Lost in the discussion of immigration raids is the real cost to business from ICE’s final solution raids.
For example, Swift says it complied with the law 100% and ICE’s raids cost Swift 30 million. The more I hear, the more it seems to be these raids harm everyone and help no one.
But you don’t have to take just my word for it. See:
“Simply put, a company cannot legally and practically do more than we have done to ensure a legal workforce under the current tools and regulations available from the government,” Jack Shandley said in written testimony delivered to Congress on Tuesday. Shandley is the senior vice president of human resources at Swift & Co. , the meat processing business that federal immigration officials raided in December. Nearly 1,300 workers were detained at sites in six states. Production was compromised. Swift lost more than $30 million.
The most telling detail: Shandley says Swift played by federal rules. It checked worker identification, filled out the proper forms, and used Basic Pilot, the government’s voluntary verification system.
What Swift couldn’t do was verify that every worker’s document was legitimate. The company tried; in 2001, the Department of Justice actually sued Swift for discrimination for too closely scrutinizing the documents of workers who looked or sounded foreign at a plant in Worthington, Minn. Swift settled, paying $200,000 but not admitting wrongdoing.
So under the current law, business loses no matter what it does, the children of immigrants lose, and as a country, we lose because we pay for ICE raids that cause lost business and tax revenue, and destroy families too.
My thanks to today’s Boston Globe editorial for pointing out what is a clear “lose/lose” government policy that should please no one.
The laws the law. And these busts are great. 1300 here another 350 in New Bedford…..they all add up.
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No system is perfect but the feds are working on it. They are just working out the kinks. Like New Bedford….they could have done some things better sure. But they did the job. ANd they did it in Massachusetts. This was a huge victory for ICE.
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Than I hope we are a different species. The real criminal – the owner who colluded, it appears to me, with the maker of false IDs – drove off in a Mercedes while some children have not seen their parents since March 6, 2007. I don’t call that a few kinks. I call that dangerous, immoral, and cruel.
Too many employees that, goshdarnit, DID turnout to be illegal?
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Another part of that story that you aren’t featuring here is that when the raid was over, and Swift began to advertise for workers at $14-$20/hr instead of minimum wage (or perhaps below, based on the practice of other businesses like Michael Bianco), they had applicants OUT THE DOOR AND AROUND THE BLOCK. Is paying the wage the job is worth instead of artificially low wages due to illegal labor part of the ‘$30 million’ loss?
Please provide links for your assertions that Swift raised its hourly rate on replacement workers. I would like to see this documented. No, I do not know what Swift’s spokesman based his loss estimate on.
http://washtimes.com…
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…and let me find the one from this raid about the people that were hired at the former, higher wage.
Production was compromised. Swift lost more than $30 million.
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I would have thought that it would have been much higher.
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Simple solution to the problem: RFID, installed at birth in the USofA, or upon naturalization or “green card” issuance, with instant links to government databases. Do a simple body scan, and you’d find out whether or not the potential employee is legal. Nobody wants that, of course.
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What I can’t figure out is why the Republikaner would be doing these sorts of hits after the 2006 election. Unless they didn’t want to compromise their (non-existent) potential support with Hispanic voters before the election.