“Silent raids” demonstrate need for a better immigration policy
Today’s New York Times reports:
The Obama administration has replaced immigration raids at factories and farms with a quieter enforcement strategy: sending federal agents to scour companies’ records for illegal immigrant workers. ..the “silent raids,” as employers call the audits, usually result in the workers being fired, but in many cases they are not deported.
What does this have to do with food politics?
Employers say the Obama administration is leaving them short of labor for some low-wage work, conducting silent raids but offering no new legal immigrant laborers in occupations, like farm work, that Americans continue to shun despite the recession. Federal labor officials estimate that more than 60 percent of farm workers in the United States are illegal immigrants.
In my visit to Alaskan seafood processing plants this summer, I saw cannery workers imported from the Philippines or Eastern Europe to work 16 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, for the minimum wage or close to it.
Residents of one remote cannery town said they all worked in canneries as teenagers for good wages. But when the large cannery moved into town, it reduced wages, increased hours, halved the amount paid to fishermen, and imported the Philippine workers. The canneries, they said, made it clear that they did not want locals working in the plants.
The result: near-poverty life for community residents and near-slavery conditions for the imported workers.
Our immigration system needs a fix to allow workers to come and go without fear of random arrests, firings, or deportations. Farm working conditions need a fix. Reexamining the minimum wage might be a good starting point.
Your thoughts?
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We should call the employment of undocumented workers what it is, the modern form of indentured servitude. As such, it distorts the economics of the labor market for the benefit of the employers and it creates a class of labor with no remedy against exploitation. The subtext that I glean from the article is that the Obama administration is focusing enforcement and penalties on the employers rather than the employed. This, in my opinion, is the only long term strategy that will address the problems of illegal immigration.
Many years ago, I had a co-worker whose son went up to Alaska to work in a fish cannery during the summers. He worked very long hours, but for good wages. It gave him enough money to get through the following school year without having to take a part-time job, and still head off for the occasional ski weekend during the winter. So these corporate canneries could hire locals and still find enough domestic seasonal help to process the fish if they wanted to. But maximizing the bottom line is the only corporate goal these days.
I am sure there are citizens who are collecting unemployment in the communities where these jobs are. If they don’t want the jobs that are left vacant, they are not actually unemployed, they are choosing not to work, so they should be cut off ofunemployment. But, the employers should have to pay legal wages, which I suspect they weren’t. And, those employers, if they didn’t file 1040′s for their employees every year, should be fined enough to finance the deportation of every illegal in the county.
We should have done this 40 years ago, then we wouldn’t have the problem now, and we won’t have it 20 years from now if this policy is followed.
Gosh, American-style corporate-capitalism sure is great! The rich get richer and the poor get to hate foreigners.
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“If they don’t want the jobs that are left vacant,they are not actually unemployed, they are choosing not to work, so they should be cut off of unemployment. ”
Dianne, you can’t work for a company that won’t hire you. It sounds like the companies don’t want locals – they expect to be treated like American citizens.
Sounds a lot like Walmart’s strategy too– run everyone else out of business so there are no other job opportunities and then hire mostly part time help and pay low wages, no benefits.
Race to the bottom everywhere.
It’s time to start “perp walks” for the senior management of these companies! Until there is jail time for these violators nothing will change.
re-examining how much of our income we are willing to pay for food, vs. toys/cellphones/ipods/bluray etc, is needed in order for farmers and 1st level food producers (eg. unprocessed food that is prepared basically for freeezing, canning, etc, instead of higher level processing into junk food) to make a real living. Dealing with illegal immigrants won’t solve our selfishness, it will only perpetuate it.
The employers need to man up and pay a living wage to local, legal workers. Illegal workers are illegal, should be treated as such. Avenues exist for immigrant workers to be here legally.
Thinking about this some more, I am at least happy that the regulators have switched their attention from the workers to the employers. The food industry is notorious for using illegal immigrants who have fewer (if any) legal rights and therefore can’t or won’t demand fair wages, safe work place conditions, health care, or disability insurance.
Food Inc has a small section in the main part of the film on this, and a larger segment in the Special Features “Deleted Scenes”.
Again — we get what we pay for. Try, most of the time, to know your farmer, know your food supplier!