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Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

When agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided a number of Swift meat packing plants in the Midwest on December 12, there was an outcry of grief from some factions. Advocates of the people arrested, and of their families that were broken up by the unexpected jailing of the breadwinners, bemoaned the social impact that this action had on innocents, mostly children, that had done nothing wrong. The effect of criminal behavior on children is always a heartbreaker, both while the criminal enterprise is ongoing and when the cops catch up with the bad guys. Even so, that’s not much of a justification to ignore the criminality.

ICE based their raid on various immigration violations, including false statements to obtain residency and re-entry to the United States after having been deported or returned to Mexico after being captured while running the border. There were also a substantial number of charges relating to identity theft, where the arrestees were alleged to have used the Social Security numbers and other identifying information of other persons to obtain jobs, credit, housing, or public assistance services. I suppose one could argue that illegal immigration is a victimless crime, like prostitution, illegal gambling, or narcotics use, although I can argue all day that none of those acts are victimless. But identity theft is anything but victimless. Ten million people are victimized by identity thieves each year, with annual losses exceeding $50 billion. Just to put that in perspective, that’s about 56% of what the federal government spent on education in FY 2006, or the cost of 205,000 homes, based on their average price in 2004.

The meat packing industry includes some of the nastiest, most dangerous jobs in America. The smell is unbelievable. Line employees spend their days dealing with blood, excrement, tissues and organs, and other really icky stuff in an up close and personal way, all day. Many of them have to wear chain mail protective garments on their arms and torsos to reduce the injuries that are going to occur when the people at each of your elbows are wielding sharp knives and chain saws for prolonged periods. When production needs a boost, the bosses just speed up the assembly line (more accurately, a disassembly line), adding to fatigue and the number of accidents. Meat packing workers are consistently in the top ten, often the top five, most dangerous jobs in the country, based on worker injuries. Police work usually comes in around the high twenties, although it’s still number one for encountering violence in the workplace.

If this wasn’t enough, the jobs don’t pay much either, so it’s not like American workers are beating down the doors to get them. It’s a situation tailor-made for a black market workforce. Any language barrier is overcome pretty quickly because the work isn’t all that complicated (”Gut pig. Repeat.”), and the workers are happy to get any paycheck in U.S. dollars, and to work just about any hours or shifts. Even at close to minimum wage, they make more in a day than they would in a week or two back home.

Were this only an issue of someone trying to make a better life for themselves and their family by forsaking the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, such as it is so often portrayed in the movies, the “undocumented workers” would be better victims of oppression. But the situation is much more aggravated than that. Affidavits in support of arrest warrants filed for identity theft offenses document a Colorado man who lost his disability benefits when another man used his Social Security number to obtain employment at Swift. A Texas woman had her credit rating diminished when a woman in Colorado impersonated her to obtain a credit union loan in Dodge City. A woman in Missouri got a nastygram from the IRS, saying that she hadn’t claimed all of her income in 2000. Actually, her return did state all the income she had produced, but didn’t include that earned by an identity thief in Colorado who was using her name. The Missouri victim was also being billed for an English language course she knew nothing about, and wouldn’t have taken, anyway, as she has been speaking English her entire life.

Law enforcement officers know the problems created by people who have come here illegally, and are trying to stay below the radar. They want or need to drive cars, so they do, usually without the benefit of a driver’s license, liability insurance, or any ability to drive competently. If they’re stopped by the police, they smile and say they don’t understand English, whether they do or not. If the cop can’t find an interpreter, he or she often blows it off, because there’s only so much effort that most of us are going to put into a traffic citation. Besides, if the violator has no identification, or if the ID they have is forged or obtained fraudulently, there’s no way to trace or locate them when they don’t show up for court. If they get into an accident, they value the car a lot less than their continued residence in the states, so they make like jackrabbits. If it’s your car or your body that is damaged, you’re on your own. Even if the cops can locate them, they’re close to penniless and judgment-proof.

Public schools are used as day care centers while both parents work. This isn’t a problem unique to illegals, but the schools have to contend with a significant portion of their student body that doesn’t speak English and often come with nutritional and health problems, or don’t have adequate clothing for the weather. Kids born of parents that are here lawfully have many of the same problems, but just about anyone in the Ed Biz will tell you that U.S. schools have enough problems without adding this layer to the mix.

When the people arrested, or their advocates, use the kids as pawns to get sympathy for the people that broke the law in their first place, it’s just shameful. First, the parents knew that they were tossing the dice every day that they remained here. You don’t get extra points for getting away with it for a long time. Secondly, a slightly different context reveals this tactic to be the same as used by terrorists. Does the phrase “human shields” mean anything to you? One group masses captured prisoners and children together to prevent the opposing force from attacking them in wartime. The other uses their own children as a rationalization for being forgiven of their criminal acts, and to continue breaking the law. Spun well, the reader forgets that the offender was the one that placed his children in this situation in the first place.

As with so many other problems, the police can’t do much to fix this one. The police just have to deal with the consequences. There are a number of possible remedies, none of which would solve the problem by itself, but would reduce the severity some. Implement a foreign worker program where the employer would bear responsibility for the care and conduct of its imported workers. Put some pressure on countries like Mexico and El Salvador to clean up their famously corrupt governments and take better care of their people. Reduce the incentive to have children born here by not automatically conferring U.S. citizenship on children born of parents who are in the country unlawfully.

And, maybe the best option for the immediate future—slam the companies that give a wink and a nod to job applicants who claim to be U.S. citizens, but don’t speak English and can’t tell you much about the places they claim to be from. There will always be “off the books” jobs here and there, but Swift & Co. is a $9 billion outfit, the second-largest meat processor in the world. They can afford to put a few extra screeners on staff. And, today, they probably wish they had done so.