I agree with Congressman Bruce Braley that federal agencies need to investigate Agriprocessors, the company operating the meatpacking plant in Postville where nearly 400 workers were detained during an immigration raid on Monday.
It is hard to believe that a company could be unaware that some 40 percent of its workforce may consist of illegal immigrants.
Click the link about to read Lynda Waddington’s whole report for Iowa Independent. Here is a particularly important passage:
“Until we enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees who break the law, we will continue to have a problem with illegal immigration,” Braley said.
According to Braley, just three employers were fined for breaking immigration laws in 2004. Last year, following Bush administration promises “to make employer enforcement a priority,” Braley says 92 employers were arrested, but only 17 fined out of the six million employers in the U.S.
“Naturally, the sheer number of arrests made by ICE during Monday’s raid raises questions about Agriprocessors, Inc.’s knowledge of possible violations of employment and immigration law.”
For his efforts, Braley received the same answer as members of the media have received when asked about a possible or ongoing investigation. “Federal officials would not comment on the possibility of an investigation into Agriprocessors for possible violations of the law,” he said Wednesday evening.
An official at the Iowa Labor Commission has confirmed that Agriprocessors was under investigation for possible child labor and wage law violations at the time of the raid. No one would comment on the possible impact the raid would have that investigation.
On a related note, I completely agree with this letter to the editor, which the Des Moines Register published on Thursday:
From the May 13 paper, “Orthodox Jews…gather across from the Postville plant.” “Ari Berkowitz, a 15-year-old Hasidic Jew, was hanging out with a handful of friends.”
I trust that we will also be seeing captions such as “Southern Baptists watch a baseball game,” and “Jane Doe, a Pentecostalist from West Des Moines, was at the mall yesterday.”
– Sondra Krueger Feldstein, Bondurant
When the Swift plant was raided in Marshalltown last year, media reports didn’t go out of their way to identify the owners and operators of the plant as Methodist, Catholic, or whatever.
Calling attention to the religion of the Agriprocessors’ owners may give the misleading impression that their faith was related to possible legal violations.
1 Comment
specifying faiths
desmoinesdem, I generally agree that the media specifically lists traits about a persons identity, such as faith, gender, and race, far too often. The Onion has found a lot of humor in that fact, and how the identity sometimes becomes the entire story. However, in this case, it does at least fit with the general narrative about Postville.
While the faith of the owners and operators of the plant has nothing to do with their illegal acts, it is notable that one of the only major suppliers of Kosher meat in the area was shut down. It is also uncommon to see Hasidic Jews in much of Iowa, especially the rural areas. However, we’ve heard for a number of years now about the large population of Orthodox Jews in Postville and how they interact with the rest of the population. It is usually the unique characteristics about a story that make it newsworthy, and a meatpacking plant operated by Orthodox Jews in rural Iowa is unique by itself. So, it’s not surprising that the photographer would take note of their faith as part of the setting, whether or not it really has anything to do with why the raid occurred.
Of course, there is also the unfortunate fact that if that wasn’t part of the caption, there are people out there who would have no idea what they were looking at and think “Gee whiz, that’s an unusual work uniform.”
I think you’re right that it’s silly to imply connections between the faith of people and their illegal acts, but I guess I can at least understand how it could happen in this case. I’ll be worried if they start mentioning the faith every time they mention the raid. At that point, they’d be totally irresponsible.
abkad Fri 16 May 10:26 AM