Related: Floored by Framing of Immigration Reform
A couple of items in today's Globe that kept me floored:
"7-Eleven owners face immigration charges; 14 stores in Va., N.Y. seized; 40 more investigated" by William K. Rashbaum | New York Times, June 18, 2013
NEW YORK — Federal authorities seized 14 7-Eleven stores on Long Island and in Virginia on Monday, charging nine owners and managers with harboring and hiring dozens of illegal immigrants and paying them using sham Social Security numbers, officials said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn were also investigating 40 7-Eleven franchises in New York City and elsewhere, in one of the largest criminal immigrant employment investigations ever conducted by the Justice and Homeland Security departments, officials said.
The franchises split their profits with the 7-Eleven parent corporation, which handles the store payrolls, and prosecutors were seeking $30 million in forfeiture from the stores and the corporate parent. In addition to seizing 10 7-Eleven stores in New York and four in Virginia, the authorities seized five houses in New York.
The raids come at a time when Washington is embroiled in an intense debate over an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system, including stronger enforcement at the borders and in workplaces....
Yeah, how about that "coincidence." Yup, gotta get that reform through so corporations can insource cheap and more compliant foreign labor and avoid taxes and I'm just sick of saying the same thing over and over again during the daily ma$$ media obfuscations.
Through the scheme, officials said, the defendants hired more than 50 people who were in the country illegally, provided them with more than 20 identities stolen from US citizens, including children and dead people, put them up at houses owned by the defendants, and stole substantial portions of their wages....
Regardless of what you think on the issue, the ma$$ $urveillance $tate has failed, or simply do not really want the issue resolved because they have ulterior motives, but can't make it look like they don't care. It's an endless circle-jerk juggle, with the American people as the balls. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the NSA has been gobbling up all sorts of records and such for years if not decades, and thus is also getting pay records filed with the government, taxes, etc, etc, etc. But yeah, they were all fooled by this and all the other schemes that their banks of broadband computers can't crack because of key code words like terrorist, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Loretta E. Lynch, the US attorney in Brooklyn, said the defendants “ruthlessly exploited their immigrant employees,” forcing them to live in unregulated boardinghouses and “creating a modern-day plantation system.”
Yes, stories like that flare-up from time to time and you realize the extent of the problem. Then it is back to the status quo or agenda advancement or distraction or whatever.
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Many of those charged were of Pakistani descent and it was believed that most, if not all, of the workers in the country illegally were also from Pakistan, officials said....
Ooooh, so they could have been Al-CIA-Duh or Taliban, blah, blah, blah.
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See ya' in court:
"Carnival operators sued over wage law; Group alleges many workers are paid below state minimum" by Gail Waterhouse | Globe Correspondent, June 18, 2013
Workers who set up carnivals around New England have sued a New Hampshire amusements company, alleging it violated minimum wage and overtime laws by requiring employees to work long hours at a low weekly salary.
The suit, filed Monday in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, alleges that E.J. Amusements of Seabrook, N.H., better known as Fiesta Shows, paid many of its employees a flat $400 per week, even though they worked an average of 14 hours a day — and sometimes as much as 22 hours in a row.
“It comes to well under minimum wage,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of the workers, many of whom live on site with the traveling carnival. “They work from when they wake up to when they go to sleep.”
Fiesta Shows supplies and operates carnival rides and concession stands at carnivals and fairs in Massachusetts and other New England states. This season, the company will provide equipment to more than 15 New England fairs, including the popular Topsfield Fair in October, according to the company’s website. Fiesta Shows did not respond to a request for comment.
Many of the employees of Fiesta Shows come from Mexico, according to the lawsuit, working on temporary visas, called H2-Bs, that allow foreign workers to perform seasonal labor or temporary nonagricultural jobs that American workers are unable or unwilling to fill. The carnival industry recruits thousands of people each year from small Mexican towns with struggling economies to work the nine-month fair season, according to a recent report by law students at American University and Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, a migrant workers advocacy group based in Mexico City.
In 2012, about 5,000 of the 66,000 H2-B visas issued went to carnival workers. Only the landscaping and forestry industries received more.
Of course, Americans wouldn't want to do forestry or landscaping jobs, which is weird because there are dozens of small business or single owner services around here. What this tells you is that big companies, big industry, big buSine$$, and big corporate, is the benefactor from all this.
Since workers were paid a flat salary and often worked up to 95 hours a week, Liss-Riordan said, she estimated their average wages were about $4 an hour.
More than a waitress, but....
The minimum wage is $8 an hour in Massachusetts and employers must pay 1.5 times the usual hourly rate when employees work more than 40 hours a week.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Jessica Stender, acting legal director at Centro de los Derechos del Migrante. “These workers are doing incredibly hard work, assembling rides, disassembling them, often working from very high heights.”
The suit lists only one plaintiff, Jorge Pilar Garcia, but Liss-Riordan said she is seeking a class-action status because hundreds of workers were potentially denied minimum wage and overtime.
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Related: What a wage is worth
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Not all the forecast was as favorable, though. CBO said average wages would decline through 2025 as a result of the bill, and that unemployment would go up slightly."
But the insourcing of cheap foreign labor to replace Americans is going to be good for the economy!
"CBO gives boost to immigration bill" Associated Press, June 19, 2013
WASHINGTON — The bill would push federal deficits lower in each of the next two decades.
Because of all the back taxes they would collect?
In an assessment that drew cheers from the White House and other backers of the bill, Congress’ scorekeeping agency said the legislation would boost the overall economy....
The White House issued a statement saying that the report was ‘‘more proof that bipartisan commonsense immigration reform will be good for economic growth and deficit reduction.’’
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I'm sorry, folks, but this is RANK, AGENDA-PUSHING PROPAGANDA that is RIGHT IN YOUR FACE!
The assessment came as the pace of activity increased in Congress on an issue that President Obama has placed at the top of his domestic agenda.
Challenged by protesters chanting ‘‘shame, shame,’’ House Republicans advanced legislation to crack down on immigrants living illegally in the United States, at the same time the Senate lurched ahead on a dramatically different approach offering the hope of citizenship to the same millions.
The hope is the two branches will not be able to reconcile. In this case no action is better than what the Senate is proposing.
Representative Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, said the bill moving through the House Judiciary Committee was part of a ‘‘step by step, increment by increment’’ approach to immigration.
Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, predicted there would be ‘‘millions of American citizens taking to the street’’ in protest if Republicans pressed ahead with the bill.
I view them all as controlled opposition protesters for that reason, and because agenda-pushing groups often get favorable coverage (as opposed to denigrating coverage or none at all. Think Occupy and antiwar folk).
The measure permits state and local authorities to enforce federal immigration laws and requires mandatory detention for any illegal immigrant who is convicted of drunk driving.
Does seem like a good idea, even if those hard-working, put-food-on-the-table guys are driving without a license.
Despite the protests, approval by the committee was a foregone conclusion. The panel’s chairman, Represetative Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, said future bills would require companies to make sure their employees are living in the United States legally, create a program for foreign farm workers who labor in the United States, and enhance the ability of firms to hire highly skilled workers from overseas.
So on the importation of cheap foreign labor, both parties generally agree.
Those steps and more are already rolled into one sweeping measure in the Senate, a bipartisan bill that Obama supports.
So amnesty and border security -- the two issues most focused on by the media -- will be dropped for some sort of worker visa bill. Read it here first.
The CBO said in its report and accompanying economic analysis that the legislation would raise economic activity in each of the next two decades as millions of workers join the legal workforce paying taxes.
That's what this greedy government cares about, and that's all!
Not all the forecast was as favorable, though. CBO said average wages would decline through 2025 as a result of the bill, and that unemployment would go up slightly.
Oh, yeah, leave that as the last paragraph afterthought.
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The agenda-pushing distortion and deception doesn't get any better than that.
