Target Rich Environment

One reason that I’ve wanted to see a serious effort to halt illegal immigration is that it disrupts markets by giving unfair advantage to those who hire illegal aliens, which when unfettered by enforcement efforts then makes hiring illegals a necessity for other businesses to compete.. 

The industries affected have gradually expanded, and now it’s becoming pervasive.  Not only that, but you know that somewhere, someone in this country is being exploited because they’re here illegally. Don’t believe me? (link)

Iowa meatpacking plant raid uncovers illegal immigrants, underage workers

08:57 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Associated Press

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.

It’s so frustrating to see this happening.  Our worthless, stinking, feel-good Congress is in the midst of authorizing an apology for Jim Crow laws and slavery (tilling the ground for reparations), which they were not alive for.  The United States lead the way in the world of not only eliminating slave labor but in creating fair treatment for workers.

Meanwhile this Congress has utterly failed to do the two things that they can do to stem the flow of exploitable illegal aliens into this country:  mandate and fund enforcement of immigration laws and secure the border.

Of course, they’ll never be held accountable for allowing this to happen in our nation or abandoning our sovereignty.