Remember they don't break any other laws.

Quite the amount of upset over these raids on the meat packing plants. Whats the general feeling on catching these law breakers?

But....but, i thought they were just picking lettuce & apples.
Isn't that what's being said?
This is just the tip of the ice berg.

Boortz had something to say about this.

AN IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN....SORT OF

Agents from ICE, that is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department raided meatpacking plants in six states yesterday. The targets: illegal aliens working in the plants. So what were these invaders from the South arrested on? Identity theft charges. Seems they stole other people's identity to get their jobs. So will company officials be arrested and charged with hiring illegal aliens? Will those arrested be deported? Nope and nope.

Once again, our toothless immigration policies are at work here. The raid was huge, by the way...some 1,000 agents were involved. It was the result of an 11-month investigation. According to a Homeland Security official "the signal we're intending to send here is we're serious about work site enforcement, and those individuals who steal identities of U.S. citizens will not escape action from us." Not so fast. The real signal you're sending is that the United States will continue to do nothing about illegal immigration....for two reasons.

One, those illegals arrested are not going to automatically be deported. Shouldn't this be a no-brainer? But no...we can't possibly kick any of the 12 million Mexican invaders out of the country. That would be politically incorrect. Second, the officials who run these meatpacking plants aren't being arrested for hiring illegal aliens. It's obvious they knew what was going on...and chose to look the other way in the name of cheap labor.

Now we have another element to the story. Unions. Yup, The union representing Swift & Company workers was in federal court trying to get an injunction against the raids. The union is asking questions about violations of the illegal's civil rights. Spare me. The union also said that the raid was designed to "terrorize" the illegals. Spare me another time. Oh .... and we're also getting the "exploitation" line. These poor, poor innocent illegal aliens were just used by these mean mean corporations.

So ... was this for show? Or are we going to get serious about the Mexican invasion?

We'll see, hopefully.

My husband heard on CNN yesterday that Swift had a policy of handing out the SS numbers of ex-employees. Has anyone else heard that?

And why aren't these companies being prosecuted and fined? That's how you eliminate the problem. Maybe, if they were forced to pay better wages, they'd find US citizens more apt to do the job.

Let's get to the bottom of this thing, that's what I say.

From what I understood about the issue. Swift is part of a federal program that has them check to see if SS #'s are good or not. If they do a check and the #'s being given are good then what other course do they have to follow?

And if the numbers are not good, guess what? The employer is advised by SS Admin not to take adverse action based on the notification they have given. There. You do nothing. You can not do anything. SS, IRS, and INS are totally isolated from each other. So, yeah, right. String up the employer.

In March, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated the about 14 percent of the workers in the food manufacturing facilities were undocumented immigrants.

Seems, it might be some more than that.

In Colorado and North Carolina, it is probably much higher. Nationwide, that's probably about right. That's lumping undocumented and falsely documented aliens together.

In this case I'm not blaming the employer because they were part of a pilot program set up by the govt. If they did what the program says then they are not at fault. Everyone one of these people who were busted yesterday should be deported to their home countries. They not only broke the law by being here they also broke the law by stealing other peoples ID's. This is a federal offense and should be punished. Don't put them in jail just deport them.

I think they all still fall into the same catagory. They had to know they had false papers and didn't care.

It's not a matter of caring or not caring. I get notifications of mismatched names/ss numbers every year. I send copies of beautiful documents back every year. That's all I'm permitted to do. Get the three involved agencies working together (IRS, SSA, and INS) and something might happen.

Oh, are you aware that IRS issues an Individual Taxpayer Identification number on request? The do. That's so undocumented workers can file tax returns and pay taxes. Swell!

Actully, LittleBitty has given me an idea on how to deal with the situation next time around. I think it has potential.