What A Surprise‽
The Associated Press is nice about it: Immigration raids tend to spare employers
DES MOINES, Iowa – After the biggest immigration raid in U.S. history, hundreds of workers have been sentenced but not one company official as yet faces any charges — something critics say is typical of a federal government that is tough on employees but easy on owners.
Worker advocates and lawmakers say the fact that nearly 400 workers were arrested in the May 12 raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville — or more than one-third of the total number of employees — proves that company officials must have known they were hiring illegal immigrants.
“Until we enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees who break the law, we will continue to have a problem with immigration,” said U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat whose district borders Postville.
It’s well known that if there are no jobs, the workers move on. They are in the US to make money, and if they can’t make any money they will go home. Throw a few employers in prison, and the jobs that attract the undocumented with disappear. Which is cheaper and more effective, arresting and prosecuting 4 managers, or arresting 400 workers?
4 comments
with the availability and tenacity of corporate lawyers, one wonders if arresting, detaining, and deporting 400 workers really is cheaper.
That would be civil court, Hipparchia, criminal court is a whole different world.
I’ve ranted on this over at my blog, but how about taking the money put by for the moronic ‘wall’ at the border and go and create jobs in Mexico and Guatemala so the workers will stay home. It is desperation that propels them from their families to come here. Make it easier to stay.
Ellroon, we are creating jobs for Mexicans and Guatemalans – who do you think will be building the wall, and the tunnels underneath it.
No major contractor is going to pay real wages for a job like this, no matter what their expense sheet says.