Posted on 01/07/2006 11:54:24 AM PST by John Jorsett
AUSTIN, Minn. — In Minnesota towns where hogs and turkeys meet their ends at the hands of workers from foreign lands, local officials often find themselves asking newcomers a simple question.
Who are you?
A worker with questionable immigration status may be carrying equally questionable identification. In Austin, where immigrants are lured by pork processing jobs, Mower County Attorney Patrick Flanagan has seen enough bad-ID cases to worry about a sizable "ghost'' population of misidentified residents.
"If you're a ghost, how can we help you? How can anyone help you?" he asked.
Imagine a small, rural community where people are used to knowing one another and where an unknown number of immigrants live and work under dubious names. Police agencies, courts, schools, health clinics and banks — all could be sitting on a shifting foundation.
In Worthington, another town transformed by immigrant workers, Sgt. Kevin Flynn is used to being told the name on a driver's license is just a "work name'' — not the name the motorist was born with, but the one that gets him a paycheck.
In Willmar, home of turkey processor Jennie-O, Police Chief James Kulset hears from out-of-state callers who find that they owe taxes for wages in Willmar — a place many have never visited or even have heard of.
"Of course, someone has purchased that individual's identity and Social Security information,'' Kulset said.
While Gov. Tim Pawlenty and his foes wrestle over the politically potent issue of illegal immigration, officials on the front lines say the question of immigrant identification is real. Some immigrant workers — no one knows how many — have acquired false papers in hopes of opening doors to employment, often because they have entered the country illegally.
They do so not to steal from the "real" people but to work in their names.
"This is a means to exist — to carry on their everyday life,'' Flynn said. "This is different from the identity thief who is looking to take your or my ID and get as much out of it as they can.''
But the confusion is real. It is part of the illegal immigration fudge-factor, rising to the surface in traffic stops, transactions at local banks and hospital mix-ups. While politicians rant, corporations profit and the nation's southern border remains porous, local officials have to welcome, police and provide for a population that prefers to remain invisible.
In Worthington, where Mayor Alan Oberloh says fake IDs have a higher street value than methamphetamine, city officials have sought help from state and federal agencies. Their concerns have found their way into Pawlenty's proposals for cracking down on illegal immigration.
Austin Mayor Bonnie Rietz, a longtime supporter of the aspirations of immigrant workers in her community, believes Pawlenty's focus should be on the immigration system — not the workers caught up in it.
"I would much rather have him put his interest into helping illegal immigrants become legal,'' she said.
While the debate rages, local officials worry that immigrants using false IDs won't report crimes and can be exploited by unscrupulous employers. The false name implies illegal entry into the U.S., and its owner is unlikely to speak up.
Until he has to.
There was the man who came to claim his impounded car from the Austin Police Department, only to be arrested for a felony warrant from California. When he was told he would be extradited, he said the name on his Minnesota driver's license was an identity he purchased.
"He did this so he could get work in the United States because he is in fact an illegal alien,'' stated the criminal complaint charging him with giving police a false name.
More common was the case of "Romeo Gonzalez,'' a person living in Irving, Texas, who called local police when the IRS told him he had not reported earnings from Austin, Minn. — 912 miles to the north. Police in Austin arrested a local man, who said his real name was Jose Silva, and charged him with fraud and forgery.
During an after-midnight traffic stop in Austin, a police officer arrested a man on suspicion of drunken driving. Before he was even jailed, the man had given the officer four identities, the last of which showed that he had been referred to immigration officials for deportation as an illegal immigrant two years earlier.
Austin Police Capt. Curt Rude said statistics are hard to come by, but stories of strange identity transactions aren't.
"I confronted one gentleman — I said the reason you're being held is you have a stolen ID,'' Rude said. "He said, 'I paid $100 for this — it's not stolen.' "
State and local officials do not know how big a problem fake identification is, but they see it as a natural outcome of the presence of illegal immigrants who come here to work. Generally, police say, workers need a Social Security number to find work, and they find it somewhere along the way from Central America or Mexico to Minnesota.
Flynn said an investigation turned up IDs that once belonged to people in food lines or blood-donation sites in other states. The papers had been bought and re-sold to immigrant workers in his community.
Liliana Silvestry, executive director of the Welcome Center, which serves Austin's immigrant population, has heard stories of immigrants working under identities they bought or "borrowed'' from the named person.
"Are those fake papers?'' Silvestry said. "No — they belong to someone. Are they being stolen? No — it was an agreement between one person and another.''
Willing workers from Mexico and other impoverished countries work in the pork plant in Austin for a $9.75 hourly starting wage, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents them. Flanagan says he believes meat processors — in Austin, that would be Hormel Foods and Quality Pork Processors — could do more to guard against hiring the wrong people.
Referring to companies' hiring practices, he said: "There is a big reason illegal immigration exists this far from the border. It's because you give them jobs.''
He added, "It seems like … they are more interested in cheap labor than they are in the betterment of the community.''
A spokeswoman for Hormel said in a statement that the company requires proper documentation under federal immigration rules. If a fake ID is suspected, the company investigates.
"If the investigation shows that the employee is illegal, their employment is terminated,'' she said.
The federal government needs to do its part, too, said Worthington Police Chief Mike Cumiskey.
"They give the people a wink and a nod, and it's allowed to happen,'' he said.
Minnesota House Speaker Steve Sviggum wrote recently that "calling illegal immigrants 'undocumented' is like calling a burglar an uninvited houseguest." But what if the burglar only wants to clean your house?
Some in Austin and Worthington believe it's time to acknowledge the "ghost'' population and its role in America's economy, either through a guest-worker system or a provisional identification card. Others fear a backlash against all Hispanic Minnesotans, regardless of their status. Some worry that the government's inability to control immigrants' access to IDs suggests that the homeland is not so secure after all.
Earlier this week, a line of young, mostly Hispanic men and women made their way through a turnstile at shift-change in Austin for another day of work in America's food industry. It's a line that stretches, in a sense, from the meatpacking centers of Minnesota all the way into Mexico and Central America.
Juan Guerrero, owner of a store and restaurant in Austin called "Mi Tierra'' — My Land — said the parade of workers is not likely to stop.
"People, they need to live, you know?" he said. "People got to find a way. … They don't have no choice. Mexico is too poor.''
Depending on the area, it is.
well Southern California has every walk of life here. We need at least 26 translations to say one thing. How come it is only in spanish.
Mexico is POOR because they have spent many hundreds of years producing children they could not support and educate. End of argument. We are now the recipient of their spill over the top of the jar, with desparate persons not understanding they are the ones responsible for their own problems.
We in the U.S. (as with other cultures, other nations) are repeatedly being demanded to absorb and support and tolerate very bad behaviors and even worse values and concepts about society and such, when, I'm convinced as to Mexico and most if not all of Latin and South America, the drug culture ("if it's cociane, it's our work -- the drug cartels are the 'papa' heroes"), they have what they allowed and rewarded and now they're truly attempting to force the acceptance by the U.S. of their own corruptions.
They laugh and snicker at "laws" and nearly everything else. The wall along our Southern border cannot be built fast enough to my view and every single American who employes illegal immigrants willingly needs to be identified and ostracised by other Americans (I really believe that because it represents a self-satisfying indulgence to an illegal culture and process that loses those Americans to the corruption the rest of us reject, despite whatever their profits involved are).
I have seen no good things in my years that have originated from illegal immigration, and particularly from Mexico. Sorry, this isn't "racist" so much as it is cultural. Mexico and many cultures in Latin/South America 'enjoy' a culture of anarchy and corruption that they have because they created and encouraged it. The United States is now under target by and for the same culture.
Funny if it wasn't so maddening.
Absurd the writer presents this statement like it's thought provoking. I'm sure EVERY police officer who has arrested someone for possession of stolen property claims the same thing.
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