- Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose
Posted on 07/24/2008 5:01:44 PM PDT by SmithL
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, blasted the Bush administration today for conducting what Democrats described as harsh and punitive immigration raids, calling special attention to a raid at a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa last May where nearly 400 illegal workers, mainly Guatemalans, were arrested in the largest worksite immigration raid in U.S. history.
Lofgren, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee's immigration panel, said at a hearing on the raid that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rounded up workers at the Agriprocessors meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, and then they were "herded into a cattle arena and prodded down a cattle chute, coerced into guilty pleas and then to federal prison."
In all, 306 illegal immigrants ultimately were charged with Social Security fraud for using illegal Social Security numbers, and also a higher offense, aggravated identity theft, which carried two-year mandatory minimum sentence. The government offered a plea bargain to dismiss the identity theft charge in return for their admission to the lesser offense, which gave them a five-month sentence and order of removal.
Lofgren and other Democrats on the panel accused the administration of targeting workers instead of employers in what has become a major enforcement crackdown on illegal immigration since the collapse last year of a comprehensive immigration overhaul that would have eased legalization requirements. The overhaul was backed by President Bush and most Democrats, and opposed by most Republicans. It died in the Senate in June 2007.
At the time, the administration was widely criticized by members of both parties for years of lax immigration enforcement. When the immigration overhaul effort failed, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said he had no alternative but to enforce existing law. He proceeded to administer a wide ranging crackdown, both at the border and with high-profile raids of employers...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
- Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose
Just another Democrat “looker”
Why is she in Congress and not in prison?
Reminds me of an old bicycle seat I had. Road hard and put away wet.
Zoe looks like she had a really hard night.
Road hard, got wet, and then went to this presser..........
These people have no class.........
Or brains.
She HAS a point. I have always wondered how the anti-business Democrats have avoided taking business and the Chamber of Commerce to task for the ILLEGAL HIRING of ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. The opinion polls in general say the rank in file members of both parties OPPOSE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. I have always thought it made sense for Republicans to oppose the ILLEGAL INVASION as a national security and sovreignity issue and the Democrats to oppose the ILLEGAL INVASION as an ILLEGAL EMPLOYER issue which drove down WAGES. But I have been wrong, because both parties are essentially ELITIST and they have been bought and paid for by their varying special interests and oppose the popular WILL of the people on this issue.
After over 7 years in office we have learned from the Democrats that George W. Bush can’t do ANYTHING right. He has screwed up EVERYTHING. He is INCOMPETENT. Everything is his fault. And, in those 7 years we have learned that Democrats have NO new ideas, NO solutions, NO action, NO insight. And, watching Pelosi and Reid, NO brains.
Did these illegal aliens break the law? Yes? Well I guess they should suffer the consequences. Anyone who thinks only the employers should suffer are idiots. That would be most democrats.
She has no Frickin' point! The illegals and the employers should both be dealt with. She is implying the only ones doing anything illegal are the employers. These people have committed many crimes, most of them felonies. We should just let them go? BS!
The problem of course, is identity theft. Lots of things can be ignored for a little while though that isn’t one of them.
She has no Frickin' point! The illegals and the employers should both be dealt with.
She has a point because employers are hardly ever dealt with.
If you have thousands of flies in your back yard every day because you have an open garbage can filled with rotting garbage, which is the easiest way to get rid of the flies?
A. Spend hours in your back yard every day with a flyswatter, chasing and swating thousands of flies.
B. Tightly close the garbage can.
Go after the employer *and* the employee.Works for me.
So the dems want to start going after employers now? That’s great ... oh guess not.
She has no point because her point was “don’t harass the law breaking illegals, harass the employers”, that is why she has no point. If you think she does then you condone 12 to 30 million illegals who commit fraud daily, identity fraud, IRS fraud, etc. Nail them all is my motto. This woman is merely trying to obfuscate and muddy the waters, and apparently so are you.
These employers know exactly what and who they are hiring. In the recent Iowa case they are prosecuting some supervisors who are hispanics. The Jewish owners are still not on the list, but you better believe they know exactly what was going on.
So prosecute the owners.
Please ad Weise in Perry, Iowa to the list of raids. They maybe next. So heads up Perry.
Correct. Here in NC we are loaded with small factories using illegals....
She advocated targetting employers which would score her a partial point.
You ignore the fact that employers are hardly ever dealt with and that attention is never called to that fact, which would deduct you a partial point.
The two of you are tied in the score.
Only with the two of you togeher, with her calling attention to enforcing the law in regards to employers and with you calling attention in regards to enforcing the law against the sausage stuffers would a full point be scored.
That's the point.
Employers, Renters, identity providers, for illegal aliens are very specifically "racketeering", and specifically targeted in the RICO law, and are criminally prosecutable.
Am I missing something? Anyone?
Her point was to leave the poor illegal aliens alone and bash the employers. My point is to take them all out, the illegals and the employers. She has no point, end of conversation. You are obviously an open border person, so please don’t respond again because I may get pissed off enough to answer you with what I really think and get banned!
Ummm ..... Didn't we already go over that?
Score: Half point.
My point is to take them all out, the illegals and the employers.
And which politician, may I ask, has previously advocated clamping down on the employers?
Has your advocacy of employer sanctions ever made the news?
No.
Has hers.
Yes.
In the employer sanctions match, she has outscored you half a point to nothing.
She has no point, end of conversation.
0 + 1/2 = 1/2
Sorry, the math says that the conversation cannot be ended unilaterally by your say so.
You are obviously an open border person, ....
I posted:
"Only with the two of you together, with her calling attention to enforcing the law in regards to employers and with you calling attention in regards to enforcing the law against the sausage stuffers would a full point be scored."
Your comment is therefore an obvious non sequitur.
.... so please don’t respond again because I may get pissed off enough to answer you with what I really think and get banned!
Make that an obvious and irrational non sequitur.
Yes, she does. Do you think the Republican clowns and buffoons will go after the illegal employers? Those boys and girls take their money from the ILLEGAL employers and the National Chamber of Commerce. I say BOTH of these two corrupt parties should be against the ILLEGAL invasion, if they have different agendas and are slave to different SPECIAL INTERESTS so be it. DEMOCRATS can be on the right side of an issue even if it is for different reasons than the Republicans who have sold out the country for a different set of reasons. BOTH PARTIES are EQUALLY TREACHEROUS on the issue of the ILLEGAL INVASION of our country. AMNESTY will NEVER BE DEFEATED if we leave it to JUST REPUBLICANS.
Employers and their illegal hires must both be pursued.
Illegals because they broke the law by breaking into our country.
The employers because they take advantage of US citizens that could be doing these jobs. And don’t give me that, “doing the jobs we won’t do” BS.
But I don’t think the employers should be fined. They pay fines by raising prices cutting costs or selling more. In each case we end up paying the fines. Rather, employers should spend some time in jail.
Employers are breaking the law if they ask for any proof of being legal before they hire an employee. Once they actually hire them, then they can ask, but by then they have already hired them as the government mandates. So actually the employers follow the law by not asking. The employers are the ones who know they are illegal and thus are the ones who should be arrested.
and what law is that?
Yes, she hates the idea of law. She is a Liberal Democrat.
Read the Everify information. It is posted on our bulletin board at work. it states that you cannot use this to check until you have hired the person and you cannot in any circumstances use it on already existing employees. This is a poster telling employers their rights.
Yep, that’s old Zoe Logren. The same politician that was part of spending over $300,000 in taxpayer money in an attempt to shut down Reid-Hillview Airport when the FAA would never allow it.
And just out of curiostity, what, if anything, DID happen to Agriprocessors, the company that hired them?
You have 12 million or so illegal aliens in this country. You have several thousand companies that hire them. It would seem to me to make far more sense to crack down on the companies than the individuals. Fine the crap out of them. Send their executives to jail. Dry up the jobs that are bringing them here to begin with. No jobs, no reason to stay.
Bullsh*t. I've never had a job in the last 20 years where I wasn't required to provide proof of citizenship.
Business bad.
Illegals victims.
You are not making sense. You crack down on both groups of law breakers, not just the employers and not just the illegals. They are illegals by definition because they break the law coming here, the break the law getting fake id, they break the law by working under fake ID. That makes them lawbreakers, criminals, actually they are felons once they choose to obtain fraudulent ID. Yes, they should be prosecuted, yes they should be deported, yes the employers should also be prosecuted. Both groups. employers and illegal aliens are law breakers(read criminals)and should be dealt with. To deal only with the employers is to say that illegals aren’t breaking the law. To deal only with illegals is saying the employers aren’t breaking the law. You want to give a pass to your illegal buddies, to bad, it just doesn’t work that way.
But they're not cracking down on both, that's the point you insist on ignoring. Nothing has happened to the company, and local authorities admit that no criminal actions are planned against the company or its senior executives. So Agriprocessor goes on its merry way and has probably replaced the workers with a whole new bunch of illegals by now.
Show me where a company has been shut down for hiring illegals. Show me where a senior executive has been prosecuted for hiring illegals. You can't. Oh, some low level managers may be arrested on rare occasions but that won't stop the hiring. Companies hire illegal workers because its cheap and they can get away with it. ICE comes in a cleans them out, they go out and hire a new bunch. I'd be willing to bet real money that a raid on Agriprocessors a year or two from now would net the same results. And why? Because nothing will have been done to discourage Agriprocessors from hiring the same kind of people once again. Until that happens then going after the individual illegals is like killing individual rats while leaving the food that attracts them spread all over the place and the gaping hole in the wall that allows them entry. Take the food away and the rats go away. Close the hole and they can't get in in the first place. Win/win all the way around, and a far more cost effective solution.
So she's saying Bush threw them into the gulag, Stalin style? What a moron.
What employers can’t ask is whether they are illegal. The govt. guidelines state that this is breaking the law because you’re not supposed to discriminate against someone because of national origin (OCS). Funny, but I thought that law only applied to U.S. citizens of different national origins but the civil rights era laws were twisted into a liberal power grab and so here we are.
What the employer is required to do is demand proof of status. Either evidence of citizenship - through birth certificate or passport - or evidence of legal residence - throug green card of visa. That applies to everyone.
yes...it’s not the smokers fault, it’s the tabacco companies fault....
it’s not the fault of the person who wants to use a gas guzzling car, it’s the oil companies fault....
it’s not the fault that someone who has an IPhone, IPod and $10,000 of stereo equipment in their car can’t pay their mortgage, it’s the mortgage companies fault...
and so on and so on....
All EVerify does it help you determine if these documents are indeed legal. If they appear to not be legal, you can't just fire the person, you have to give them an opportunity to correct false information and give them an opportunity to prove they can legally work in the US.
Your argument has a major hole in it.
It’s not illegal to produce a gas guzzling car, it’s not illegal to produce cigarettes. It IS illegal to hire illegal immigrants.
It would be nice if the government went after BOTH.
If Everify is used to prove that a potential employee is legal, it should be part of the prescreen process, but that is forbidden. So the employer must first hire the emplyee before they can check to see if it is legal, therefore, the employer has already broken the law by hiring an illegal before they are allowed to check to see if they are illegal or not.
That is true and I was looking up websites on everify because I figured you would come back with the argument that if they are not able to correct any discrepancies within the 8 day timetable, that could you then fire them?? Everything I’ve read says you should be VERY, VERY careful about getting rid of them even after the 8 day process because you could be held liable if you wrongly terminate them. I did find one site that says you are then REQUIRED to terminate them, that was from the state of Arizona in which state law now requires employers to use everify.
I don’t know, the whole thing gets very sticky if you check everify and come back with document problems. Fortunately I work in a big enough company that it would go to the legal department and be out of my hands anyway but for smaller companies, I’d be afraid to terminate someone and be very careful even if they didn’t pass everify. I’m pretty sure on my documentation from corporate on everify that they said it does not anywhere in the everify paperwork say that you can terminate someone if their paperwork doesn’t work out. It’s totally ambiguous, just left hanging in the air.
Either way, I think you’re only in trouble with the government when you “knowingly” hire an illegal. If you can prove that you made good faith efforts to verify the documentation, then a company would be fine.
That said, I do believe that employers such as the big meat packers have done this deliberately. In the Swift case from Marshalltown, employees of the company were charged with assisting in identity fraud.
I also think that if the illegal alien problem went away, so would identity theft.
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