The Real Argument on Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration. The big hot-button we all saw back in 2006, and since. The subject that broke the camel’s back with the conservative base and McCain. There’s a lot of opinions on the subject: The right believes immigration as a concept to be a good thing, but illegal immigration undermines our institutions and disrespects our laws and our national sovereignty (especially when other governments promote it). The businessmen see it as a source of cheap labor, not only in terms of wages but in the extreme unlikelihood of lawsuits resulting from labor malpractice. The left see the importation of other nation’s impoverished as a humanitarian cause, and focus less on the legal aspect, but rather on the notion that we should improve these people’s lives. The “no borders” crowd needs to stop smoking crack. But that’s just the tipping point – opinions vary even more when you start going after specific subjects: how to deal with the people here, what rights as a non-citizen do they have, how should they be treated in terms of applications for citizenship, how to seal the border, etc. Just about the only thing we can seem to agree on is that the border needs to be sealed before the other problems are addressed. (Citing back to an AP/Newsweek poll showing 79% support for this back in ‘06 when the subject was hot)

But what’s really missing from the illegal immigration argument? No, it’s not the national security issues of the drug cartels on the southern border. No, it’s not the anchor babies stories, or the story of Raemon and Campos (sp), or other border agents who were silenced for what they did down on the border. No… the argument we should be having, the argument that should be the PRIMARY focus of this debate…well, it looks something like this:

From the NYT (Not my favotire source, but they hit a grandslam on this one)

After Iowa Raid, Immigrants Fuel Labor Inquiries
July 27, 2008
After Iowa Raid, Immigrants Fuel Labor Inquiries

By JULIA PRESTON

POSTVILLE, Iowa — When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13.
Now those young immigrants have begun to tell investigators about their jobs. Some said they worked shifts of 12 hours or more, wielding razor-edged knives and saws to slice freshly killed beef. Some worked through the night, sometimes six nights a week.
One, a Guatemalan named Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant’s killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week. In an affidavit, he said he was constantly tired and did not have time to do anything but work and sleep. “I was very sad,” he said, “and I felt like I was a slave.”
At first, labor officials said the raid had disrupted federal and state investigations already under way at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher plant. The raid has drawn criticism for what some see as harsh tactics against the immigrants, with little action taken against their employers.
But in the aftermath of the arrests, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, labor law experts said.
Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant. They have told investigators that they were routinely put to work without safety training and were forced to work long shifts without overtime or rest time. Under-age workers said their bosses knew how young they were.
Because of the dangers of the work, it is illegal in Iowa for a company to employ anyone under 18 on the floor of a meatpacking plant.
In a statement, Agriprocessors said it did not employ workers under 18, and would fire any under-age worker found to have presented false documents to obtain work.
To investigate the child labor accusations, the federal Labor Department has joined with the Iowa Division of Labor Services in cooperation with the state attorney general’s office, officials for the three agencies said.
Sonia Parras Konrad, an immigration lawyer in private practice in Des Moines, is representing many of the young workers. She said she had so far identified 27 workers under 18 who were employed in the packing areas of the plant, most of them illegal immigrants from Guatemala, including some who were not arrested in the raid.
“Some of these boys don’t even shave,” Ms. Parras Konrad said. “They’re goofy. They’re teenagers.”
At a meeting here Saturday, three members of the House Hispanic Caucus — including its chairman, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois — heard seven immigrant minors describe working in the Agriprocessors plant.
Iowa labor officials said they rarely encounter child labor cases even though the state has many meatpacking plants.
“We don’t normally have many under-age folks working in our state,” said Gail Sheridan-Lucht, a lawyer for the state labor department, who said she could not comment specifically on the Agriprocessors investigation.
Other investigations are also under way. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is examining accusations of sexual harassment of women at the plant. Lawyers for the immigrants are preparing a suit under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act for wage and hour violations.
Federal justice and immigration officials, speaking on Thursday at a hearing in Washington of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee, said their investigations were continuing. A federal grand jury in Cedar Rapids is hearing evidence.
While federal prosecutors are primarily focusing on immigration charges, they may also be looking into labor violations. Search warrant documents filed in court before the raid, which was May 12, cited a report by an anonymous immigrant who was sent to work in the plant by immigration authorities as an undercover informant. The immigrant saw “a rabbi who was calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees.” Jewish managers oversee the slaughtering and processing of meat at Agriprocessors to ensure kosher standards.
In another episode, the informant said a floor supervisor had blindfolded an immigrant with duct tape. “The floor supervisor then took one of the meat hooks and hit the Guatemalan with it,” the informant said, adding that the blow did not cause “serious injuries.”
So far, 297 illegal immigrants from the May raid have been convicted of document fraud and other criminal charges, and most were sentenced to five months in prison, after which they will be deported.
A spokesman for Agriprocessors, Menachem Lubinsky, said the company could not comment on an active investigation.
“The company has two objectives in mind: to restore its production to meet the demands of the kosher food market and to be in full compliance with all local, state and federal laws,” Mr. Lubinsky said. Reports of labor violations at the plant “remain allegations only, that no agency has charged the company with,” he said.
The Agriprocessors kosher plant here has been owned and operated since 1987 by Aaron Rubashkin and his family. His son Sholom was the plant’s top manager until he was removed by his father in May after the raid. The plant’s products are distributed across the country under brands including Aaron’s Best and Aaron’s Choice.
Most of the young immigrants were hired at Agriprocessors after they presented false Social Security cards or other documents saying they were older than they were.
But in an interview here, Elmer L. said he had told floor supervisors that he was under 18. He asked that his last name not be published on advice of his lawyer, Ms. Parras Konrad, because he is a minor in deportation proceedings.
“They asked me how old I was,” Elmer L. said. “They could see that sometimes I could not keep up with the work.”
Elmer L. said that he regularly worked 17 hours a day at the plant and was paid $7.25 an hour. He said he was not paid overtime consistently.
“My work was very hard, because they didn’t give me my breaks, and I wasn’t getting very much sleep,” he said. “They told us they were going to call immigration if we complained.”
Elmer L. said that he was clearing cow innards from the slaughter floor last Aug. 26 when a supervisor he described as a rabbi began yelling at him, then kicked him from behind. The blow caused a freshly-sharpened knife to fly up and cut his elbow.
He was sent to a hospital where doctors closed the laceration with eight stitches. But he said that when he returned, his elbow still stinging, to ask for some time off, his supervisor ordered him back to work.
The next day, as he was lifting a cow’s tongue, the stitches ruptured, Elmer L. said, and the wound bled again. He said he was given a bandage at the plant and sent back to work. The incident is confirmed in a worker’s injury report filed on Aug. 31, 2007, by Agriprocessors with the Iowa labor department.
Gilda O., a Guatemalan who said she was 16, said she worked the night shift plucking chickens. She said she was working to help her parents pay off debts.
Another Guatemalan, Joel R., who gave his age as 15, said he dropped out of school in Postville after the eighth grade and took a job at Agriprocessors because his mother became ill. He said he worked from 5.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m. in a section called “quality control,” a job he described as relatively easy that he got because he speaks English.
But he said he and other workers were under constant pressure from supervisors. “They yell at us when we don’t hurry up, when we don’t work fast enough for them,” said Joel R. He and Gilda O. did not want their last names published because they are illegal immigrants and they were not arrested in the raid.
Most of the young immigrants have been released from detention but remain in deportation proceedings. Ms. Parras Konrad said she will ask immigration authorities to grant them special four-year temporary visas, known as U visas, which are offered to immigrants who assist in law enforcement investigations. Iowa labor officials are considering supporting some of those requests, Ms. Sheridan-Lucht said.
Agriprocessors executives said they had begun an overhaul of hiring and labor practices, starting with hiring a compliance officer, James G. Martin, a former United States attorney in Missouri. In an interview, Mr. Martin said the company had contracted with an outside firm, the Jacobson Staffing Company, to handle its hiring, and new safety officers, including one former federal work safety inspector.
Mark Lauritsen, a vice president for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried to organize the plant, said he remained skeptical. “They are the poster child for how a rogue company can exploit a broken immigration system,” Mr. Lauritsen said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 28, 2008

An article on Sunday about a raid at a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, in May that captured more than 20 under-age illegal immigrant workers misstated part of the name of a union that has tried to organize at the plant. It is the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, not the International Food and Commercial Workers Union.[/quote]Here it is: no punches pulled because of being PC, no holding back because we like our god-damn cheap orange juice. Illegal immigration is modern day slavery. And we should god-damn know better.

I’m sure not every place that employs these 12+ million people is this bad. Every week I’m cashing checks that people who I know are here illegally are bringing to me from the work they do at the chicken plants. (You eat Tysons? Georges? Pilgrim’s Pride? Perdue? Cargil? You better believe it. Shenandoah Valley is food processing central for the east coast, and they employ only one kind of worker.) These people are getting paid next to nothing – a working wage that forces them into houses reminiscent of the 1930s New York projects – two, three and four families living on top of each other in a 3-room place.

You know what? Yeah, there’s a lot of drug runners, violent freaks, criminals streaming across the border. But most of these people aren’t like that. It’s time we stopped this crap. It’s time we sealed both damned borders and our coastal imports, and get this problem solved once and for all. The answer is not mass amnesty – that does nothing to stop these companies from hiring more slave labor. The answer is not mass deportation – that’s not going to end this practice either. But it’s time we drew a line in the sand, it’s time we make everyone foreign and domestic start respecting our laws. Seal the border, slam it to the businesses doing this to other human beings, and make the legal immigration process easier and faster.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Every word of that is true today. But only if we start taking responsibility for it, and stop acting like the antebellum south; making excuses because it’s inconvenient to do otherwise. (And yes, I say this as a southerner.) We have always been a nation of hope, a nation of opportunity. A nation where Liberty holds up her torch so you don’t have to hide in the shadows, unless you disrespect liberty itself. It’s time we guard the golden door – and let in those who are willing to live under that light.

And damn us for every minute we let this slavery continue.

–J.L.