Many Mexicans Have Jobs Before Crossing the Border

[Phlegm]

From Associated Press:


(AP) When Pedro Lopez Vazquez crossed illegally into the United States last week, he was not heading north to look for a job. He already had one.

His future employer even paid $1,000 for a smuggler to help Vazquez make his way from the central Mexican city of Puebla to Aspen, Colo.

"We're going to Colorado to work in carpentry because we have a friend who was going to give us a job," Vazquez said.

Vazquez, 41, was interviewed along the Arizona border after being deported twice by the U.S. Border Patrol. He said he would keep trying until he got to Aspen.

His story is not unusual. A growing number of U.S. employers and migrants are tapping into an underground employment network that matches one with the other, often before the migrants leave home.

"It continues to become clear who controls immigration: It's not governments, but rather the market," said Jorge Santibanez, director of the Tijuana-based think-tank Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

As debate over immigration heats up in the United States, more and more U.S. companies in need of cheap labor are turning to undocumented employees to recruit friends and relatives back home, and to smugglers to find job seekers.

Darcy Tromanhauser, of the nonprofit law project Nebraska Appleseed, said companies in need of workers rely on the networks to "pass along the information more effectively than billboards."

"It started out more explicitly, where (meatpacking) companies used to have buses to transport people to come up, and they would advertise directly in Mexico," she said. "Now I think that happens more informally."

At the same time, it has become less risky for companies to recruit illegal migrants. Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. prosecution of employers who hire such workers has dwindled to a trickle as the government puts its resources toward national security.

The few cases that are prosecuted, however, highlight how lucrative a business recruiting undocumented workers has become. In one case, a single smuggler allegedly earned $900,000 over 15 months placing 6,000 migrants in jobs at Chinese restaurants across the upper Midwest.

Shan Wei Yu, a 51-year-old Chinese-American, was sentenced in December to nine years in federal prison on charges involving the transportation of 40 of those migrants. Investigations involving the others continue.

Rick Hilzendager, special agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Grand Forks, N.D., said Yu connected 6,000 migrants from Latin America with jobs in Chinese restaurants in Illinois, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Based in Yu's home in McKinney, Texas, the Great Texas Employment Agency placed ads in Chinese-language newspapers in the Chicago area offering cheap labor from Latin America, investigators said.

Yu sent a recruiter with Spanish interpreters to find migrants in Dallas willing to be fry cooks and dishwashers, Hilzendager said. A team made up mostly of illegal Chinese immigrants rented cars and drove them up.

Yu allegedly charged a $150 finder's fee for each migrant while the drivers earned $300 per worker. Restaurant owners deducted the $450 from workers' first-month paychecks of $1,000.

"It was just so easy," Hilzendager said.

Nick Chase, assistant U.S. attorney in North Dakota, said Yu even offered to replace workers free of charge if one left within two weeks of starting.

"It was a 2-for-1 special _ like a pizza," Chase said. "Everything about it was ugly."

The employees, housed in cramped apartments provided by employers, worked 14-hour days and had little outside contact. The case broke open in August 2004 after two Mexican migrants working at the Buffet House in Grand Forks fled poor conditions and were picked up along a highway by Border Patrol agents.

Many of the drivers involved in the scheme were deported to China. Two North Dakota restaurant owners were sentenced to four months each for harboring illegal immigrants.

But many migrants, and many employers, say the recruiters provide a valuable service. Sergio Sosa, who organizes Nebraska meatpackers, said many are seen as heroes in the Mexican towns where the workers come from.

Sosa, speaking by telephone from Omaha, said that in the 1990s companies bused migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border, paying them room and board plus salaries of $100 a week. But after a government crackdown, they began to rely more on their workers to recruit friends and family back in Mexico.

"One of the meatpacking supervisors is from Michoacan, and most of the people working for him come from his town," Sosa said. "There's no official recruiting _ it's more internal through family."

Migrants setting out along the border confirmed his account. Guadalupe Mendez, 26, said her sister found her work as a seamstress in Los Angeles. Lorenzo Garcia Ruiz, 38, said friends arranged a gardening job for him in Kentucky.

To make a real dent in this network, the U.S. government would need to go after employers or make them pay the costs of legalizing workers, migration activists say.

But an August 2005 report of the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, indicates the opposite is happening. After the Sept. 11 attacks, work-site inspections by U.S. immigration officials plummeted as they focused on national security cases.

From 1999 to 2004, the number of businesses that faced fines dropped from 417 to three, the GAO said. Data after 2004 could not be compared because the government changed the way it records data.

Investigators say fake documents makes it difficult to prove an employer has knowingly hired an undocumented worker. The business community argues that employers aren't equipped to spot fraud and warns that more investigations could lead to workplace discrimination.

Chase said businesses must be kept in check.

"There are employers out there who are always going to be tempted by the bottom line," he said.

[kaharthemad]

When Burrito Bob can fill the papers out and come here legally then he can stay. Till then we need to start arming the Minutemen out there in texas, Arizona and the rest of the bording states. 15.00 per Illegal.

[labbats]

Why can't the government just plant a couple moles down there and report back at who is hiring illegals down there? Then put the sting on them and publish it in the local paper so that everyone knows who is doing this. Then get the locals to put signs in every home/business that is being used by them stating that they are purposely hiring illegals and shipping them here. Watch the businesses fold overnight.

Of course, I'm also of the opinion that DUIs should be forced to get DUI license plates, rapists should have to get a tatoo saying they are a rapist, etc. This country needs to face the fact that social stigma would change a lot more than some ink on a paper.

[Martrae]

Only problem is you'd have idiots wearing stuff like that as a badge of honor. Look at all those homosexuals that are deliberately getting AIDS cuz it's the 'in' thing.

[kaharthemad]

And it will be the 'in' thing when they die off. Nature has always had a way of thinning the herd.

[labbats]

You get a rapist tatoo on your neck, and it ain't gonna be the latest fashion trend.

Also, I've heard bits and pieces of gays purposely getting AIDS, but I'd wager they're 1 in 100. Much like saying all Muslims are terrorists.

[kaharthemad]

Much like saying all Muslims are terrorists.

yeah but thats about 15 to 1.

[Gargamellow]

i think the punishment should fit the crime

you rape..you get raped

you kill...you get killed

you steal..you lose everything

i don't care who comes to thsi country...this land belongs to earth, not me..at least they got jobs

[Tikker]

I don't understand why if they have a job, they don't just apply to become a legit citizen?

[Phlegm]

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Federal immigration authorities rounded up more than 1,000 illegal immigrants at dozens of sites and charged nine individuals of the firm that employed them, federal law enforcement officials announced.

Seven current and former managers of IFCO Systems, which has offices in several states, were arrested and charged in connection with the employment of illegal immigrants, said U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby in Albany, New York.

Suddaby said two lower level employees were also charged in the case.

Wednesday's action against IFCO Systems -- an industry leader in the manufacture of wooden pallets, crates and containers -- came as Homeland Security and Justice Department officials prepared to announce steps to toughen internal enforcement of the nation's immigration laws.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other Bush administration officials and a federal prosecutor will appear at the agency's Washington headquarters Thursday. They will announce the new strategy aimed at employers and disclose the results of the enforcement actions targeting IFCO Systems.

Customs officials said agents made more than a thousand arrests in nearly 40 locations including Houston, Texas; Cincinnati, Ohio; Phoenix, Arizona; and Albany, New York.

A customs official said federal authorities checked a "sample" of 5,800 IFCO employee records last year and found that 53 percent had faulty Social Security numbers.

"They were using Social Security numbers of people that were dead, of children or just different individuals that did not work at IFCO," Immigration and Customs agency chief Julie Myers told CNN.

"The Social Security Administration had written IFCO over 13 times and told them, 'Listen, You have a problem. You have over a thousand employees that have faulty Social Security numbers. And we consider that to be a big problem.' And IFCO did not do anything about it," Myers said.

Myers said a yearlong investigation revealed that IFCO managers had induced illegal immigrants to work there, telling some of them to doctor W-2 tax forms or saying that they did not need to fill out any documentation at all.

Myers and Suddaby will join Chertoff for Thursday's announcement.

Immigration legislation pending in Congress would increase penalties for companies that employ illegal immigrants.

The strictest immigration measures proposed have spurred a series of demonstrations by opponents nationwide in recent weeks. On Wednesday, hundreds of high school students protested at the Colorado Capitol in support of illegal immigrants, The Associated Press reported.

As public concern over illegal immigration has grown, federal law enforcement officials have sought to tighten enforcement of laws against employment of illegal immigrants. The charges include money laundering, harboring immigrants, illegal immigrant employment and wire fraud.

"It used to be in these cases that they amounted mainly to a slap on the wrist or a small civil fine," Myers told CNN. "We're now focusing on criminal cases and bringing as many criminal charges as we can when we find employers that blatantly violate work site enforcement laws."

Asked if senior managers knew or should have known about the alleged violations, Myers said, "There's no allegation of that at this time. It's certainly an ongoing investigation. I will tell you, though, that we are troubled by some of the things that we've seen at IFCO."

She said the company is cooperating with the investigation.

The criminal complaint against the seven managers charges them with conspiracy to transport, harbor, and employ illegal immigrants for private gain.

The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison for each illegal immigrant, officials said.

IFCO Systems, based in Germany, with more than 40 offices across the U.S., issued a statement late Wednesday acknowledging the federal action.

"IFCO Systems is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating a workplace free of discrimination," the company said. "It is our policy to comply with all federal and state employee requirements."

But the IFCO statement did not directly address the charges.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials today conducted employee background checks at a number of IFCO facilities across the country. We are cooperating fully with representatives from ICE and hope to have this matter resolved as soon as possible," the statement said.

[Siferz]

I don't understand why if they have a job, they don't just apply to become a legit citizen?

It's extremely difficult to become a citizen, even if you have a job waiting, practically impossible. One thing that is far more common though, is for an employer to get a worker's permit for the immigrant before they come to the United States.
If you can make a good case about not being able to find sufficient help in the States, you can get a work permit for a foreigner to come work for you, which is far more common. I'm not sure why the company states above wouldn't just do that...

Why can't the government just plant a couple moles down there and report back at who is hiring illegals down there? Then put the sting on them and publish it in the local paper so that everyone knows who is doing this. Then get the locals to put signs in every home/business that is being used by them stating that they are purposely hiring illegals and shipping them here. Watch the businesses fold overnight.

FOR THE MOST PART, businesses don't hire illegal immigrants purposely. These immigrants have falsified documents that would suggest they are legal. If you want these businesses to 'fold overnight' than stop going to Walmart, stop eating fresh fruit and vegetables. stop filling up on ethanol gasoline, and stop building new roads and buildings because all of these industries are EXTREMELY saturated with illegal workers. Impossible...

[Harrison]

Impossible?

No.

[Siferz]

Yes actually it is impossible to get a society to quit doing all of the things I listed above.

Even though what I meant was that it's impossible to get these businesses to 'fold overnight' or anything close to.