Posted on 02/10/2008 9:20:15 AM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
A little over a year after an immigration raid on the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Hyrum, businesses across a wide swath of Utah's economy find themselves in a political limbo.
On the one hand, they want a legal immigrant work force in order to prosper or even to survive. On the other, they have been steamrolled by an opposition that crushed the recent proposal in Congress to reform the nation's immigration laws.
The federal raids took out about 10 percent of Swift's work force in Utah and five other states in December 2006. If that were a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I moment for other Utah businesses, the reality is that the nation's wink-wink system of employing illegal workers has changed little since then.
Indeed, that was unscored Thursday when immigration agents raided Universal Industrial Sales, Inc., in Lindon, and detained 50 undocumented workers, charged the metal fabrication business with haboring illegal aliens and arrested its human resources manager.
In the Swift case, court records show that the company dutifully filled out required forms known as I-9s when hiring employees. The company also had used a federal program under development called Basic Pilot, which was meant to help identify the illegal use of Social Security numbers. Workers were required to present a Social Security card and another form of government-issued ID with a matching photo. Beyond that, Swift was legally required only to keep the information in its files.
Records show that undocumented Swift workers simply purchased SSNs and IDs on the street for about $800, which easily got them work.
JBS Swift & Co., the new name of the company bought by the Brazilian meatpacker JBS S.A. in July, turned down several requests for interviews.
But experts argue that a meatpacking company the size of Swift had to have known whether it hired workers without proper documents.
"It stretches credulity to state they had no idea they had these workers," said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
For businesses such as construction, landscaping, agriculture, hospitality, meat processing and food services, hiring immigrants has become a matter of course. But with strenuous opposition to "amnesty" for the 12 million undocumented people already in the U.S. (an estimated 100,000 in Utah) stalling federal immigration reform or other reforms that might create a guest-worker program, Swift's labor problems are now widely shared by others.
"It's now much bigger than a meat-processing issue," said James Mintert, professor of agriculture economics at Kansas State University.
And if the Swift raids exposed the meatpacking industry's practice of hiring low-wage immigrants who used stolen or fake IDs to get jobs they could not have gotten legally, the aftermath also has raised plenty of questions about immigrant labor in Utah - and there appear to be few answers. Normally, business interests in Utah and nationally are politically powerful, but in the case of immigration-reform legislation they backed in Congress this year, they've found themselves overwhelmed. Utah's senators received perhaps 100 calls in opposition for every 10 in favor of the immigration-reform bill that failed to pass the Senate in June, said Clark Ivory, CEO of Ivory Homes, the state's largest home builder.
"The reason that immigration reform has failed is that extreme elements are stirring the pots of hatred. [They] are anti-Hispanic, very vocal and very vindictive with these politicians," Ivory said. "A moderate, thoughtful and quiet voice that comes from business is not heard over that extreme voice that comes from the far right wing."
The business community wants to abide by the law, and it wants the nation to control its borders, he said. But that community also wants reform that provides an adequate skilled and unskilled work force, which has been a constant challenge in recent years.
In the past two decades, Utah's economy has gone through changes that have created a greater need for more low-skilled workers than a native-born population could or would want to fill, said Pamela Perlich of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah.
During that span, Utah saw a huge boom in commercial and residential construction - projects such as the LDS Church conference center, facilities for the 2002 Winter Olympics and the rebuilding of Interstate 15 and construction of TRAX light rail.
In addition, a demographic shift to a higher percentage of workers with four-year college degrees (10.2 percent in 1960, compared with 26.1 percent in 2000) meant more Utah-born workers landed higher-paying jobs.
"As more of our native-born population moves up the ladder, we still continue to have demand for people in tortilla factories or meatpacking plants or people to clean buildings or make beds in hotels," Perlich argues.
But there are plenty of people inside and outside the business world who don't buy that argument. Robert Wren, for one, thinks something more sinister is in play.
Wren is chairman of UFIRE, a Utah group advocating enforcement of the nation's existing immigration laws, and although he agrees that "business needs a work force," he argues that "what has happened is that having an illegal immigrant work force allows them to get a cheaper employee.
"They aren't willing to pay what the job should be paying to get an American to do it," he said. "And by hiring more and more illegal immigrants, we basically depress the wage rates in America."
Ivory and Perlich counter that it's not that simple and that there is no way to fill available jobs without resorting to immigrant labor. Economists, too, generally agree that the nation as a whole has benefitted from immigrant labor - but disagree on how much native-born, low-skilled workers who directly compete with immigrants have been hurt economically by the influx.
Regardless of who's right, Utah businesses have been lobbying Congress for reforms that would expand the number of visas available for workers, not only those in entry-level jobs but also those in highly skilled positions, such as the high-tech sector.
"Without effective immigration reform, there's going to be a huge shortage of labor for the construction industry," said Scott Parson, president of Staker & Parson Cos., a Salt Lake City sand and gravel, concrete and road construction company. He has been involved in the immigration question on behalf of the Salt Lake Chamber.
Ivory and others worry that with federal legislation stalled and a new presidential administration still a year away, the Utah Legislature might step into the void the way its counterparts have in a few other states, where laws against hiring illegal workers have been tightened and immigrants' use of public services has been restricted.
Can I just say that this is an ugly comment. If a job is worth doing, shouldn't the work force be paid a decent wage? Why should we tollerate a system that allows a sub-class of people to be paid under scale? I don't care for the implcations of this comment at all.
"Sorry, but my business would fould if I paid more then $3.00 an hour. You've gotta understand this." Well I do understand it. The business has failed. Find something else to do.
Staker Paving used to have a virtually all white, unionized work force. They got an enormous amount of Salt Lake County and Utah DOT contracts (I-215, for example). They exist to put taxpayer dollars in their pockets (who supports the lion's share of paving?).
Now that was many moons ago that I was exposed to all this. Clearly, in the interim, they have decided that the taxpayers that they take money from are just too damn expensive to employ. Breaking the unions with illegals is better. And Oh By The Way, it's OK for them to break the laws, but God Forbid you don't want to pay taxes that go to them. That's A Law Which Must Never Be Broken, unlike immigration or labor laws, which are apparently not worth the paper they're written on. At least to Staker Paving.
So screw these scum. Hopefully an Arizona style set of laws will be passed in Utah. And garbage like the Parsons and the Stakers will either leave the business or get a little jail time for their Hate Americans practices.
I've been called worse by better...they can frankly call me anything they want too.
Crack dealers need the police to leave them alone. That doesn’t mean the police should leave them alone.
Well said.
I would like to do an audit of Mr. Ivory’s books. I’ll bet you find that he has grown quite rich in his home building business, because paying employees $10/hr without benefits and taxes is a lot less than the $24/hr plus benefits that he used to pay a journeyman carpenter or drywaller.
Oh - and those legal American tradesmen, who used that just wage to raise a family and send their kids to college and pay taxes and spend into the economy - why they’re either on the welfare rolls or in some part-time low-pay job. Instead of contributing to the economy, they are now a drag on it. And their lives are not so good, either.
But that doesn’t bother Ivory, or the union leaders, or the Democrats, or the RINOs, or the Chamber of Commerce - that’s just good business.
Yes, Pres. Bush and Sen. Juan McSleazy are part of this group and that’s why I will never forgive them for being compliant in the deterioration of this country.
That said, who the heck do we vote for in November? Obama and Clinton will destroy this country.
When I see these companies actively recruiting in poor neighborhoods and willing to employ more just out of school workers then I we can talk..... They won’t work. They know it is a GIVE ME.
Eliminate welfare (all forms) and there will be plenty of workers,
It’s called make your own way in this world or quit taking up space on this planet.
At least a lot of the illegals are leaving due to a lack of jobs. This is part of the reason that the employment figures still look robust, despite the huge contraction in construction and housebuilding.
No, they don't. They want illegal criminal aliens they can pay under the table with a pittance of a salary. Think I'm wrong? Okay, if I'm wrong, then why did this happen:
The federal raids took out about 10 percent of Swift's work force in Utah and five other states in December 2006.Normally, business interests in Utah and nationally are politically powerful, but in the case of immigration-reform legislation they backed in Congress this year, they've found themselves overwhelmed. Utah's senators received perhaps 100 calls in opposition for every 10 in favor of the immigration-reform bill that failed to pass the Senate in June
Way to go FReepers!! Remember when we crashed the Senate telephone system? Yeah!!!
Guess I'm one of those nasty, filthy haters for wanting my country to have sovereignty over it's borders. So be it!
Funny how the liberals are full of sob-stories about illegal aliens having their families broken up and they’re starving because their breadwinner got deported. How about some stories about the victims of identity theft?
I hope the following 14 reasons are read so many times that the readers get sick of reading them. I have included the URL’s for verification of the following facts.
1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
http://tinyurl.com/zob77
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroine and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
Homeland Security Report
http://www.house.gov/mccaul/pdf/Investigaions-Border-Report.pdf
12. The National Policy Institute, ‘estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.’
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/publications.php?b=deportation
13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.
http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm
14. ‘The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States’.
http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html#Illegals
The total cost is a whooping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR !
1858: “But Rhett, without our African slaves, whoever shall pick our cotton cheaply?”
1908: “But Charles, without our child laborers, whoever shall weave our textiles cheaply?”
2008: “But Muffy, without our Mexican illegals, whoever shall pick our lettuce cheaply?
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McGee, you have summed up the whole immigration debate wonderfully.
A hundred years from now people will look back on this society like they do now on the period of American slavery. How could a ruling class of the government and businesses exploit a group of people so terribly and get away with it.
How could a populace tolerate it?
The only difference between the slaveholders of 1858 and the CEOs and Chamber of Commerce types today is that the slave holders at least provided food and shelter for their slaves.
Today’s slave traders force their serfs to fend for themselves, and pass on the costs to the taxpayers. Today’s Uncle Tom Cabins would be charging the residents $400/month rent.
LOL! Me too! Mr. Ivory and his ilk were calling me "babykiller", "sellout", and other choice names back in 1972...all because I accepted a 4-year Army ROTC scholarship.
They now think they're going to hurt my feelings 36 years later by calling me a racist?
Yep, works great for people who live like pigs and aren’t concerned with what their kids are doing when they’re out “doing the jobs that Americans won’t.”
What the....?!?
But that doesn’t bother Ivory, or the union leaders, or the Democrats, or the RINOs, or the Chamber of Commerce - that’s just good business.It used to bother the union leaders quite a bit. Ol Ceasar Chavez was as anti-illegal as they come.
Yet they'll extol the virtues of the "free market", while they illegally screw with the supply and demand of labor.
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