This just in from ALIPAC — Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee:

We need everyone’s help today. The Obama administration is postponing the implementation of the E-Verify system because it would cost illegal aliens their jobs before the liberals have a chance to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform AMNESTY that would render the E-Verify program moot!

Please pay special attention to today’s action alert and move on this.

Use the contact information list below for the US Senate and Congress to contact your Senators and Member of Congress by phone. Tell them:

“I want the E-Verify System deployed immediately to prevent illegal aliens from taking jobs from Americans and legal immigrants and I oppose Comprehensive Immigration Reform AMNESTY. America needs Comprehensive Immigration ENFORCEMENT instead!”

New Senate and Congress Contact List

The election of 2008 promises to be an all-out battle throughout the country for the soul of America. Will we continue to be a nation of individuals who pride themselves on personal responsibility? Or will we keep sliding deeper into increasing government entitlement programs (and meddling) on the path to socialism?

The answer will largely be determined by the outcomes of the 435 hard-fought Congressional races throughout the United States. And in many of those races, the margin of victory or loss on average may be less than three percent. Which is to say that illegal aliens may decide the future of our democracy.

Our voting processes are deeply flawed. For quite some time the problem of voter fraud has been discussed, but tolerated. The website Illegal Aliens US comments:

Those ‘undocumented’ are actually ‘highly documented’ with fraudulent documents our government readily accepts.

Because of virtually no vote fraud enforcement, motor voter registration, driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, amnesties and other factors, American’s most precious liberty, voting, is being rapidly undermined by illegal aliens.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reports:

In 1996, Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, making it a federal crime for non-citizens to vote in any federal election (or state election, unless authorized by state law). As a penalty, ineligible non-citizens who knowingly vote may be deported. Additionally, a non-citizen who falsely claims to be a United States citizen is in violation of this law.

However, there are many documented reports of non-citizen voting, and there is no evidence of prosecution of the aliens for their action. With nearly 19 million foreign-born residents who are not U.S. citizens in the country in the 2000 Census and an estimated 9-11 million illegal residents (many of them not also counted in the Census), the potential is enormous for non-citizens to affect the outcome of elections.

Accuracy in Media adds:

A recent study released by the conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation provides proof that illegal aliens and immigrants with green cards are committing rampant voter fraud in the United States.

Just last week, Libertarian Republican posted about a specific case in San Antonio:

300 busted in San Antonio — Illegal Immigrants have been voting in US Elections for decades. California most especially has been plagued by hundreds of thousands of illegals voting in elections. Republicans have alledged for years that Democrats have undertaken massive voter registration drives of Illegals in heavily Mexican neighborhoods around Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego County and other Border regions. Even Mid-Western States such as Ohio and Missouri have also seen problems with Illegal Immigrant voting. Now, Texas has been hit….

Specific Components of the Problem

 1)  By all estimates, the 1993 federal Motor Voter law is the biggest concern. It mandates that states allow people to register to vote when they get a driver’s license. And 47 states don’t require any proof of U.S. residence for enrollment.

 2)  For states that require some form of identification at the polling place, driver’s licenses are always accepted. And up to the present time, those can easily be finessed, obtained through bribery or forged. You will recall that seven of the 9-11 hijackers used fake driver’s licenses to board the planes. One of the terrorists used a bypass code to get a California license without a social security number.

Nawaf Alhazmi …. used a loophole, since closed, in California law that allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign drivers without Social Security numbers to use a generic number in its place…. Although the process changed a year ago, some of the drivers still have their original licenses… …a 1994 court decision required the state to also give driver’s licenses to qualified applicants, such as foreign students, who had no Social Security number…. 184,000 such licenses were issued between 12/2000 and 2/2002.

Security technologist Bruce Schneier reminds us:

Three of the 9/11 terrorists had valid Virginia driver’s licenses in fake names, after bribing a DMV clerk.

For those who can’t finesse the system or bribe a state employee, there is always forgery. And it is rampant. Just this week, reports US Border Control, a California man was charged with running a fake ID factory in a rented room:

Police have arrested Luis Alberto Montana, 44, and charged him with renting a room in a Watsonville, California home and running a document factory there, producing a variety of ID cards…. Evidence seized included sheets of blank social security cards, immigration cards, driver’s licenses, W-2 forms as well as completed cards, including driver’s licenses from California, Arizona, Oregon and California license plate stickers, Matriculas and resident alien cards, according to police.

So much for authentic identification.

 3)  Many jurisdictions allow people to vote based on property deeds, rent receipts or utility bills. That may be a fair indication that those folk live in the voting district, but says nothing about their eligibility to vote! The Northwest Indiana Times lists some of the documents that will work:

…the state-required residency documents, such as a child support check, current utility bill, property deed….

And, as we observed in an earlier article, lots of illegals own property. Many more have rent receipts. The only cases where such papers might be scarce are those (quite numerous) where several families share a rented apartment.

 4)  In a Wall Street Journal article, John Fund notes:

The Justice Department has often blocked states from weeding out people who have died or changed addresses. That’s important because in most states you don’t have to show photo identification to vote, making it quite easy for someone to vote in someone else’s name.

Even when big government does not interfere, precincts are notoriously lax in updating their rolls.

 5)  The manipulation of absentee ballots is another source of voter fraud. In 2005, the Detroit News cited:

The national average for voting by absentee ballots is 14 percent, according to the United States Election Assistance Commission…

On a nationwide scale, that’s a lot of room to move! Twenty-six states permit any registered voter to vote by absentee ballot. In these states voters are not even required to state a reason for voting by absentee ballot. It’s “convenience voting.” Oregon has taken it to the limit. Oregon conducts all elections solely by mail ballot, and has eliminated the expense and manpower requirements of maintaining polling places.

From My San Antonio News comes this gem:

Four Duval County residents have been indicted by a Brooks County grand jury and charged with illegally handling ballot applications and mail-in ballots that belonged to other voters … according to the state attorney general’s office.

The charge of possessing and handling the ballot of another person is a … violation of the Texas Election Code. The four San Diego residents indicted Thursday were Lydia Molina, 70; Maria “Kena” Soriano, 71; Elva Lazo, 62; and Maria Trigo, 55….

Check out those last names. What border do you think they came across?

 6)  Nursing homes are another prime source of legitimate voter names that can be manipulated. And from what population of day laborers might all those low-paying service jobs in the nursing homes be filled? The attendants, janitorial staff, groundskeepers?

In Alabama, the Montgomery Advertiser discloses:

Sadly, the use of absentee ballots to commit voting fraud has been well documented in Alabama in past elections. While many people used absentee ballots legitimately, past court cases have disclosed numerous instances where the outcomes of elections have been skewed by people who manipulate absentee ballots in one way or another…. Residents of nursing homes have legitimately filed for absentee ballots only to find that someone else had already filed in their name….

And the state of Florida, as a retirement destination, has a disproportionate senior population. Nursing home fraud is pervasive:

In 1998, the mayoral election in Miami was thrown out after it was learned “vote brokers” had signed hundreds of phony absentee ballots…. “In this area there’s a pattern of nursing-home administrators frequently forging ballots under residents’ names,” says Sean Cavanagh, a Democratic county supervisor who uncovered the scandal. He believes law enforcement turns a blind eye to voter fraud in many other places….

 7)  State-wide voting, rather than precinct voting, increases the chance for fraud. The poster child for “dead souls” is Maryland:

It should normally be difficult to pick the worst state legislature in America, but Maryland’s is way out in front…. Democratic legislators … passed three election-related bills and again mustered the necessary three-fifths votes to overturn his [GOP Gov. Bob Ehrlich, 2006] vetoes. Together the election laws would so weaken safeguards against voter fraud as to make Maryland the nation’s prime example of Election Day irresponsibility….

The most troublesome bill undermines the concept of local polling places by allowing all voters to vote anywhere in Maryland using a provisional ballot. Gilles Burger, chairman of the state’s Board of Elections, flatly says the bill invites fraud. His testimony prompted the Beall commission to warn that it would mean “a provisional ballot could be cast successfully in multiple counties and not be detected until after the votes were certified.”

As you can see, there are two factors in the danger of state-wide voting. First is the lack of local scrutiny regarding eligibility. Second is the potential for using the same ID in multiple precincts.

 8)  Incredibly, there are jurisdictions that do not require any identification at all at the polling place:

…California and many other states don’t require voters to show any identification at the polls. This continues at a time when you have to show photo ID to cash a check, board an airplane or even get a library card. Those under age 27 now have to show ID to buy cigarettes, but not to vote.

California? Er, Mexifornia? The home of sanctuary cities?

 9)  Rushing the naturalization process also leads to large numbers of ineligible individuals getting the opportunity to vote:

Some politicians try to make the current system even more susceptible to fraud. Vice President Gore’s office took the lead in convincing the Immigration and Naturalization Service to waive “stupid rules” on background checks so that hundreds of thousands of people awaiting citizenship would be “processed in time” for the 1996 election. It was later learned that 75,000 new citizens had arrest records when they applied. A spot check of 100 random new citizens by the House Judiciary Committee found that 20% of the sample had been arrested for serious crimes after they were given citizenship.

10)  The practice of allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections also poses a problem. Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum explains:

The Scam of Voting by Noncitizens — ….the Democrats are seeking odd-ball constituencies to enhance their numbers. They and their liberal-advocacy law firms and lobbyists … are going after the votes of noncitizens. Many millions of noncitizens live in the United States, some legal and some illegal, and the Democrats see this as a win-win effort to get them to the polls on election day. They figure the percentages are pretty good that those constituencies will vote Democratic. Local decisions to allow noncitizens to vote in city, county and school board elections should not give them a pass to vote in federal elections, but once they are on the precinct registration rolls, who is going to stop them? Certainly not the Democratic polling officials.

And the numbers are significant:

“Thousands of non-citizens are registered to vote in some states, and tens if not hundreds of thousands in total may be present on the voter rolls nationwide. These numbers are significant: Local elections are often decided by only a handful of votes, and even national elections have likely been within the margin of the number of non-citizens illegally registered to vote,” said Hans A. von Spakovsky, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation.

“There is no reliable method to determine the number of non-citizens registered or actually voting because most laws to ensure that only citizens vote are ignored, are inadequate, or are systematically undermined by government officials. Those who ignore the implications of non-citizen registration and voting either are willfully blind to the problem or may actually favor this form of illegal voting,” said Spakovsky, an expert on the subject of illegal aliens and immigration law…

11)  And then there are those pesky electronic voting machines. From Popular Mechanics — Hack The Vote:

Four companies, Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic and ES&S, are supplying the large majority of the machines… Proponents of the new technology insist these ATM-like devices will save us from the debilitating ambiguity and sloppiness of old tallying methods that complicated the 2000 deadlock in Florida. But critics fear that this generation of machines may create far more problems than it solves, such as systemwide breakdowns, lost votes–even the potential for widespread tampering.

The danger will be exacerbated in Maryland with its state-wide voting:

Maryland will now become the only state in the nation to allow statewide early voting on touch-screen machines that lack a verifiable paper trail.

Opposition To Election Reform

Civic-minded folk who work for reform will face legal obstacles and public derision:

… anyone who combats vote fraud comes in for abuse. The Justice Department has become expert at raising cries of “voter intimidation” at any attempt to monitor polling places. Last week Justice dispatched investigators to Fort Worth, Texas, merely because a political activist there distributed leaflets alleging Democrats were casting absentee ballots on behalf of shut-in voters. When the Miami Herald won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the fraud in that city’s mayoral election, the Pulitzer jury noted it had been subject to “a public campaign accusing the paper of ethnic bias and attempted intimidation.” Local officials who’ve tried to purge voter rolls of felons and noncitizens have been hit with nuisance lawsuits alleging civil-rights abuse.

Estimating the Percentage

There’s a quick and easy way to guesstimate the percentage of illegal aliens registered to vote — winnowing the juror pool. The Cutting Edge shares this data:

In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 individuals called for jury duty from voter registration rolls over a two-year period in just one U.S. district court were not U.S. citizens….

Thousands of non-citizens are registered to vote in some states, and tens if not hundreds of thousands in total may be present on the voter rolls nationwide. These numbers are significant: Local elections are often decided by only a handful of votes, and even national elections have likely been within the margin of the number of non-citizens ille­gally registered to vote.

References:

WSJ Opinion Journal — Voting Early–and Often

WSJ Opinion Journal — Phantom Voters

Eagle Forum — The Scam of Voting by Noncitizens and Felons

Accuracy in Media — Is Rampant Voter Fraud by Illegal Aliens Being Ignored by Government and Media?

The Heritage Foundation — The Threat of Non-Citizen Voting

American Enterprise Institute — Absentee Balloting for Convenience This is a good article on the historical development of absentee balloting and the trade-off between convenience and privacy.

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This has been a production of the Guard the Borders syndicate.

The Federal immigration raid last Monday in Postville, Iowa evoked all the stereotypical dramas — illegal aliens, identity theft, stolen Social Security cards, underage workers, worker abuse, a drug lab, a local school system burdened with illegal Hispanic children, a Protestant (mostly Lutheran) small town co-opted by Jewish business interests, Jewish businessmen skirting the law to turn an extra buck, a Catholic church offering sanctuary, an American labor union pitted against the Jewish businessmen who were hiring the cheaper illegal labor, a clash between two US government agencies with competing jurisdiction, pandering politicians scrambling to collect points with the Hispanic vote, liberal sympathizers supporting illegals in suing the government, foreign consulates sticking their noses in, protests that the civil rights of these criminal invaders have been violated and finally the WaPo putting a liberal spin on the news.

It is the stuff of opera, but this plot would be difficult to stage, because there are so many sub-themes that an audience could not follow the action. Ditto for the American public, trying to follow this in the mainstream news media that omit relevant background out of political correctness.

Illegal Aliens

Last Monday, on May 12 at 10 AM in the morning, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided the world’s largest kosher meat packing plant, located in Postville, Iowa. From the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier:

Federal agents converged on the grounds of the Agriprocessors meat-packing plant in Postville at 10 a.m., rounding up Hispanics on investigations of identity theft, use of stolen Social Security cards and for people in the county illegally. As many as 300 people were arrested….

The raid by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was the largest such operation in Iowa history, said Matt M. Dummermuth, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.

He said the raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant was part of an investigation that started in October and came after months of planning. Agriprocessors is the world’s largest kosher meatpacking plant….

Underage Workers

Prior to the ICE raid, the Iowa state labor department served a subpoena on the local school district for student information. From The Des Moines Register:

School officials in early April were served with a 21-point subpoena from Iowa Division of Labor Services seeking the records of Postville middle and high school students and information about some school employees, the district’s superintendent said.
….

The article goes on to note that school guidance counselor Ron Wahl hired some students, and that he in turn was involved with Agriprocessors. His computer and records were also seized.

Education Week reports:

In fact, 12 minors were arrested at the plant during Monday’s raid, according to federal officials….

Michael A. Olivas, a law professor at the University of Houston who specializes in immigration law, [e-mailed]. “I am not against legitimate law enforcement, including enforcement of child labor laws…. If that is accomplished by a legitimate subpoena, I assume it has met the test of such requirements. That it involves immigration … does not change the basics.”….

And from WHO TV in Des Moines comes this report:

It turns out illegal immigration may not have been the only illegal thing going on at Agriprocessors in Postville. According to Dave Neil, the Iowa Labor Commissioner, his department has “an on-going investigation” into child labor and wage violations there.

According to Iowa law, people under the age of 18 are prohibited from working “in or about slaughtering and meat packing establishments.” But rumors that teens were working at Agriprocessors and getting paid off the books had been circulating for months….

Worker Abuse

Allegations surfaced that the illegal Hispanic workers, who would not dare to complain for fear of being deported, were being physically abused by their Hassidic supervisors. These were taken into account in the warrant for the ICE raid. The weblog Cedar River Salmon has been following the story:

Postville, Iowa is seemingly the picture of diversity, but underneath it is an example of multiculturalism gone bad…. Mexicans have become the slave labor of an industry that was once the economic lifeblood of many Iowans and their communities…. In one case, a supervisor covered the eyes of an employee with duct tape and struck him with a meat hook. The worker, who had entered the country illegally from Guatemala, was not seriously injured. He declined to report the incident for fear of losing his job….

The Drug Lab

Jewish Telegraph, the self-proclaimed “global news service of the Jewish people,” admits:

Feds: Drugs made at kosher meat plant

Federal authorities charged that a methamphetamine laboratory was operating at the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and that employees carried weapons to work.

The charges were among the most explosive details to emerge following the massive raid Monday at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa.

But not to worry, the local Rabbi hastens to add. The meat is still kosher:

Rabbi Moses Weissmandel, the supervising rabbi at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa, called this morning to categorically refute every allegation made this week by government investigators — except the illegal worker business. “That’s not my department,” Weissmandel said.

What is his department is the rabbinical staff, some 40 rabbis responsible for the actual slaughter of meat and for supervising the plant to make sure everything’s kosher. He claimed his rabbis provide round-the-clock supervision, and that none of the allegations – among them that workers were producing drugs on site, and that rabbis abused the workers with meat hooks – are true.

“I categorically say it’s false, it’s not true, it’s a lie,” Weissmandel said. “I have my rabbis supervising 24/7. We supervise every inch of that place in order to be sure that the place is totally kosher.”

The School System

After the raid, fully half of the school children were absent:

Half of the school system’s 600 students were absent Tuesday, including 90 percent of Hispanic children, because their parents were arrested or in hiding.

In an article mentioning Iowa’s difficulties in coping with English as a Second Language (ESL) students, Edutopia notes:

Habla Ingles?

The influx of English-language learners … into communities across America has created new and unprecedented challenges for administrators and teachers, many already struggling with overcrowded classrooms, dwindling budgets, and strict performance standards for their students. Waves of immigration once limited to large cities such as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles are now reaching into … pockets of the heartland, bringing with them children whose needs go beyond language to issues of poverty and lack of stability, often associated with minimum wage or migratory employment.

CityTownInfo reports that Postville has a median family income of $40,125. Sperling’s reports a population of 2,314. If 600 of these are students (and that number only counted the public school population) then there are less than 1700 potential wage-earners to support approximately 300 expensive ESL students. Discounting the illegal immigrants under the radar who do not pay taxes and the stay-at-home moms, one can postulate a very expensive educational burden on the remaining legitimate workers/taxpayers.

Stealing A Small Town

The pain of the original, mostly hard-working Lutheran residents of this small mid-western town cries out from a lost website, hacked off the Internet but still partially available in Google cache:

What Happened To Postville? — Basically some New York Hassidic ‘Flim-Flam’ artists, walked into a small Iowa town, bought off the local politicians, and established a giant slaughterhouse. They quickly flooded the plant with Mexican, Guatemalan, and Chinese immigrants. The Rubashkin Family quickly took control of the town, and now it’s a cross between Krakow, and Mexico.

What Is Agri-Processors? — AgriProcessors bought a old processing plant and converted to a kosher meat processing plant for beef, veal, lamb, chicken and turkey.

Postville’s Only Employer — In 1988, Rubashkin and 300 Hasidic rabbis from the U.S., and Tel Aviv, came to Postville (Pop 1378), and bought a shuttered plant. The Jews despised the locals, started their own school, and refused to mix. Today the town has 2352 residents, and the plant employees 800.

Who Runs Postville — Mayor John P Hymen, and the town council of fellow Hassidics….

Skirting The Law

Trouble with the slaughterhouse is nothing new. The local paper reports:

Postville plant has record of violations, reprimands

The company has a long history of citations and fines from state and local officials for violation of labor, food safety and environmental laws….

Company officials admitted in federal court last year that they knew some employees at distribution centers in Brooklyn, N.Y., were using false Social Security numbers, according to court documents….

In April 2000, up to 40,000 gallons of turkey blood spilled into a stream near Postville. The spill was blamed on a malfunctioning pump….

The list of atrocities and violations is too long to include here, but readers can check the reference for more of this disgusting story. More details of specific violations are given in this article.

Catholic Church Sympathizes Panders To Illegals

The local paper notes that the Archbishop rushed into town to offer support to the illegals seeking sanctuary in St. Bridget Catholic Church in Postville:

Dubuque Archbishop Jerome Hanus will celebrate Mass in English and Spanish at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at St. Bridget Catholic Church in Postville.

The Postville raid and fedral Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency actions “highlight once again the need for comprehensive immigration reform,” Hanus said earlier in the week. “Families have been disrupted; parents and children are filled with fear. Many are uncertain whether their loved ones will be arrested, imprisoned indefinitely or deported.”….

No mention from the good archbishop of the fact that the reason these people are living in a state of uncertainty and fear is because … HELLO, THEY BROKE THE LAW BY COMING HERE and by using false or stolen documents.

Conflict With The Union

In constant conflict with organized American labor over pay and safety violations, AgriProcessors just lost another round with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union this past January. The premise of the company’s case will crack you up, dear readers. Agriprocessors held that their workers were not eligible to vote to join the union because they were illegals!

It has not been a good week for AgriProcessors, the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. …the company recently lost an appeal in federal court and continues to field attacks from the slaughterhouse workers’ union.

Last week, a federal court of appeals rejected AgriProcessors’ claim that workers in a Brooklyn distribution center should not be allowed to unionize because many of them are undocumented aliens. The decision ended a two-year court battle.

Conflicting Enforcement Interests

The United Food and Commercial Workers union (and, as a derivative, federal labor interests) was counting on the testimony of illegal workers at the Postville Agriprocessors plant in its ongoing battle with the company. Labor charged

“that the immigration raid disrupted a separate U.S. Labor Department investigation into alleged child labor law violations and other infractions.”

Liberal Sympathizers Sue The Government

You are going to love this. Three of those arrested (note the names) — Antonin Trinidad Candido, Roman Trinidad Candido and Maria del Refugio Masias — have filed a lawsuit against ICE on behalf of an “unspecific number of detained immigrant workers” courtesy of two law firms located in Omaha, Nebraska, — Peck Law Firm and Dornan and Lustgarten Law Firm PC, LLO. Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) has coverage:

A federal class action lawsuit filed Thursday by immigrants arrested in the Postville raid allege Agriprocessors acquired false identification for workers, along with numerous allegations of abuse from supervisors….

And, from the Peck Law Firm mission statement:

We believe that every person who is pursuing the dream of coming to the United States should be treated with dignity and respect throughout the immigration process.

We seek to create a positive atmosphere where our clients’ hopes and dreams are matched only by our dedication and excitement from success.

We believe that community education on immigration issues is essential to our nation’s understanding that from diversity comes strength….

Note that, even though this is a “law” firm, their approbation tacitly includes illegals.

The Obligatory Protests Begin

The WCF Courier reports:

Dozens protest immigration raid

More than 150 people marched Monday night in a peaceful but raucous protest outside of National Cattle Congress.

For two hours, demonstrators marched, chanted and waved flags along the sidewalk that runs along NCC grounds, where detainees from the immigration raid in Postville were being held.

At times, they turned towards federal agents on the other side of the barbed wire fence to chant slogans like “ICE go home.”….

Note to protestors — you are the illegal invaders, and ICE is OUR law enforcement. How about you go home?

Veronica Retuer-Villagrana, 17, said she was upset because most illegal immigrants stay out of trouble.

“We come here to work, not be criminals,” she said….

Note to Veronica — you have already broken our laws by coming here illegally. What is your definition of criminal?

Left-Biased Media Spin Begins

Today, the left-leaning Washington Post weighed in, typically beginning their coverage with a title criticizing law enforcement and an opening tear-jerker anecdote sympathetically told from the law-breaker’s point of view:

Immigration Raid Jars a Small Town
Critics Say Employers Should Be Targeted
By Spencer S. Hsu  |  Sunday, May 18, 2008

Antonio Escobedo ran to get his wife Monday when he saw a helicopter circling overhead and immigration agents approaching the meatpacking plant where they both work. The couple hid for hours inside the plant before obtaining refuge in the pews and hall at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, where hundreds of other Guatemalan and Mexican families gathered, hoping to avoid arrest.

“I like my job. I like my work. I like it here in Iowa,” said Escobedo, 38, an illegal immigrant from Yescas, Mexico, who has raised his three children for 11 years in Postville. “Are they mad because I’m working?”….

The WaPo is being egregiously disingenuous. It is a long and difficult process to bring charges against an employer, and costly to the taxpayers. But it is easy to determine whether an individual is in this country legally or not, and so the roundup of illegals is the quickest and most cost-effective way to tackle the problem of illegal immigration short-term.

Describing A “Clash Of Cultures”

The whole sorry drama is spelled out in a book by secular Jew Stephen Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa. From Publishers Weekly:

Bloom’s account of a vicious clash between the residents of a small, intensely Christian town and the group of Lubavitcher Jews who open a highly successful kosher slaughterhouse there is a model of sociological reportage and personal journalism. In 1987, after a Hasidic butcher from Brooklyn bought a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, and began to relocate Jewish and immigrant workers to the area, the town began to change. While some residents were suspicious and anti-Semitic, most were happy to see the town rise above its previous financial destitution. But the Lubavitchers, who traditionally live and work within their own closely knit communities, were not interested in fitting into Postville, and many were dismissive of, or overtly hostile to, its original citizens. After the Lubavitchers started buying real estate and exerting greater influence on the town’s finances, longtime Postville residents began to feel marginalized, yet their reactions caused the Jews to become more isolationist. The slaughterhouse also caused problems: workers were paid below minimum wage and were uninsured, women workers were sexually harassed and fighting among the (often illegal) immigrant workers escalated. Finally, the town took legal action to gain more control over the slaughterhouse. Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa, writes cleanly and with great insight and temperance about these events….

Calling this a “clash of cultures” is a bit too kind, and is the viewpoint of a sympathetic apologist. This is really the story of all the things that go wrong when an entire town looks the other way while the laws of our country are broken, due to economic self-interest. Then when their chickens … er, bloody turkeys … come home to roost, they realize too late that they have sacrificed their lovely little mid-western rural American iconic town. Too bad for them. They were willing to ignore the rule of law, and this is what they got.

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Final thoughts — after reading the entire list of violations cited in the references included in this article which would, as the saying goes, “gag a maggot” I am left wondering, “Who would eat this meat?”

Last Monday’s raid on the Agriprocessor slaughterhouse unveiled an operatic American illegal immigration drama like no other. One is almost tempted to draft José Plácido Domingo Embil to sing the tile role.

Update 5/22: See also the great post by Angel at Woman Honor Thyself — Illegal “Criminals” not Undocumented “Workers”

The city of Buffalo, New York is known for its wonderful food. That’s because during the last century, immigrants from all over came to make it their home, bringing with them delightful culinary traditions.

They came to what was then a thriving industrial community, where a hard-working person could earn a better life. (Note also: They came with the intention of becoming part of our country, adding to it but not taking from it. They left the “Old World” and they embraced the new one.)

Now illegal aliens have given Buffalo a big black eye, right in the restaurant business. A Mexican national named Simon Banda used the identity of Honduran Jorge Delarco (by obtaining his birth certificate, not yet clear how). Living in the United States for years, he operated restaurants in western New York State:

• El Caporal Mexican Restaurant, 3601 Union Road, Cheektowaga
• Azteca Mexican Food Cantina, Suite 3955A, Vineyard Drive, Dunkirk
• Don Lorenzo Mexican Restaurant, 126-128 W. Main St., Allegany

From an article in the Triangle Business Journal:

Eleven individuals in five states, including five in Western New York, have been arrested and charged with smuggling illegal aliens from Mexico and allegedly forcing them to work at Mexican restaurants….

“ICE is focusing on criminal worksite investigations of individuals (who) knowingly employ and hire illegal aliens, essentially drawing them into this country with the promise of wealth and a better life,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Lev Kubiak.

About 45 illegal aliens were charged $2,000 or $2,700 to be smuggled into the United States, paid substandard wages of about $300 for 72 hours a week, and required to live in certain apartments and pay rent to the owner of the restaurants.

“To add further insult to injury, once they possibly did pay off the smuggling fee, as illegal aliens have no where to go, they cannot be employed anywhere else in the country,” said U.S. Attorney Terrance Flynn.

He added it’s a disadvantage to other businesses, particularly other Mexican and ethnic restaurants, who are complying with U.S. laws and are competing for customers against those who illegally hire a labor force, paying them substandard wages, while earning a larger profit margin.

“The ICE national strategy of worksite enforcement is essentially to level the playing field for businesses that are operating under legitimate means and do not fall victim to businesses that don’t abide by those same laws,” Kubiak said.

Amen.

If you happen to be in Buffalo, you surely can count on all the mouth-watering Polish, German, and Italian eateries. You can enjoy the roast beef on Kummelweck with a beer, breakfast stollen, the world’s best fish fries, spicy hot Buffalo Wings at the Anchor Bar, Ted’s outstanding hot dogs, and Zorba the Greek’s incomparable home fries. But double-check before you order Mexican!

The folks at Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (chicken processing) use the federal database to check identity documents of new employees. However, that system will only weed out forged documents. Management thought that some applicants were using real, but stolen, identities.

The company informed ICE agents that they suspected cases of identity theft at their Arkansas plant. This morning, with full company cooperation, federal immigration agents raided Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plants in five states — Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. More than 100 people are expected to be charged.

Our list of good American food is growing — Skyy vodka, Pilgrim’s Pride chicken, Dunkin’ Donuts….

Reference: Immigration agents raid Pilgrim’s Pride plants

Our clueless Congress is always basing grand schemes on the assumption that everyone in the nation will play by their rules.

Prohibit gun ownership — as in Washington, DC — and there will be no more shootings because no one will have a gun. Right? But our nation’s capital is a shooting gallery, because the criminals do not follow the plan. In fact, it is worse than it might be, since the criminals know their victims have no means of defense.

Now this same inept Congress wants to create extensive visa programs for immigrants. No form of identification will be reliable except for fingerprint readers or retinal scans. All lesser documentation can be forged. To wit, we offer this juicy tidbit from the South Bend Tribune:

Man indicted under 17 names in South Bend court

A man indicted this week under 17 names with making and possessing false identification cards made his initial appearance Friday in federal court in Hammond.

The man said his correct name is Juan Antonio Yanez, one of the aliases listed for him. He was indicted under the name Juan Medina, which is another of his aliases.

The indictment was sealed after being returned Wednesday by the federal court jury in South Bend and was just unsealed Friday.

Yanez is charged in 13 counts with unlawfully producing false identification documents, possession with intent to transfer such documents, possessing equipment to make the false documents and misuse of a Social Security number.

The documents alleged that on April 23, Yanez had in his possession false Illinois identification cards, false Social Security cards, a false El Salvadoran identification card, false driver’s licenses, false Mexican identification cards, false U.S. permanent residence cards and the equipment to make them.

The government also is seeking an order to forfeit to the United States the false documents and equipment, including a computer system, card printers, typewriter and blank white plastic cards used to make the false IDs.

Yanez, who needed a Spanish interpreter in court, is in custody until a detention hearing and arraignment set for Tuesday in federal court in South Bend.

Tail wag: Chris Manion