An excerpt from:
Immigrant Workers in the United States Meat and Poultry Industry
Submission by Human Rights Watch to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - Committee on Migrant Workers
Immigrant Workers and Organizing at Nebraska Beef
One of the most telling accounts of the relationship between immigration status and workers’ rights came from Nebraska Beef workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch. A workers’ organizing effort was underway at Nebraska Beef in December 2000 when the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) raided the Nebraska Beef plant.14 The raid was part of its “Operation Vanguard,” the name given to 1999-2000 INS sweeps through Midwest meatpacking facilities to round up and deport undocumented workers.
A worker still employed at Nebraska Beef told what happened during the raid:
It was early morning when they stopped the lines. The supervisors told us all to go upstairs because the INS was here to check on people’s immigration status. There was a feeling of panic because so many of us are undocumented. We couldn’t get out; the doors were blocked. A bunch of us hid in the coolers for more than two hours. We were freezing in there. Some other people hid in other places in the plant. We were the lucky ones. They deported more than two hundred workers.
Seven of the employees detained in the Nebraska Beef raid were minors who used false documents showing they were older than 18. U.S. child labor laws prohibit work in meatpacking plants by anyone younger than 18. “They were obviously kids too young for the plant,” said an interviewed worker, “but the company didn’t care. They constantly needed bodies. Everything was production, production. Nothing else mattered.”
Another worker told what happened in the days following the raid:
The next day the company had us back at work with the lines going the same speed as before the raid. But we were missing more than two hundred workers on the lines. They said they’d fire us if we didn’t keep up. A bunch of us went up to the office and told the plant manager, either slow down the line or pay us more money. They gave us fifty cents more an hour and told us to get back to work. Then over the next week or two they fired the five people who spoke up for us at the meeting.
The December 2000 INS raid at Nebraska Beef resulted in more than two hundred workers being deported. Federal prosecutors indicted three top company managers in human resources, personnel and production departments for criminal conspiracy in a scheme to recruit and transport undocumented workers from Texas and from Mexico and for providing them false documents for work at Nebraska Beef. “We haven’t seen this type of scheme before,” said a federal government spokesperson, “not on this level.”
The prosecutors’ case collapsed in 2002 when a federal judge dismissed the indictment. The judge dismissed the case not on the merits of the charges, but because the witnesses prosecutors needed to make their case against Nebraska Beef managers had all been deported. Without the testimony of workers actually caught up in the alleged labor smuggling scheme, prosecutors could not present sufficient evidence for a trial on the merits.
I find it alarming that the government is so contradictory in their handling of the illegal immigration "crisis." What's the point of evicting such mass amounts of illegal immigrants if those who are holding the purse strings to the lucrative jobs they migrate for aren't held as equal, if not greater, "criminals?" Obvious, yes, but nonetheless entirely frustrating, too. The options I have heard lately even include a massive "fence" lining the Mexican-American border. A fence. Like the people on either side are cattle...really, upon closer examination, the jobs that immigrants do in America aren't jobs that unemployed American's seem to be vying for. You would think the hysteria surrounding how immigrants are "stealing American jobs" would be silenced by some frank and logical conversation re: a) what those "stolen jobs" constitute and b) the amount of outsourcing that American companies - those with household names - commit to every year, which don't "steal" American jobs but simply refuse to offer them at all.
I read something, somewhere, regarding the American Dream as both a significant and historical ideal, and this is something the American people need to realize - that if they refuse to seize it with the opportunities surrounding them, then they shouldn't resent those who act quicker at obtaining it...especially when they're helped along by American corporate interests. I know, I know, the statistics of the American working poor etc., and I realize that poverty can make it difficult to seize opportunities, but if 2/3 of the population - such an alarming amount when considering the job stealing bit - who don't even speak English as a first language can do it, than American's with the same if not more educational background should be able to as well. I see the true "crisis" to be American laziness and ineptitude, and those who are simply trying to better their standings - to "live the American Dream" if you will - shouldn't be punished for it. The amount of energy spent on trying to keep this group of people out of our country should instead be expended upon motivating the rest of the American population already in the doors to keep up with the pace. We can't argue anymore about immigration and those that are illegally taking advantage, so to speak, of American opportunities, because its highly unlikely to reverse itself, save a big "fence" lining hundreds of miles of land, but we can argue about what we can do to motivate and smarten up the American people. This can't be done unilaterally in the governmental sector either - the jobs immigrants are coming over for aren't postal service routes, but corporate, sweat shop type environments that thrive on illegal labor. If America is really serious about cutting down the percentage of jobs that illegal immigrants take, then they need a multilateral position which holds public and private interests accountable and that starts with cutting back on sweatshop labor, stopping the freeing corporate white collars from responsibility when the INS deports 100s of their illegal workers, and focusing our governmental attention on what we can do to enable the American public to stop shunning immigrants and begin to take some of the responsibility themselves. Regardless of anything relevant to the illegal immigration "crisis" no one in America should be treated the way the HRW report articulates, regardless of whether they are here legally or not.
Immigrant Workers in the United States Meat and Poultry Industry
Submission by Human Rights Watch to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - Committee on Migrant Workers
Immigrant Workers and Organizing at Nebraska Beef
One of the most telling accounts of the relationship between immigration status and workers’ rights came from Nebraska Beef workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch. A workers’ organizing effort was underway at Nebraska Beef in December 2000 when the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) raided the Nebraska Beef plant.14 The raid was part of its “Operation Vanguard,” the name given to 1999-2000 INS sweeps through Midwest meatpacking facilities to round up and deport undocumented workers.
A worker still employed at Nebraska Beef told what happened during the raid:
It was early morning when they stopped the lines. The supervisors told us all to go upstairs because the INS was here to check on people’s immigration status. There was a feeling of panic because so many of us are undocumented. We couldn’t get out; the doors were blocked. A bunch of us hid in the coolers for more than two hours. We were freezing in there. Some other people hid in other places in the plant. We were the lucky ones. They deported more than two hundred workers.
Seven of the employees detained in the Nebraska Beef raid were minors who used false documents showing they were older than 18. U.S. child labor laws prohibit work in meatpacking plants by anyone younger than 18. “They were obviously kids too young for the plant,” said an interviewed worker, “but the company didn’t care. They constantly needed bodies. Everything was production, production. Nothing else mattered.”
Another worker told what happened in the days following the raid:
The next day the company had us back at work with the lines going the same speed as before the raid. But we were missing more than two hundred workers on the lines. They said they’d fire us if we didn’t keep up. A bunch of us went up to the office and told the plant manager, either slow down the line or pay us more money. They gave us fifty cents more an hour and told us to get back to work. Then over the next week or two they fired the five people who spoke up for us at the meeting.
The December 2000 INS raid at Nebraska Beef resulted in more than two hundred workers being deported. Federal prosecutors indicted three top company managers in human resources, personnel and production departments for criminal conspiracy in a scheme to recruit and transport undocumented workers from Texas and from Mexico and for providing them false documents for work at Nebraska Beef. “We haven’t seen this type of scheme before,” said a federal government spokesperson, “not on this level.”
The prosecutors’ case collapsed in 2002 when a federal judge dismissed the indictment. The judge dismissed the case not on the merits of the charges, but because the witnesses prosecutors needed to make their case against Nebraska Beef managers had all been deported. Without the testimony of workers actually caught up in the alleged labor smuggling scheme, prosecutors could not present sufficient evidence for a trial on the merits.
I find it alarming that the government is so contradictory in their handling of the illegal immigration "crisis." What's the point of evicting such mass amounts of illegal immigrants if those who are holding the purse strings to the lucrative jobs they migrate for aren't held as equal, if not greater, "criminals?" Obvious, yes, but nonetheless entirely frustrating, too. The options I have heard lately even include a massive "fence" lining the Mexican-American border. A fence. Like the people on either side are cattle...really, upon closer examination, the jobs that immigrants do in America aren't jobs that unemployed American's seem to be vying for. You would think the hysteria surrounding how immigrants are "stealing American jobs" would be silenced by some frank and logical conversation re: a) what those "stolen jobs" constitute and b) the amount of outsourcing that American companies - those with household names - commit to every year, which don't "steal" American jobs but simply refuse to offer them at all.
I read something, somewhere, regarding the American Dream as both a significant and historical ideal, and this is something the American people need to realize - that if they refuse to seize it with the opportunities surrounding them, then they shouldn't resent those who act quicker at obtaining it...especially when they're helped along by American corporate interests. I know, I know, the statistics of the American working poor etc., and I realize that poverty can make it difficult to seize opportunities, but if 2/3 of the population - such an alarming amount when considering the job stealing bit - who don't even speak English as a first language can do it, than American's with the same if not more educational background should be able to as well. I see the true "crisis" to be American laziness and ineptitude, and those who are simply trying to better their standings - to "live the American Dream" if you will - shouldn't be punished for it. The amount of energy spent on trying to keep this group of people out of our country should instead be expended upon motivating the rest of the American population already in the doors to keep up with the pace. We can't argue anymore about immigration and those that are illegally taking advantage, so to speak, of American opportunities, because its highly unlikely to reverse itself, save a big "fence" lining hundreds of miles of land, but we can argue about what we can do to motivate and smarten up the American people. This can't be done unilaterally in the governmental sector either - the jobs immigrants are coming over for aren't postal service routes, but corporate, sweat shop type environments that thrive on illegal labor. If America is really serious about cutting down the percentage of jobs that illegal immigrants take, then they need a multilateral position which holds public and private interests accountable and that starts with cutting back on sweatshop labor, stopping the freeing corporate white collars from responsibility when the INS deports 100s of their illegal workers, and focusing our governmental attention on what we can do to enable the American public to stop shunning immigrants and begin to take some of the responsibility themselves. Regardless of anything relevant to the illegal immigration "crisis" no one in America should be treated the way the HRW report articulates, regardless of whether they are here legally or not.
