Posted on 12/24/2006 5:21:38 AM PST by DeaconBenjamin2
ELBA, N.Y. A cold December rain gusted across fields of cabbage destined for New York City egg rolls, cole slaw and Christmas goose. Ankle-deep in mud, six immigrant farmworkers raced to harvest 120,000 pounds before nightfall, knowing that at dawn they could find immigration agents at their door.
The farmer who stopped to check their progress had lost 28 other workers in a raid in October, all illegal Mexican immigrants with false work permits at another farm here in western New York. Throughout the region, farm hands have simply disappeared by twos and threes, picked up on a Sunday as they went to church or to the laundry. Whole families have gone into hiding, like the couple who spent the night with their child in a plastic calf hutch.
* * *
For Rodney and Debbie Brown, the dairy farmers in Clifton Springs who lost 6 of their 10 employees to immigration arrests, the experience began like an episode of The Twilight Zone.
When no workers showed up at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 28 to help milk 580 waiting cows, Mr. Brown went to the farmhouse where most of their Hispanic employees lived, only to find it eerily empty. Some of the workers had been with the Browns for more than seven years.
* * *
Later, the Browns learned that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been waiting for the workers in their driveway at dawn with state troopers, and had whisked them to the 450-bed detention center in Batavia, where there were 3,094 admissions this year. Like an estimated 650,000 immigrants in New York State and some 11 million nationally, the employees were in the United States illegally....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
do they mean the fear should have already been there?
as in sneak across go to jail or be shot
I don't even think it would cost the consumer more.This employment of illegals is all about fattening up the profit margin for these farmers.When I need some extra labor on the farm for hay and straw baling I pay the same wage that the factories in the area do.And I have no problem getting good hard working Americans to do the job.And as an added free bonus,they all speak English.
If not being deported was offered the federal prosecutor making the offer should be charged with aiding & abetting a criminal.
The only offer that should have been given to the invaders is a free flight home.
Examine his employer tax records for those years.
They really need to start confiscating employer's property used in the commission of a crime. If they can do it for prostitution they certainly can do it for this.
If small farms go too bad. Consolidation of farms will reap cost benefits and highrer wages to Americans then can be paid.
$189,000 of up to 30 million illegals. Geez, cry me a river.
Those numbers reflect that they are NOT doing their job, not that they are.
"and had whisked them to the 450-bed detention center"
Is that the "Secret" Haliburton Detention Center for Internet Conspiracy liberals???
Plea bargains in return for testimony against a preferred target are standard operating procedure. No court or ethics panel would view it as aiding and abetting a criminal.
Get out the hankies. The sob sister media is telling a sad tale of ILLEGAL immigrants actually paying a price for breaking the law.
I've talked about this for years ....
We've allowed so much to be purged from our American fabric, and a couple of basics are reading, and an honest American history.
Our founders had a vision ... not short sighted, and actually a lot further ahead than what we give them credit for.
We are their ..... posterity.
In an agricultural society, land was the means by which families grew, strengthened and stayed. Communities arose and prospered ... around the LOCAL church (not the mega-TV-crap).
Men prepared for his children .... but like the WW2 song says ... "How ya' gonna' keep them, down on the farm .. after they've seen Paree ?"
So now everyone follows a job, not dad, chases money, not cows and so much is lost for the sake of progress.
I don't know what the solution is .. or even if a solution is possible .. but it's something I think about when I wax nostalgic.
Good start, but why aren't Rodney and Debbie Brown doing the perp walk as well for aiding and abetting.
Great! A climate of fear is exactly what wee need. They can take it back south of the border and spread the word. What about the people who's SS numbers are being stolen?
Wee=we
For some reason I don't think these two "farmers" are the suffering all that much.
As does any article that references "undocumented workers". They are all criminals. People who chose to come here illegally.
At our house my son calls it "pee-pee". ;0)
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