Obscene and Immoral:

The “Fast Tracking” of Illegal Immigrants in Postville, Iowa

       Even the Rabbis were illegal!  Two brought in from Canada blessed the fowl; meanwhile government documents about the Agriprocessors kosher plant reveal that the rabbis often ignored God, Moses and the Ten Commandments. Described only as a “Hasidic Jew”, one floor supervisor duct-taped the eyes of a Guatemalan worker”; he then “took one of the meat hooks and hit the Guatemalan with it.” The warrant notes that, “apparently”, the sightless man received “no serious injuries”. (http://www.aila.org/content/fileviewer.aspx?docid=25454&linkid=177821)

         On the Web, the Agriprocessor homepage assures us that they “approach their business in the context of a deep religious tradition.” Perhaps it is a Neanderthal faith? Or, instead of burning people at the stake, these guys slowly roast the workers over an assembly line that recorded numerous amputations. The government’s application for a warrant stresses that, “Your affiant is aware, from his training and experience, that those who employ illegal aliens often exploit the aliens in various ways…exploitation can take on many forms, such as requiring employees to provide money or other things of value to maintain employment or secure better working hours or tasks, providing sub-par working conditions, failing to pay overtime, and physically harassing or mistreating employees.”

   If forced to take a multiple choice exam, Agriprocessor could check only one box: All of the above. The government was right but, when it finally served its warrant, Washington focused on the exploited rather than the exploiters. The infidels got a fine while the workers were “driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled” out of the slaughter house to, believe it or not, the National Cattle Congress. As Erik Camayd-Freixas stresses (http://www.galleons.org/Joomla/content/view/94/1/) the National Cattle Congress “is a sixty acre cattle fairground that had been transformed into a sort of concentration camp or detention center.” Converting 23 trailers into courtrooms, Homeland Security forced its staff and interpreters to work overtime. On a white collar assembly line that lasted from 7A.M. to midnight, the Fed “fast tracked” workers who, since they often could not read and write, heard interpreters offer this deal.

          Admit that you used a false social security card (five months in jail) or plead guilty to “aggravated identity theft”( a mandatory two years in jail); in essence, even though you cannot read and write, you would admit that you deliberately stole the social security identity from an individual who did not know that he had been robbed! As Camayd Freixas explains, of the 983 cards examined by the authorities, only one “happened to coincide by chance with an (actual) reported identity theft.”

    Confused? So were the workers. Therefore, lawyers who each represented 17 clients had the interpreters explain that, since aggravated identity theft meant far more time in jail, the worker needed to accept the lesser charge and move the line along. Fast tracking resembled the kind of justice meted out in Guatemala, so as the workers sometimes pretended to read the charges, they “signed” the documents with a comment like this. “Your honor, you know that we are here because of the needs of our families. I beg that you find it in your heart to send us home before too long, because we have a responsibility to our children, to give them an education, clothing, shelter and food.”

         Legally the Judge had no choice. Morally, he made this comment. “I appreciate the fact that you are very hard working people, who have come here to do no harm. And I thank you for coming to this country to work hard.”

     Reading this comment, I was reminded of another found at the Presidential Library of Ronald Reagan. Considering –twenty-five years ago- a possible legalization of 3 to 6 million workers, the President noted that he did not want to reward people for breaking the law. In addition Ronald Reagan “did not want to run the risk of corrupting people who for the most part revealed a strong devotion to the work ethic.” If he amnestied them into America, they could be eligible for welfare; perversely, America would be corrupting the Mexicans whose presence allegedly corrupted the country that allowed them to work so hard.

   Here are two indisputable facts. First, the Latinos arrested in 2008 and in 1982 are, overwhelmingly, hard working, family centered men and women. Second, a memo sent to President Reagan by his Attorney General indicates that, even in 1981, more than 75% of the illegal immigrants worked in foul secondary industries like meat packing. We have relied on illegal labor for more than eighty years but, rather than embrace the facts, we punish the hard working people on whom we rely.

     It is, for example, supreme hypocrisy to complain about the illegal workers and forget the yeoman’s work they are doing to shore up the Social Security system. Money deducted from false social security cards goes into the “Earnings Suspense File”. Camayd-Freixas notes (and he is quite correct) that that fund now contains more than $600 BILLION. Social Security happily blends the illegal money into the legal accounts, with this result: People like the workers at Postville “currently subsidize the retirement of legal residents at a rate of $8.9 billion a year.”

      President Reagan worried about corruption. The problem was that he focused on the wrong group. It is our senior citizens who are receiving welfare; more specifically, a senior who lives in Phoenix, basks in the sun, and complains about the illegals better hope that the Guatemalans keep on working. Otherwise Phoenix may dry up as fast as the senior’s social security check.

   Here is what we need to do: Listen to Senator Barak Obama. He asked people –all people- to accept responsibility for their children and their families. Can anybody be more caring, more responsible than a worker who, in one case, walked for forty days to cross the Rio Grande and wind up at Agriprocessors?

    On a continent that extends from Buenos Aires to Anchorage, these are the best of Americans.

   And the sooner we accept that fact, the sooner we will follow the advice of Rabbi Henry Karp. In a May 31^st, 2008 letter to Davenport’s Quad City Times, the Rabbi noted that “all Americans with immigrant ancestors should be joining together in efforts to bring about just and most important of all, humane immigration law reforms. We should dedicate our efforts to the memories of our ancestors who came to these shores and provided us with the good lives we enjoy today.”

   In my own case, my father arrived in 1916. I do not know if he was legal or illegal. He never learned to read and write; and he worked in a factory for 43 years so that I had the opportunities he never enjoyed. One way to respect this legacy is to embrace –with an amnesty- the hard working immigrants who want to do for their kids what my father and mother did for us.