Would Your State/City Do This?

[JPatrick]

Lots of folks here in the heartland have little tolerance for illegals. The KY3 story below speaks to the type of action that is happening more and more here in the hills. I find the story somewhat fasinating because I know of a few spots on the map where getting this aggressive against illegals would be way beyond the bounds of local PC. How about where you live?
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Business owner admits harboring illegal immigrants
by KY3 News

SPRINGFIELD -- The owner of a construction company in Ozark faces up to a 30-year prison sentence and/or a fine up to $1.5 million for harboring illegal immigrants. Santiago Lopez-Gomez, a citizen of Mexico who lives in Springfield, pleaded guilty on Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate James England.

The U.S. attorney’s office says Lopez-Gomez is himself an illegal immigrant. Prosecutors say he admitted he hired six illegal immigrants from Mexico to work for his company, S.L. Primo’s Exteriors. The office said in a news release that Lopez-Gomez rented three homes in the Freemont Hills Town Home Community in Ozark to house his workers. Ozark police officers arrested him and four of his workers on Feb. 27 during an investigation of a traffic accident.

Prosecutors say, by pleading guilty, Lopez-Gomez also agreed to forfeit to the government all of the funds in his business bank account at Bank of America, which total $73,247. They say Lopez-Gomez admitted all of the funds deposited into the bank account were obtained through his business using illegal workers.

A judge will sentence Lopez-Gomez after a presentence investigation by the U.S. Probation Office.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

in south florida where cubans enjoy the wet foot/dry foot immigration policy while haitians are turned back both wet & dry (though many still get through) and where we also have a fairly large population of mexicans though in isolated areas (both in urban areas like the city of lake worth and agricultural areas like suburban dade & palm beach counties), there is not much of a ruckus at all about illegal aliens here.

it has been this way since i came here legally from new jersey in the 70s. i never gave it much thought before reading your question and i do not know if the relative peace here derives from our long history of immigration (both legal and non), or if the newer immigrants are simply so engrained in our economy & political structure here. it could just be that they all blend in so well with all the brazilians, venezuelans and europeans flocking to this welcoming third world country we call south florida.

 

[Mwsinron]

I live in California. The people here would not stand for this kind of treatment. Im just here to make a quick buck and move the hell out and let them have the republic of California

 

[bssc]

IIRC in Arizona, the migrants get punished but the businesses are innocent. Of course, the businesses wrote the rules (although that may have changed in the last couple of years).

 

[youbet]

So-called "illegals" are well tolerated here. And the businesses that employ them are seldom harrassed for doing so, despite not withholding income or SS taxes or providing safe working conditions. That includes not only the majority Latino immigrants but also Europeans, primarily Irish and Polish.

 

[chinaco]

SPRINGFIELD -- The owner of a construction company in Ozark faces up to a 30-year prison sentence and/or a fine up to $1.5 million for harboring illegal immigrants. Santiago Lopez-Gomez, a citizen of Mexico who lives in Springfield, pleaded guilty on Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate James England.

Hope he and other like him go to jail. Look at it this way. They often avoid paying the taxes that we pay. We pick up the burden and the biz owner shifts the cost onto us. Even if the workers are lower paid... the biz has taxes to pay into the system.

We and the legal businesses are the ones getting robbed. I wish the IRS would look at it as tax evasion.

I am not against legal immigration (personally I think we are going to have to increase it)... But I am against illegal immigration and businesses that break the law. Why do I follow the rules! Are they only meant for us law abiding citizens. I look at a business (or individual) that does this as a criminal. And they are... but the powers that be are not prosecuting them now.

It is a real problem! Disgorging and prison sentences will stop it.

 

[Outtahere]

I heard on the news last night that the big bust here in MA, where they deported all the illegal, the company they busted were making the employees clock out of their first job at the company then clock in under another company to avoid paying overtime to the workers. They owe the workers over $700k in overtime... what a slick/sleasy move. Are they tolerated here, no but they aren't aggressive about finding them.

 

[dex]

It is out government's fault. We need(ed) a guest worker program in the US and had one until the early 1960s. Companies need workers now and the workers are coming here illegally.

I don't support illegal immigration - it hurts everyone.

 

[Joss]

I grew up on a rather remote family ranch in Arizona in the 60's and 70's. Without the guys from Mexico we probably wouldn't have had ANY labor. My Dad became close to several who made the seasonal trip repeatedly. One had his own rancho in Mexico and Mom & Dad, who travelled a lot down there, would stop in to say hello whenever they were nearby.

The cases of horrible treatment of these folks are disgusting. But everyone who wants an instant solution might consider that the effect on the economy of amputating this labor source would be about like what's happening with gasoline prices. You can be green-touchy-huggy-feely all you want till the rubber meets the road. But nothing is free. Raise labor prices and you're either going to pay for it at retail... or wave bye to the segment as it moves offshore.

 

[chinaco]

I grew up on a rather remote family ranch in Arizona in the 60's and 70's. Without the guys from Mexico we probably wouldn't have had ANY labor. My Dad became close to several who made the seasonal trip repeatedly. One had his own rancho in Mexico and Mom & Dad, who travelled a lot down there, would stop in to say hello whenever they were nearby.

The cases of horrible treatment of these folks are disgusting. But everyone who wants an instant solution might consider that the effect on the economy of amputating this labor source would be about like what's happening with gasoline prices. You can be green-touchy-huggy-feely all you want till the rubber meets the road. But nothing is free. Raise labor prices and you're either going to pay for it at retail... or wave bye to the segment as it moves offshore.

But don't you think this can be done legally?

 

[Joss]

"But don't you think this can be done legally?"

LOL! Wasn't pretty much the same question asked about booze back in 1933?

I have no idea. Realizing that we've been chasing illegals for at least the last 40 years ought to make us wonder, huh?

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

having lived in south florida for some 30something years and having been bombarded all that time with the politics of cuban this and haitian that, that now by the time the news gets from my television set to my ears, i have already tuned it all out.

still, i often wonder on my own what if i was born there or there. is life just a lottery or is there a price to be paid for the luck of the womb. more often than not i do not understand borders. well, maybe i understand them in so-called practical terms, but in my heart i do not relate. it just doesn't make sense to me. geography, religion, culture, class, sexual proclivity. how many divisions and who decides?

birth right? what right do i to the life i lead? i'm a lazygood4nothinbum who has come into not significant inheritance, but enough that i don't have to work for a living. born in the promised land. the irreverent "deteriorota" of mad magazine fame put my feelings best: "you are the fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here."

i can't help but to think that my life is but a blessing that i did nothing to deserve. and so when i see as i have haitians literally washing up on our shores, when i see cubans taking refuge here, when i see mexicans working our fields, when i remember my own family escaping russian czars in the 1800s for this the promised land, i can not help but to turn a blind eye to maybe what might be no longer fair in a life that never was. i just don't know.

 

[Arif]

Panama has the same problem issues with Columbians arriving here illegally. My lawyer told me there are about 300k Columbians here which is 10% of the entire population. The govern't has started cracking down on immigration by scrutinizing all marriages between Panamanians and foreigners. When my wife and I went in for her visa interview they said some answers didn't match (lost in translation..literally)up so they came to our house to see if we lived together. I think lack of stability in Columbia with the drug lords and their economy make Panama an irresistable place to smuggle into. There are no roads that will take you to Columbia from Panama just dense jungle so the trip over here is very dangerous.

 

[Dreamer]

I feel that everyone should obey the law. Does this mean that I do not feel sorry for people who are basically in a desperate situation? No, I do feel sorry for them and I agree that I am truly blessed to have been born in the USA. However, I feel even sorrier for the people who are desperate to come to the US and are waiting in their own countries and following the rules. If I had been waiting patiently for years to get to the US and then found out that people who had come illegally and had not followed the rules were going to be allowed to be US citizens in the future, I would be very disappointed and feel like a sucker for trying to follow the law. Which laws do we follow and which laws are okay to break? Should the homeless, whom I also feel extremely sorry for, be allowed to break in and live in a person's second home or in a spare room in someone's McMansion?

 

[bright eyed]

my sis lives in orange county and i find a lot of very hypocritical - open - hatred/vitriol for undocs even though everyone down here uses their labor for their lawns, child care, office clean up etc. i find it quite hypocritical.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Pretty funny at the end when they hire some illegal immigrants to build a short piece of the proposed "fence", then it takes them about 3 minutes to either go over, under or through it...

 

[loosechickens]

We spend a bunch of our time along the Mexican border....I don't know what the answer is, but I DO know that what we're doing at present isn't working.

One problem.....I read recently that the U.S./Mexico border, along with the border between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, has the most disparity of any border between two countries in the world, as to rich and poor. That disparity is bound to cause problems.

Long term, of course, the solution would be to improve Mexico's economy so that more citizens of Mexico would have decent jobs. NAFTA was conceived to assist in that direction, but ended up being mostly a giveaway to big corporations and the richest 10% in both countries, with the workers getting the short end of the stick.

Mexico is also suffering from outsourcing itself. Many of the decent paying jobs that were created during the beginnings of NAFTA, especially in northern Mexico have now moved on to other countries with even cheaper labor.

When we were in Yuma this winter, picking lemons was paying $33 for a full day's work. Lemon trees are a real b*tch to work in, thorny, prickly, etc. Climbing up a ladder, picking 40 pounds of lemons, climbing down the ladder, dumping them, climbing back up the ladder and picking 40 pounds of lemons, climbing down and dumping them, etc. and on and on and on, all day for $33. Who but illegal workers would do that?

So many in this country complain about illegal immigration, but as another poster said, we sure want to take advantage of that cheap yardwork, child care, and inexpensive produce.

My husband volunteered several years when we were settled for months at a time in one place, with Big Brothers/Big Sisters. His little brother's parents were both illegals, who had worked and lived here in the U.S. for twelve years. The child was born here. Both the parents had worked for more than ten years washing dishes in the kitchen of a local nursing home. Every day for TEN years for pretty much minimum wage. How many dishwashers do you think that nursing home would have gone through depending on U.S. citizen workers? Yet, these folks were showing up to work every day, day in and day out, doing hard and dirty work to feed their little family.

We don't put any teeth in the laws that go after the employers of these people, but so many demonize the hard working people who, after all, are just trying to feed their families. Wouldn't we do the same thing if we were them, stuck in some little village in Mexico making a couple of dollars a day and living in a dirt floored shack? To me, these folks represent all the qualities that have made this country great.

Heck, hundreds of thousands of US go across the Mexican border every year in search of cheap dentists, doctors, eyeglasses and prescriptions. How is that any different? Each side exploits what the other side has to offer. We get cheap health care, they come here for jobs. What's the difference?

I wish I knew what the best answer would be, but prohibiting stuff has never worked, whether it is drugs, Prohibition, or trying to keep poor people from coming to where they can make a better living for their families. We might better figure out a way to deal with the situation that we have. It's one of the few things I can think of where I've felt that President Bush actually had some idea of what he was doing. He had experience as a governor of a border state, and has proposed some things that might work, IF he can get them past his own party.

Unfortunately, I all too often, see rank racism and bigotry masquerading as concern for our "national borders". Out here on the road, we've run into large numbers of young people, from Ireland and some other countries that just overstayed their tourist visas and are working illegally in this country, yet nobody seems worried about them. I wish I could believe that the fact that many of the Mexicans coming here are "brown" has nothing to do with our illegal immigrant frenzy. But I'm afraid it has way too much to do with it.

Personally, sometimes I fantasize that every illegal Mexican immigrant in this country just went home. As we wandered around in the shambles of our country, with nobody to watch the kids, pick the crops, clean butts in the nursing homes, and cut the grass, not to mention the empty shelves in the grocery stores, maybe we'd realize all the work and contribution these people have brought to this country.

gotta go....feel a rant coming on....LooseChickens