Border-Fence Builder Pleads Guilty To Hiring Illegal Immigrants

.nbc4 ^ | December 14, 2006 | staff

[Nachum]

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- A Southern California fence-building company, its founder and another executive have pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

They'll pay a combined penalty of $5 million. Prosecutors will ask for sentences of six months, but prison time is rare in such cases. The fine, however, is one of the biggest ever imposed in an immigration case.

The company will pay most of it. Founder and president Mel Kay will forfeit $200,000. Manager Michael McLaughlin will pay $100,000.

The two men admitted hiring at least ten illegal immigrants. The immigration service has said there were many more. A defense attorney said: "People slip through the cracks" -- and that "mistakes were made."

Among Golden State Fence's projects in recent years was part of a 14-mile border fence in San Diego.

[Nachum]

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

LOL!!!

[NapkinUser]

"A Southern California fence-building company, its founder and another executive have pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

They'll pay a combined penalty of $5 million."

Heavy fines work.

[madison10]

Well, that was stupid...

[proxy_user]

They were only supposed to be working on the SOUTH side of the fence!

[cripplecreek]

If they were facing south they were going about it all wrong.

[sgtbono2002]

Thats a half milliom per worker. Some fine. that ought to make you think twice.

[Muleteam1]

Isn't this a bit like a house painter wearing a diamond ring in an IRS audit?

[ASA Vet]

Congress should pass a law requiring captured criminal invaders to work on the fence.
When it's finished they must be on the Mexican side.
We can mail their last pay check to them, (computed at half the minimum wage.)

[CharlesWayneCT]

Doing the jobs Americans just won't do.

[Technoman]

These crackdowns are just window dressing so the couch potatoes will support Bush's amnesty program.

If they want to get serious, they would run major stings at day worker sites, targeting contractors. Then ICE could target McDonald's and other fast food empires who, soon after the 1986 amnesty, replaced their teenage workforce to the current.

When unscrupulous business elites are brought down with heavy fines and jail, things will quickly change. And when the jobs dry up for illegals in the US, most will likely return to their homelands.

[Nachum]

And when the jobs dry up for illegals in the US, most will likely return to their homelands

Not just jobs-

* enforce all the laws pertaining to illegal immigration
-------THEN:

* refuse them medical care
* deny them free education
* deny anchor babies citenzenship
* Don't merely drop them over the border, but send them deep inside their country so the walk back is almost impossible.
* Go after municipalities that have become "sanctuary cities" and prosecute local officials
* Impeach and or prosecute Judges that refuse to uphold immigration law
* Send a bill to Mexico for hospital, education, and incarceration services
* Make it illegal to wire money from the US to a foreign country without proof of a legal entry into the country: ie. work permit, visa, passport, other proof of legal residency (when they can't send the money back home, they will be forced to go home to give it to their families)

After that, I might believe things would change

---

Also, I would like see an early release program for minor criminal illegal aliens. They would be released early and forced to be transported to southern Mexico, far from the US border. Currently, illegals occupy as much as 40% of the prison population in California. This would dramatically decrease the prison population in California and reduce the cost of incarceration and the danger to the public when they are released.

[Susannah]

I was going to post the article about this from frontpagemagazine, but guess I'll just add it here.

http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/Articles/Border%20Fence%20Firm%20Snared%20for.html
Border Fence Firm Snared for Hiring Illegal Workers
By Scott Horsley

December 14, 2006 · A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company's work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.

After an immigration check in 1999 found undocumented workers on its payroll, Golden State promised to clean house. But when followup checks were made in 2004 and 2005, some of those same illegal workers were still on the job. In fact, U-S Attorney Carol Lam says as many as a third of the company's 750 workers may have been in the country illegally.

Golden State Fence built millions of dollars' worth of fencing around homes, offices, and military bases. Its president and one of its Southern California managers will pay fines totaling $300,000. The government is also recommending jail time for Melvin Kay and Michael McLaughlin, probably about six months.

It is exceptionally rare for those who employ illegal immigrants to face any kind of criminal prosecution, let alone jail time. Earlier this week, for example, immigration raids on six meat-packing plants netted almost 1,300 suspected illegal workers. But no charges were leveled against the company that runs the plants: Swift.

Golden State Fence's attorney, Richard Hirsch, admits his client broke the law. But he says the case proves that construction companies need a guest-worker program.

[Liberty Valance]

I'm sure there's a better example of irony but I don't recall it.

---

Main Entry: iro·ny
Pronunciation: 'I-r&-nE also 'I(-&)r-nE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -nies
Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirOnia, from eirOn dissembler
1 : a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning -- called also Socratic irony
2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or utterance
3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play -- called also dramatic irony, tragic irony
synonym see WIT

[OldEagle]

"People slip through the cracks"

And this from the folks who built the fence????