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Rumors of plant housing stir concern (illegal immigrant concerns)
Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre PA) ^ | 8/20/2003 | MICHAEL McNARNEY

Posted on 08/20/2003 6:00:04 AM PDT by Born Conservative

Pittston Township officials believe immigrants are coming in to work at the new T.J. Maxx warehouse.

mmcnarney@leader.net
PITTSTON TWP. - Will T.J. Maxx laborers at the company's township warehouse soon be living on site in company housing?

That's what township Supervisor Tony Attardo says he is told.

"If anybody makes any (zoning) applications up there, we'll have our good eye on it," Attardo said. But supervisors, he said, are bound by township zoning laws - if modular housing is allowed by ordinance, he said, then T.J. Maxx has the right to build.

Laborers are paid $6.50 to start at the million square-foot warehouse, in the Grimes Industrial Park. Supervisors said they were promised that the jobs would pay at least $8, with warehouse supervisors getting at least $13.

T.J. Maxx spokeswoman Sherry Lang wouldn't discuss company housing, instead sticking to a written statement issued last week. And Attardo himself said the talk of housing at the warehouse, in the Grimes Industrial Park, is "scuttlebutt."

Attardo said he's been told by a man who lives near the warehouse that surveyors have been at work near the plant. Attardo said he would endorse an ordinance limiting how many unrelated people can live under the same roof, but he wasn't sure how authorities would disprove claims of people who claim to be related.

Attardo wouldn't say if he or other authorities have been in touch with the federal Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the successor to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

"I think you've got a little situation here of wait and see," Attardo said.

A spokesman in Philadelphia's federal immigration office, which is responsible for Northeastern Pennsylvania, did not return a telephone call seeking comment.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events; US: Pennsylvania
KEYWORDS: illegalimmigration; tjmaxx
I posted a related article yesterday. TJ Maxx is moving in, and had promised county officials higher wages for the workers, but have since reneged on this. TJ Maxx has received huge tax exemptions by locating here, since they are building in a "Keystone Opportunity Zone". There is concern that they will be employing illegal immigrants, and now with this story, there is speculation that they will  also be housing them on site.
1 posted on 08/20/2003 6:00:05 AM PDT by Born Conservative
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To: Born Conservative
Just a little FYI. If they do decide on selling/renting a few little plots of land for the illegal to live, you are sitting on a big ol'bomb. You see, when the population reaches the threshold where they may incorporate, the taxpayer now has to provide this new little community with water, sewage, power, communications ... all at taxpayer expense. Look around El Paso, and you'll find little 'burgs' of tarpaper shacks that have been set up; then finished with US taxpayer dollars. I wonder if I illegally move to any other country on the globe, if they'll do that for me?
2 posted on 08/20/2003 6:04:47 AM PDT by Hodar (With Rights, comes Responsibilities. Don't assume one, without assuming the other.)
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