Posted on 10/19/2018 7:14:14 AM PDT by gattaca
With new enforcement priorities under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are taking aim at employers that knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants. The most recent and largest bust happened at a trailer manufacturing plant in northeast Texas.
Business had been booming at Load Trail LLC, about two hours northeast of Dallas, as customers bought the black trailers to haul hay bales, topsoil, construction refuse and oilfield equipment. Then came the ICE raid in late August.
Inside Load Trail's huge production building, welders turn raw steel into trailers, amid cacophonous clanging and showers of sparks. It's brutish labor cut the heavy black metal, lug it into place, arc-weld it, repeat but the production floor is nearly half empty because of an acute shortage of welders.
Load Trail CEO Kevin Hiebert remembers the morning of Aug. 28, when a helicopter thumped overhead and 300 ICE agents swarmed into his yard. "It looked like something you would typically see in the movies," he said, "not something you ever planned on living out in real life."
ICE rounded up more than 150 employees nearly a quarter of Hiebert's workforce loaded them into buses and booked them for working in the country unlawfully. A criminal investigation of the company continues.
So far this year, ICE agents have stormed 7-Eleven stores, a meatpacking plant, dairy and vegetable farms and a feedlot.
Jake Thiessen's family founded Load Trail in Tigertown, Texas, which is home to a half-dozen major trailer manufacturers. Shortly after the Load Trail raid, ICE began auditing employee records of every trailer manufacturer in the community to find out which workers have fraudulent identity documents. John Burnett/NPR "Businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens create an unfair advantage over their competing businesses. In addition, they take jobs away from U.S. citizens and legal residents," said Katrina Berger, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in the Dallas ICE office.
But you won't hear those complaints in Tigertown, Texas. This flyspeck community situated between cotton fields near the Oklahoma border is home to a half-dozen major trailer manufacturers all competitors. And they all employ undocumented workers.
"I think the manufacturing industry in Texas, any kind of steel fabrication construction, depends on illegal immigrant labor," Hiebert says.
ICE Targets 7-Eleven Stores In Nationwide Immigration Raids THE TWO-WAY ICE Targets 7-Eleven Stores In Nationwide Immigration Raids The head of a competing trailer-maker down the road agrees, saying they all use workers who are in the country illegally. He asked not to be named in hopes of staying off ICE's radar.
It's too late for that, though: ICE is auditing the employee records of every trailer manufacturer in Tigertown to find out which workers have fake identity documents. Some unauthorized employees are so rattled they're not showing up for work.
What the industry needs are legal guest workers, says Load Trail CEO Hiebert, "Especially now that they're cranking up on the enforcement. Everybody hopes that there'll be some kind of real immigration reform before what happened at Load Trail happens to them."
Load Trail has been in trouble before
In 2014, the company was fined $445,000 for employing more than 170 unauthorized immigrants at its plant. Hiebert says they hire whoever walks in the door, and they pay decent wages $20 to $25 an hour. Still, they've always had a hard time finding welders.
"The trailer industry is growing well," Hiebert says, "but manufacturers are unable to keep up with demand. It has to do with the inability to produce the product."
So the work is done by men like Ignacio Barrios, a sturdy, 36-year-old welder who came here illegally from Oaxaca, Mexico. He worked at Load Trail for 17 years before getting swept up in the ICE operation.
Texas has always been knowingly duplicitous when it comes to illegal immigration.
Cal Jillson, political scientist
He wears an American flag T-shirt, and sits in the church that's helping to support his family of five now that he's out of work. Barrios paid a $5,000 bond to get out of detention, and is waiting for his day in immigration court.
"You have to work hard," he says in Spanish. "Lots of times you get injured, burned, you break your fingers. It gets over 100 degrees in the there. I've seen that Americans don't want to do the kind of work that we do."
Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says "Texas has always been knowingly duplicitous when it comes to illegal immigration."
On the one hand, Texas is a staunch law-and-order state where conservatives support Trump's immigration agenda; on the other hand, Jillson says, if ICE is too successful, "employers are wondering where they're going to find people to man their businesses if American high school graduates aren't going to do it."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested more than 150 workers at a trailer-manufacturing business in North Texas. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Lamar County, where the trailer manufacturers are headquartered, is crimson Trump country. Yet, to hear the trailer bosses tell it, the administration's immigrant roundups threaten a lifeblood of the county. Locals who voted for Trump are nonetheless sympathetic to the hard-working, undocumented welders.
Every morning, a group of retirees meets at the Dairy Queen in the county seat of Paris to drink coffee and mull over the state of the nation.
ECONOMY Worker Shortage Could Dampen Economy "This country will not survive if we don't straighten the way [immigrants] can come over here and work. Because I guarantee you Americans are not gonna do it," says Alan Helberg, a former hospital administrator. His buddy, retired dentist Jerry Akers, chimes in, "Congress needs to get off their duff and pass some meaningful legislation to where people can come here and work legally and not have to be afraid of getting uprooted."
Comprehensive immigration reform is, so far, dead in the water in the gridlocked Congress. And back at Tigertown, some trailer manufacturers say that if they can't find enough welders, they would consider moving their entire operations to Mexico.
When the government is giving away money to people who don’t want to work and incentivizes them not to work...they won’t work.
When people need to eat and support their families, and there aren’t government handouts, you would be surprised to see just how many Americans would do that job that Americans won’t do.
I have been blessed both by my military service and my parents who instilled in me that there is no job beneath you. You do what you must to pay your own way and get the job done. I have no doubt that if I have to, I can scrub toilets, clean floors or handle rotting garbage, and I can do it to get a paycheck, no matter how small.
To me, being self sufficient and a contributor to society is far more important than taking the false view that my worth to society is commensurate with the low pay I might get for doing a job (which ANYONE is capable of doing with no skill or education) and getting all bent out of shape over it...which is what Leftists encourage.
We need to get rid of the government incentive to NOT work.
Get rid of welfare for the able-bodied and the lines to apply for the jobs will be a mile long.
I hope ICE falls from a great height on the rest of the scofflaws employing illegal workers in this industry and town. Only then will the scales of competition be levelled for all and the employers can figure out how to meet demand legally. Choices could include paying better wages to attract welders from other endeavors, applying a technology solution that requires a capital expenditure, and/or increasing the price of the product to be able to do the two previous suggestions. Since I haven’t seen the actual product or process, I don’t know the best technology solution. I’d look real hard at how to engineer the process to use robotics and/or an automatic submerged arc crawler.
Welding would be a great job skill for training prison inmates in the last couple years of their sentences.
Might provide many with a chance at decent employment upon their release.
Perfect answer. It does take a while for a society to adjust to losing their slaves.
After ICE Raid, A Shortage Of Welders In Tigertown, Texas
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There are lots of kids at the school I teach at who want to be welders...excellent!...there should be some new, high-paying jobs for them!
Solution: No more luxury handouts. End LBJ’s Great Society bullshit*t. Powdered milk, powdered eggs, large cans of string beans. Purchase clothing at Gooddwill. Zero cell phones. Zero AC. Zero flat screens. Zero chips. Zero cable. Public transportation or walk! Zero cars. Zero donuts. Zero cake. Zero cola. Get your fat ass to work if you want the good stuff.
The career and technology school where I work is doing training for recently released convicts under a grant for transition/re-entry training. I get to interact with the instructor quite often as I have employers inquire about how to get the skilled bodies they need to manufacture their product. The instructor tells me most of them work out really well, some become excellent in just the short training course. I’ve been shown some excellent test weld samples by these students. He starts the training with the student doing a MIG weld in the 3G uphill weld position.
They don’t want to pay the wages an American commands. They want experienced welders they can pay 15 bucks an hour instead of 25. Shameful.
“Once you are illegal, there is no path back to being legal besides returning to your home country and filing the proper application so you can wait your turn in line.”
A lot of people think marrying a U.S. citizen is a “get out of jail free” card. It’s not. I worked with a woman who married an illegal. She had to go live in Mexico for a year (with him, of course) so that he could go through the proper process to get his green card.
To bad, so sad; they wouldn't be in this predicament if they had originally HIRED AMERICAN CITIZENS, INSTEAD OF CHEAP LABOR ILLEGALS WHO HAD NO RIGHT TO BE WORKING IN THE FIRST PLACE!
It does when your goal is to build Trailers cheap enough it puts other Companies out of business that hire and pay American Citizens to do the work.
These Companies should be publicly shamed and a national boycott of their Products until they are verified as hiring Legal workers. If they can't survive legally that is their choice, NOT a problem that requires ANYONE to support them.
Just like farmers who claim they are going bankrupt growning mellons, pickles etc because they can't find enough workers to pick the crop. NOT MY PROBLEM. They chose to plant that produce. Perhaps next year plant someothing that doesn't require the labor of 1,000 people to harvest it.
If the price of those products become high enough someone will invent a machine to harvest it.
“What the industry needs are legal guest workers, says Load Trail CEO Hiebert”
Then you had better call up your reps and tell them to support closing the border and enforcing immigration laws, because you are never getting a guest work program until we fix those problems.
"You have to work hard," he says in Spanish.
Says the illegal who hasn't even bothered to learn to speak English.
I remember when welders and mechanics made good money.
Now I see ads offering minimum and just barely beyond.
Good riddance.
Hire American!
Yeah, the real problem is that to raise the wages, they have to raise prices, and that will kill their business unless all the competitors raise their prices too. So the only solution is really universal enforcement so no business gets to undercut everyone else because they are breaking the law.
Which really means.. my company is lining their pockets with tax dollars saved by dodging taxes employers pay to hire US citizens so they can deed their families.
God forbid these places invest in training. They want fully experienced labor without having to pay for it. So, they get welfare-subsidized illegals.
I call bullshit. I can weld steel, aluminum, stainless, nickel, titanium, etc.
I took courses in metallurgy to keep up on the newest trends.
When I went to a boat manufacturing company and showed my certifications they where more than happy to hire me at $15 dollars an hour. II told them I was a certified for underwater welding. They entire place was filled with Cubans. I told then for $15 an hour I’ll weld black steel only.
They wanted me to weld stainless steel tuna towers and high bridges.
I didn’t study for years to become a high grade welder for $15 dollars an hour. I used to at nuclear plants making $46. I will bag groceries before I weld for $15 an hour. This isn’t taught in schools anymore or any other trade raft. These snowflakes need an electrician to install a lightbulb.
I think they almost want it that way. The owner makes a profit, the worker gets paid, and the get to TAX the service.
Why not have an apprenticeship? Bring in some kids that show potential and as they become better advance their skills beyond just welding black steel for trailers. I would be happy to teach anyone that wants to learn but I’m not doing it for 15 bucks an hour.
Lets start at 100k, 2 week vacation,, full medical, 401K, bonus for every student that passes a 6G welding test.
They don’t want o pay a craftsman, they want a yard monkey.
Guess ill stick to bagging groceries.
We need a bounty system where people who snitch out employers of illegals get a cut of the fines. And the fines need to be significant.
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