Friday, November 20, 2009

Dropping Immigration Charges against American Employers: This is why we have an immigration problem


This commentary is a based on a series of articles about the case Sholom Rubashkin, a manager of a kosher slaughterhouse who was charged with 72 counts of federal immigration violations, including harboring undocumented immigrants for profit, conspiracy to commit document fraud, and aiding and abetting document fraud.

The reasons for dismissing Mr. Rubashkin's immigration charges are this: he has been convicted for multiple counts of financial fraud, and his immigration convictions will not increase the time he serves in prison.

Hold on here--wasn't Rubashkin's Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville, Iowa the largest single-site raid in U.S. history? Didn't federal agents find 389 undocumented workers at the plant?

Where is FAIR? Where are the "Help Save" groups? Where is the indignant outrage of the Tea Party movement?

I think it's important to remember in instances like this--a perfect example of American hypocrisy--that while Mr. Rubashkin is not being held accountable for his role in the immigration violations, those who worked for him are either deported or sitting in immigrant detention centers. He won't have to pay for his substantial crimes facilitating undocumented immigration, but the immigrants themselves will.

The federal judge who was willing to overlook these crimes was sending a clear message to him and all the employers in the U.S.: if you break these laws, it's not going to be worth our time and money try to convict you. And why should he?

It's so much easier just to blame the immigrants.
in reference to: The Associated Press: Immigration charges dropped in slaughterhouse case (view on Google Sidewiki)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trouble is, our corrupt system has evolved to a state where employers usually have plausible deniability when hiring illegal immigrants. Nevertheless the illegal immigrant him/herself has no such plausible deniability. I would welcome stiffer penalties against employers and mandating E-verify be used by all employers. Our government is too corrupt to do that. Meanwhile, attack the problem at its source - the individuals who are knowingly committing identity fraud.

Deb said...

I'm afraid your comments reflect the hypocrisy I was writing about. The U.S. is "helpless" and cannot simply get its act together to go after our own citizens, but that same corrupt government (by your words, not mine), should be free to pursue, harass, and apprehend immigrants

How is it that you can be so sure that only immigrants are "knowingly" committing identity fraud? Are you really sure that those owners and managers at the meatpacking plants really think they're hiring citizens?

Or is it simply okay to give them a pass because as I said above, it's just easier to blame immigrants than accept responsibility for the problems that we ourselves have created.