“not enough Americans available to do the work”
posted by finneganThere’s an article in today’s Washington Post about the local poultry industry and federal immigration “reform.” It hits several of the same points touched on in past hburgnews and DNR articles (such as the effects of high grain prices on the industry).
Hobey Bauhan, president of the Virginia Poultry Federation, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte use some of the same immigration reform rhetoric:
Goodlatte agrees with Bauhan that the federal online documenting system needs to be changed to detect more immigrants who use stolen papers and place less blame on employers who fail to catch them…
Goodlatte is opposed to allowing current unauthorized immigrants to work towards citizenship:
The broader solution, he said, is not to legalize immigrants already working in the United States, as some have proposed, but to expand the national “guest worker” program, which allows up to 66,000 unskilled foreigners to work temporarily on farms and other seasonal job sites, so that it would include food processing and other agribusiness jobs [...]
Efforts to expand the guest worker program failed last year in the broader collapse of a Senate compromise proposal for comprehensive immigration change. Opponents of the program say participants are vulnerable to such exploitation as being cheated of wages and being forced to stay in poor living quarters.
Goodlatte’s voting record on immigration has remained fairly consistent. Last year, he submitted H.R. 1792, which was meant “To simplify the process for admitting temporary alien agricultural workers under section 101(a)(15)(H)(ii)(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, to increase access to such workers, and for other purposes,” according to the official bill summary. I’m not sure what “other purposes” is supposed to mean in that context.
Politicians like Goodlatte must balance on a very thin wire between constituents who want to see a widespread crackdown on illegal immigration, and business interest groups like Virginia Employers for a Sensible Immigration Policy, that want to limit employers’ liability for hiring immigrants.
Jim Mason, president of the Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative, was quoted in the Post story as well:
“We depend on immigrants. If they all went away today, people like us couldn’t operate” [...] At Jim Mason’s processing plant [in Hinton], a majority of the 560 workers are immigrants who live full time in the United States, most of whom are from Mexico or Central America.
posted: July 13th, 2008 by finnegan
filed under economy, growth & construction, immigration, news & meta-news, politics, the environment.
Comments: 7
Comments
Comment from Draegn88
Time: July 14, 2008, 4:01 pm
I would ask Jim Mason if workers from Mexico and/or Central America are absolutely necessary. Cannot a person from Europe, Africa or Asia do the job just as well?
Comment from Brian M
Time: July 14, 2008, 6:06 pm
I would believe that the swim/trip from Africa, Europe, or Asia would be much much more difficult than that from Mexico or South America. And if there were a huge amount of illegal immigrants from other countries I doubt his response would change.
Comment from JGFitzgerald
Time: July 14, 2008, 9:26 pm
You would ask. Post wouldn’t. Go figure.
Comment from JGFitzgerald
Time: July 15, 2008, 11:13 am
I should refrain from commenting on posts related to immigration, since they do tend to stir up rancid bigots better left lying, but an irony in this story is inescapable.
The GOP under Bush has brought together two constituencies that should be at odds, as best described in What’s the matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank. On one end, the business community, enamored of tax cuts and lack of regulation. On the other, the people being screwed by the corporate leanings, but kept in the party by their almost sexual fixation on social issues. Eventually, the thinking went, the social conservatives would desert the corporate slobber barons when it became obvious to the evangelical wing that they could not eat their Bibles.
Instead it is the business community, the Chamber Republicans, who are likely to desert the social conservatives as the harshness of the latter’s positions creates roadblocks to business taking care of bidness.
It would be a sweet irony if the contradiction didn’t affect so many lives.
Comment from seth
Time: July 15, 2008, 2:10 pm
he’s a uniter, not a divider
:)
Comment from finnegan
Time: August 3, 2008, 2:16 pm
Excellent report in the Virginian-Pilot today about unauthorized immigrants working on the Verizon project in the Hampton Roads area.
Verizon is using proxy contractors and subcontractors, who are hiring unauthorized Latino day laborers to dig ditches.
Subcontractor Anthony Maxwell of Maryland described in court papers his frustrations with trying to find legal workers.
“I tried to recruit employees but to no avail,” Maxwell wrote in court papers. “The only choice I had available to me were mainly Latino day workers.”
However, a group of workers he hired in 2005, who he says showed him work visas, turned out to be in the United States illegally with phony papers.
[...] Verizon union workers say they used to perform the work now being done by immigrant labor.
“We didn’t give any of this work away,” said Charles Buttiglieri of the Communications Workers of America, the union representing about 7,000 Verizon workers in Virginia. “All of it was covered by our folks.”
Buttiglieri was referring to the old days, prior to 2000, when Verizon was called Bell Atlantic. Since then, as union ranks thinned and costs rose, Verizon turned to contractors.
He said he and other union members raised the issue of illegal immigrant labor before the State Corporation Commission, in the context of deteriorating customer service, during Verizon’s attempt to seek deregulation.
“In Virginia, it seems to be a hotter issue than it is in Maryland,” he said. “It seems you’ve got a whole helluva lot more of that taking place in Virginia than in other areas.”
John Wills, secretary/treasurer of CWA Local 2202 in Virginia Beach, said he has received calls from residents complaining about the foreign workers.
He tells callers, ” ‘It’s work that we lost decades ago.’ “
Comment from David Miller
Time: August 4, 2008, 12:20 pm
De-regulate, subcontract, union bust then blame the very immigrants you rely upon for the economic woes that you’ve created. Use “illegal immigrant” wedge to stay in place to further Monopolyocracy.
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