Yesterday, Mack and Associates Inc., a company that owns 11 McDonald's
restaurants in Nevada, was fined one million dollars by a federal court after
pleading guilty to employing 58 illegal immigrants.
The court found that the company purposefully hired the illegal immigrants, offering them names and social security numbers to use that belong to other
U.S. citizens, said the US Justice Department.
In a Las Vegas federal court, Mack and Associates corporate officers pleaded
guilty to "conspiracy to encourage and
induce an alien's unlawful residence in the United States and aiding
and abetting an alien to remain in the country," the department said. Meanwhile, the company's former vice president pleaded guilty to
inducing an illegal alien to remain in the United States and faces up to five years in prison and a 250,000 dollar
five.
The case is an anomaly among government raids, which typically only end in the prosecution and deportation of the illegals due to the difficulty in proving high ranking officers knowingly hired illegal immigrants.
In May, the largest Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raid in history ended with the arrest of 389 employees of an Iowa meat-packing plant. Two supervisors have been charged with aiding and abetting the use of fraudulent identification, yet the Justice Department has yet to produce charges against Agriprocessors Inc. or its corporate officers.
Some in Congress are upset about this trend, and worry about the damage these types of raids and deportations cause on the families of those deported.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) announced yesterday that they will visit those most impacted by the May 12, 2008 ICE raid of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa on July 26th.
"As the Bush Administration and ICE crack down on, criminalize and imprison workers, nearly 400 families in Postville have been left with an impossible daily struggle to feed their children. Meanwhile, their employers—accused of wage and hour violations, child labor and physical and sexual abuse—face no charges," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) in a press release.
CHC members, and many others in Congress, are pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, a buzz word that encompasses the prosecution of those who hire illegal immigrants, a revamping of visa rules, increased border security, a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the country, and various other programs designed to attract and retain hard-working, intelligent immigrants.
Across the political aisle that can appear more like an ocean some days, many republicans are cheering the ICE raids and hoping for more. Following a series of ICE raids on the Swift & Co. plants in Colorado, Rep. Tom Tancredo sent a letter to ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers to commend her for a job well done.
“This kind of enforcement action by ICE has been sorely missing over the past decade and I urge you to expand such operations to other industries.”
Regardless of your stance on the immigration debate, one thing is for certain: a supply of illegal immigrants in the U.S. will always exist so long as there is demand for their services from business owners. Like the drug war, tackling supply without addressing the demand will simply lead to an unwinnable campaign against a group of people simply looking for a better life.