Agriprocessors Drops To Second Place

That's right. Your favorite kosher meatpacker is no longer…

…number one.

The new record for the largest single site immigration raid in US history was snatched away yesterday by Howard Industries, a Mississippi-based manufacturer.

But Agriprocessors may get its title back. Here's why:

1. The ICE raid on Agriprocessors only netted 32% of the illegal workers sought. The feds actually had warrants for 697 illegals. They only caught 220 of them. But the feds found more illegal workers during the raid – workers the feds had previously been unaware of.

2. This means that Agriprocessors may still hold the record for most illegal workers sought on the day of a raid.

3. At this point, hundreds of Agriprocessors' workers have been charged with aggravated identity theft. (Almost all pleaded to lesser charges.) So far, only 8 Howard Industries employees have been so charged.

We'll have to wait for the dust to settle to see if Agriprocessors gets all or part of its record back. But, as it now stands, in terms of straight volume, Agriprocessors is #2.

[It should be noted that, so far, there are no allegations at Howard of extortion, sexual exploitation and abuse of these illegal workers. Agriprocessors, of course, has many such allegations made against it– and much hard evidence exists to prove them true.]

Comments

[sage]

There are likely many more employers, such as Howard, who are harboring illegal aliens and will be raided in the future.

This makes the cries of Agri defenders charging anti-semitism or that Agri was singled out, just nothing but a damn bunch of bullsh*t.

[Archie Bunker]

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080827/OPINION03/808270336/1038/Opinion

DM Register editorial board imitates Shmarya.

[Shmarya]

I saw that!

[sage]

The Iowa Governor has already politely and wisely declined the Agri invite and he should stick to his guns.

Better to let this whole mess be adjudicated in State and Federal Courts, where the Governor and many other interested parties can heartily enjoy the proceedings and go home each night and have one or more of their favorite libations.

[Rachel Batya]

--This makes the cries of Agri defenders charging anti-semitism or that Agri was singled out, just nothing but a damn bunch of bullsh*t.--

On the contrary, sage, the raid at Howard, which puts Agri in 2nd place, is clearly part of a highly orchestrated anti-semitic government conspiracy by people who are insanely jealous of us and will never, ever let us be #1 at anything. Surely it hasn't escaped your attention that the raid was in *Mississippi*, a state whose record regarding anti-semitic activity is not exactly spotless.

Yes, my friend, first they try to discourage us by dropping us to #2, and then they try to intimidate us by choosing Mississippi as the site of the raid. Next thing you know, they'll be shipping the illegal aliens to all the major Jewish communities to take away our jobs, and from there...well, I shudder to think of it.

[Rachel Batya]

--Register editorial board imitates Shmarya.--

Unbelievable! I love it.

[sage]

Rachel,

With all due respect, I don't buy your anti-semitic government conspiracy theory.

Agri is a criminal entity, of their own choice and volition, who were duly caught harboring an illegal alien workforce as well as engaging in other criminal acts.

All this will be properly ajudicated in the Courts.

[Shmarya]

Rachel,

With all due respect, I don't buy your anti-semitic government conspiracy theory.

That "theory" was sarcasm, Sage.

Rachel –

Try adding this after sarcastic comments: [/sarcasm}. It means "end sarcasm."

[shmuel]

"Next thing you know, they'll be shipping the illegal aliens to all the major Jewish communities to take away our jobs, and from there...well, I shudder to think of it."

Glad to see you've finally woken up and now use the proper term: "illegal aliens." That didn't hurt so much, did it?

[michael ben drosai]

Try adding this after sarcastic comments: [/sarcasm}. It means "end sarcasm."

and he calls himself "sage" pretty dense if you ask me

sad when you have to label sarcasm as such

[Yosef Ben Matitya]

baavod reshoeem rinoh!

[Rachel Batya]

Sigh.

The whole thing was sarcastic. I used the term "illegal aliens" consciously and ironically. I was satirizing a) Agri's defense that they are the victims of a conspiracy and b) the view that Guatemalan peasants are a threat to the economic health of the country.

I just don't get how anyone could take that post literally. As far as Agri goes, I'm clearly on the side of the critics. As far as my politics go, I'm clearly on the left-hand side of the aisle. In the short time I've been hanging around here, I've gotten a good sense of where people stand and I interpret their posts accordingly.

The fun part about satire is that people read it, they aren't sure whether to take it seriously, and then have that "aha!" moment when they realize the irony involved. If I need to use an end of sarcasm marker, it kind of takes the fun out of it for them. On the other hand, having to explain myself kind of takes the fun out of it for me.

I'm going out for a walk.

[sage]

Hi Rachel,

Thanks for your post !!!!

Being an Electrical Engineer for the Space Agency going on 44 years, I tend to take things very literally and precisely, as I have to do on the job.

Lets agree to wait for the upcoming Agri trials, which, G-d willing, we will greatly enjoy.

[sage]

Great MSNBC Post on Agri-Vation:

+++ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26395212/ +++

[Rachel Batya]

Hi Sage--

No problem. I understand where you're coming from. It's very hard to switch modes sometimes.

The ironic thing is that I chose your post to respond to as a kind of "thank-you" note for your great "kapporos inversus" post yesterday! I got a good laugh out of it and was trying to return the favor. But it's always a shot in the dark when all you've got is type. No harm done, though.

Anyway, for the future, I'm not going to flag my sarcasm, and I'm also not going to explain it. If someone doesn't get it, I'll just say "I was joking" (or someone else will) and very likely, the world will go on just as it was before.

Kol tuv,
Rachel

[Archie Bunker]

http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/082808/opedStemIllegalImmigration.html

A 1997 study by the American Academy of Sciences found that the cheap labor of illegal aliens and poor immigrants caused a 44 percent decrease in wages among the poorest Americans from 1980 to 1994.

A study in the 1990s by Social Science Quarterly found that for each 1 percent increase in the proportion of immigrant workers without a high school education in any job category, wages for Americans performing that work fell 7 percent.

A huge majority of Americans support attrition — through stricter immigration enforcement — of the illegal population.

The anguish of well-intentioned people is understandable, but open-borders immigration harms poor Americans without denting global poverty.

Illegal immigration endangers national security, the social safety net, our most vulnerable citizens, and the dignity of American labor. It challenges national cohesion and sovereignty, and it’s producing a population explosion with incalculably ruinous consequences to our environment and quality of life.

Empathy with Postville’s victims cannot justify these threats to the country we love.

Stephen Steinlight is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington and the associate editor of The Fractious Nation? Unity and Division in Contemporary American Life. These essays were distributed by JTA.

[Archie Bunker]

Here's an anti-Semitic view of Steinlight's essay from Patrick Buchanan's people:

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2008/08/27/steinlight-on-agriprocessors/

In the early years of this decade, the Immigration debate was much enriched the valiant efforts of Stephen Steinlight, who undertook what can only be termed a crusade to convert fellow members of the Jewish community to the view that mass immigration was bad for them, and incidentally also for America.

Guided by Mark Krikorian’s CIS, Steinlight amusingly made heavy use of that outfit’s policy of triangulation against VDARE.com’s Peter Brimelow and the more serious element of the immigration reform movement. Quite reasonably, he centered his case on the unwisdom from the Jewish point of view of allowing high levels of Muslim immigration – although, as befitted a descendent of the old Jewish Socialist tradition, he always displayed a full understanding of the damage mass immigration does to working people.

This truly courageous and enterprising effort seemed in recent years to have sunk without trace – although we did get a good joke from him early last year.

Now the Agriprocessors scandal has allowed him an Op-Ed chance at the JTA news service: Ignoring problems of illegal immigration leads to exploitation August 24 2008 which couches his appeal almost exclusively in terms of the damage to poorer Americans:

…ignoring the problem of illegal immigration virtually guarantees that Agriprocessors’ despicable practices will be repeated elsewhere….Rendered myopic by political correctness and uninformed sentimentality about immigration, many in the Jewish community have failed to recognize that the AgriProcessors nightmare is an inevitable consequence of massive immigration by the unskilled and uneducated poor — legal and illegal – into a knowledge-based, post-industrial society…

Massive immigration has disastrous consequences for America’s most vulnerable: the unemployed, partially employed, working poor, recent legal immigrants, African Americans and elderly working populations. Legalization will sanction and perpetuate this assault on struggling Americans by flooding the workforce with more cheap labor.

By supporting legalization of illegal immigrants, the Jewish establishment endorses the Bush administration’s immigration policy, which seeks to create a huge, permanent legal underclass of impoverished immigrants that will drive down wages and worsen working conditions for all Americans.

Of course it is significant that Steinlight finds it expedient facing this particular audience to almost ignore the cultural component:

We can’t mend the whole world here, but massive illegal immigration can devastate America. It endangers national security, the social safety net, our most vulnerable citizens and the dignity of American labor. It challenges national cohesion and sovereignty, and it’s producing a population explosion with incalculably ruinous consequences to our environment and quality of life. (VDARE.com emphasis).

But it is not necessary to be a Marxist to comprehend that floods of vulnerable, exploitable labor will indeed produce – exploitation.

Some feel that the rigid dogmatism of the great bulk of Jewish opinion in favor of open borders is a function of their hostility to their host society. But it is also a simple fact that given the actual economic and social status this group now has, it is also very much in their class interest.

Stephen Steinlight deserves praise for seeing through this and persevering in his lonely struggle.

[Archie Bunker]

Denial of child slave laborers is a river that runs through Rubashkin, Genack & Weissmandel.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080827/NEWS/808270360

Enrollment at Postville's public schools has barely dipped, despite concern that last May's immigration raid would lead to wholesale losses of students.

A Catholic Church official who has helped many Agriprocessors workers said she was pleasantly surprised to hear that the schools' enrollment had barely dropped. "I think everybody in town thought they'd be down more than that," said Sister Mary McCauley.

McCauley speculated that the trend is partly due to some former teen-age Agriprocessors workers who returned to classes now that government officials have cracked down on the use of underage employees at the plant.

[uncle joe mccarthy]

both raids still remain a farce...right now my apt building is being repainted with a crew made up of all illegals

you will probably see more raids as we inch closer to the election

[Archie Bunker]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3588126,00.html

Here's a nasty story.

[Jerome Soller]

Rachel and Sage,
This thread has clearly demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Jewish electrical engineers have no sense of humor whatsoever!

A recovered Jewish electrical engineer (now working in software engineering)

[Carol Ann Varley]

To qualify for a Green Card, a legal immigrant must show that he/she is free of communicable diseases.

There are illegal immigrants who cross our borders with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases that put others at risk.

This is something to keep in mind.

[Paul Freedman]

sage: *the* Space Agency?

HQ or a center? I hear that KSC is losing a lot of people

[Paul Freedman]

archie: re: "Jewish establishment"--illegal immigration or no immigration somebody has to inform those folks that Norman Rockwell's America is just one corner of it

[Paul Freedman]

how many Jewish electrical engineers does it take...

[sage]

+++ This thread has clearly demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Jewish electrical engineers have no sense of humor whatsoever!

A recovered Jewish electrical engineer (now working in software engineering)

Posted by: Jerome Soller | August 27, 2008 at 03:27 PM +++

Hi Jerome,

I'm quite sure that your comment was sarcastic!

[sage]

+++ sage: *the* Space Agency?

HQ or a center? I hear that KSC is losing a lot of people

Posted by: Paul Freedman | August 27, 2008 at 04:45 PM +++

Hi Paul,

I have been employed at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA since June 17, 1965.

Many thanks for the query.

[isabel]

not only did Agri's child laborers go back to highschool, but they take their anchor babies with them!!!state of Iowa pays more for students who need English as a second language,taxpayers pay about 6,700 per student while an American student receives 5.300.Postville has a very modern school because of all the free money.

[Rachel Batya]

--Hi Jerome,

I'm quite sure that your comment was sarcastic--

It was?!?!

[sage]

Right on Rachel !!!!!

BTW, I do have a very good sense of humor and I find it extremely helpful in keeping me sane through these past four years of having to deal with never-ending Rubashkin Scandals and finding ways to cope with our horribly corrupt Orthodox Religious Leadership.

Assuming that many folks posting on FM will be following the Agri Trials, [I feel that Iowa will take the first shot followed by the Feds, with the prison sentences run back to back], all of us will have our favorite libations to enjoy each evening to celebrate.

I have two favorites now, George Dickel Tennessee Whisky and Famous Grouse Scotch.

I very rarely have any libations, save for mandatory Shabbat and Yom Tov wine, but seeing the Rubashkins and others get convicted and sent away will, certainly, be a great cause for celebration across the board.

I respect the privacy of others, but if you are willing to share, what are your favorite libations?

[Yochanan Lavie]

"Next thing you know, they'll be shipping the illegal aliens to all the major Jewish communities to take away our jobs, and from there...well, I shudder to think of it."

My small shul is a little short of a minyan once in a while. We can have Druckman convert them, and solve our problems. (/sarcasm).

I agree with Archie. While I can sympathize with the human tragedy of Postville, open borders have eroded our sovereignty and threaten to make us a two-tiered 3rd world country- with an elite and a peasantry. It also erodes our culture.

[state of the Jews]

Sage:
Lets not rejoice just yet.
In fact while I may have a drink, it will be out of sorrow, not joy. The entire episode is an example of our failure as a community: a failure of our Rabbonim, a failure to see and act on the connection of yashrut and kashrut, a failure to police ourselves and our failure to convince others in the comunity. Lets keep this in perspective - we here are a minority. A vocal minority that has influenced a great many, but still a minority. The real question is where do we go from here once this battle is won. How do we insure that it won't happen again? Because it will, and you know it.
And I am still haunted by the question I have asked before: After all the trials, after the guilty parties are in jail, who will be there to protect the rights of the next wave of workers? Certainly not the Torah Sages of the OU or Rav Wiessmandl.

[sage]

Yes, SOJ.

These are my concerns, too, and likewise many others posting on this blog.

The existential question seems to be, "How do we see to it that we can help G-d's plans to come to fruition in the presence of totally corrupt religious leadership that we have no power to fire?"

We obviously have much thinking and praying to do.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Sage: We do have the power to "fire" them. Ignore them, and don't fund them. In Israel, it's more complicated, but it can be done.

[sage]

Yes.

Ignoring and not funding them are easily done but they are still publically prominent and an ever present pain in the a*s or worse.

They have made themselves, in my opinion, irrelevant, as far as G-d's long-term plans are concerned, but not enough people have, as yet, gotten this message and are willing to make them disappear, so to speak.