tell, and the ones that do, you compare to Hillary. WoW!!
Okay, it struck me as funny for the second it took me to type it and misspell a word.
Oops....did I say Tissues?...I meant, get me a box of ammo.
ML/NJ
LOL, you apparently do know the scope of how many different business that already have such requirements. The firearms thing was just an attention getter. Try the ones that government puts on trucking companies and their CDL holders and the hazmat requirements and you Pi**m** over making sure that that they have the correct and legal SSI number. Grow up.
Social Security already HAS done this legwork. They already KNOW how many SSN’s are being used in illegal manners.
They refuse to share the information with the IRS and they have been reluctant (until recently) to send out non-compliance letters to employers.
The SSA/IRS should have the ability to tell by the second or third month of employment that there is an issue in the SSN’s filed. As it is, the typical time between when you hire a worker with forged paperwork and when you get a non-compliant letter from the SSA is about four years.
ML/NJ
Can we at least criminalize businesses who willfully, knowingly, and will full knowledge and aforethought, recruit and hire illegal immigrants?
Those that pay their illegal immigrant employees slave-labor wages with the knowledge that they have no legal recourse whatsoever to challenge such abuse?
ML/NJ
ML/NJ
For a week, maybe? Until they have time to hire a full replacement of their staff from among the estimated 21.5 million illegal immigrants in the US now or the hundreds of thousands of new illegal immigrants entering every year.
Forever, I suspect. Even the simplest jobs require some training so each turnover costs money, and if the wetbacks see that everyone who starts to work for Xyzzy Mfg disappears they wouldn't be too eager to sign up themselves.
To my mind this is all very simple. The whole immigration mess is the result of all sorts of government people turning their backs on the problem. E.g. if the guards on the border had orders to shoot to kill people who cross at unauthorized places as the invaders they are, probably no more than ten people would be killed. (fewer than die in the deserts) Word would get around that the gravy train was over and that would be the end.
But it's so much easier to blame eeeevil businessmen, isn't it?
ML/NJ
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