On May 12 ICE raided the Agriproccessors plant in Postville, IA, said to be with its 1,000 odd employees the largest kosher meat processing facility in the world. ICE arrested 389 workers for illegal status. This was heralded as the largest ICE raid ever. As it happened, The state of Iowa Workforce Development’s labor division had fined Agriprocessors $182,000 in October, 2007, for safety violations. In May of this year it reduced the fines to $42,750 as part of a negotiated settlement under which the company promises to remedy its practices. One of the key safety problems was mishandling of chemicals.
According to the Des Moines Register, the owner, New York City based Aaron Rubashkin, is a prime example of an employer who resists any form of accountability. It reported (quote follows):
Aaron Rubashkin blamed his troubles partly on the media, which he compared to the state-run news outlets he saw before he emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1953. He referred to American reporters as ‘the lynching press,’ and he dismissed their stories. ‘Everything is a lie,’ he said.
Rubashkin’s statements were criticized Wednesday by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which has tried to organize the Postville plant.
‘We hope that authorities in Iowa, at the federal level and at the kosher certifying agencies, take notice of this company’s total unwillingness to accept responsibility for its actions,’ union spokesman Scott Frotman said in a prepared statement.
‘There is not a slaughterhouse in the country with a more reprehensible record of health and safety violations,’ Frotman said. ‘The fact that the Rubashkins are now on record accusing state and federal investigators of lying, and the fact that they would say the same thing about their own workers, shows just how morally bankrupt the management of this company is, and how important it is for Agriprocessors to be thoroughly investigated.’
Burmese workers replace illegal meat processing workers
When the Swift beef processing plant in tiny Cactus, TX, was raided in late 2006 (I have posted on this) hundreds of illegal Hispanic workers were carted off. For months the plant was barely operational. No workers in its rural surroundings. Then it started to bus workers in from Amarillo, 60 miles away. It recruited two Burmese workers from Amarillo. Then Swift tapped into the Burmese community in Houston, relocating them to Cactus. State officials leaned on Swift to provide adequate housing. 100 Burmese kids started school.
This story occurred because Swift like other meat processors located large plants in rural towns to lower wage scales – and to draw in immigrant labor, legal or illegal.
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported today on how the Burmese got to Cactus.
The article in full:
Continue reading Burmese workers replace illegal meat processing workers
14% of Mexicans work in the U.S.
Mexican workers who work in the U.S.
I was asked the other day about the source of the estimate that a large share of Mexico’s labor force works in the U.S. The source in the Migration Policy Institute, in a publication dated November 2006. “MPI estimates that 9.4 percent of all persons born in Mexico lived in the United States in 2005. In the same year, 14 percent of Mexican workers were engaged in the US labor force compared to 2.5 percent of Canadian workers.”
The report goes on: “According to Inter-American Development Bank estimates, remittances sent in 2001 by Mexicans working abroad totaled $8.9 billion. By 2005, this amount more than doubled and reached more than $20 billion, a lion’s share of which came from the United States. Mexico remains the largest recipient of remittances among all Latin American countries, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the total $53.6 billion sent to Latin America. In 2005, remittances equaled to 2.8 percent of Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).”
Also go to my post, “Why poorer educated Mexican men come work in the United States.”
Immigrant Hispanic unemployment rate: 7.5%
The Pew Hispanic Center reports that in the first quarter of this year, the unemployment rate for immigrant Hispanics was 7.5%, compared to all Hispanics at 6.5% and 4.7% for all non-Hispanics. About half – 52.5% — of all working age Latinos (ages 16 and older) are immigrants.
In recent years the immigrant Hispanic unemployment rate was law compared to all non-immigrant rates, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2006 – 2007. And, not reported in these figures, the labor force participation rate of illegal Hispanic immigrant males was extremely high. (This Pew report does not break out illegal immigrants.)
Much of the unemployment rate increased is attributed to the housing slump. “Mexican immigrants have suffered the effects of the construction downturn most keenly. Latino workers who exited construction in 2007 included about 221,000 immigrants. Some 152,000 of those workers had migrated from Mexico.”
“Labor market outcomes for Hispanic women appear to be worse than for men during 2007. They left the labor force in greater proportion and experienced greater increases in unemployment than did Hispanic men. Some 130,000 more Latino women became unemployed in 2007, and their unemployment rate increased from 5.6% to 7.0%.
“Weekly earnings for most groups of Hispanic workers also slipped backward in the past year. Again, Latino construction workers suffered most from the decline in wages. Their earnings tumbled in 2007 and they now earn less than they did two years ago in the first quarter of 2006.”
The report in full:
Latino Labor Report, 2008: Construction Reverses Job Growth for Latinos
One of out six workers is an immigrant
Recently I posted about the Migration Policy Institute’s large database on immigration in the U.S. On the right column you can find this posting listed as “a mass of…”. I am excerpting here the MPI’s summary for the country as a whole. At the website, you can drill down to find data for each state.
* Immigrants were one in six US workers employed in the civilian labor force (age 16 and older) in 2006, one in eight in 2000, and less than one in 10 in 1990. In California, immigrants comprised more than a third of the state’s employed workforce in 2006 compared to less than 2 percent in Montana.
* More than one-fifth of the 22 million immigrant workers in the United States are recent arrivals (i.e., those who arrived between 2000 and 2006);
* More than half of all immigrant workers in the US civilian labor force in 2006 were born in Latin America and slightly more than a quarter were from Asia. The rest originated in Europe (11.8 percent), Africa (3.8 percent), Northern America (2.0 percent), and Oceania/other (0.4 percent).
* In 2006, 45.7 percent of US total civilian employed workers (native and immigrant) were limited English proficient (LEP). The share of the labor force that was LEP was higher in Nebraska (56.7 percent) and Arkansas (54.7 percent) and much lower in Maine (19.9 percent) and Montana (17.6 percent).
A conservative’s endorsement of liberal immigration policy
Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, has written a book supporting liberal immigration policy. The WSJ’s editorials on immigration reform have been favorable towards reforms envisioned by the defunct McCain/Kennedy initiative. Riley criticizes Republican conservatives who have wrapped themselves in the anti- illegal immigrant flag, calling this cause a non-starter at the polls.
Some excerpts from this review which appeared in the May 16 issue of the WSJ (subscription required):
“Immigrant workers tend to act as complements to the native U.S. workforce rather than substitutes. There is some overlap, of course, but this skill distribution is the reason immigrants and natives for the most part aren’t competing for the same positions.”
“Americans may rail against illegal aliens in telephone surveys, but election results have shown time and time again that it’s seldom the issue that decides someone’s vote. The lesson for the GOP is that hostility to immigrants is not a political winner.”
“Reasonable people agree that illegal immigration should be reduced. The question isn’t whether it’s a problem but how to solve it. Historically, the best results have come from providing more legal ways for immigrants to enter the country.”
The review in full:
Continue reading A conservative’s endorsement of liberal immigration policy
Incremental immigration reforms held up by Hispanic caucus
Recent Congressional attempts to increase the number of temporary workers allowed under the H-1B program (i.e. Bill Gates’ programmers) and to pass an AgJobs program (aimed primarily to benefit California farmers) have been stalled by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. the caucus is holding out for comprehensive reform. Both House and Senate members of the Caucus are using procedural rules to keep proposals from coming to a vote. The Caucus is holding out for comprehensive reform.
Grey market employer crackdowns and illegal workers
Massachusetts, California and Connecticut to taking more pains to find employers who are not paying workers compensation and unemployment insurance – and quite often hiring illegal workers in an exploitative manner.
Massachusetts has launched a Joint Task Force on the Underground Economy and Employee Misclassification. One of the task force’s main targets are employers to don’t buy workers compensation insurance. Under Governor Duvall Patrick, the state administration is not trying to root out illegal workers, but rather to protect workers regardless of legal status. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated in 2005 that MA had about 165,000 illegal workers (see “popular posts” for illegal workers by state).
Google for the task force’s website for more information. I can’t seem to load the URL.
The California’s Workers’ Compensation Enforcement Collaborative is partly a brain child of Bill Zachry, risk manager of Safeway, the state’s largest for profit employer. Zachry is also not trying to root out illegal workers, but rather to crack down on abusive employers. To contact the collaborative, which does not have a website, contact Krystal Tena, Watsonville Law Center, Watsonville, CA 831-722-2845
KrystalT@watsonvillelawcenter.org. The Watsonville Law Center is a rural legal aid organization with a special commitment to protect low income workers. CA was estimated in 2005 yo have 1,800,000 illegal workers.
Connecticut, in contrast, is after illegal workers. It figured out that many of them work for employer who cheat on workers compensation insurance, and the state is going after these employers with the intent on finding illegal workers. CT was estimated in 2005 to have about 50,000 illegal workers.
Second generation immigrants doing well – study in New York City
This is the message from a study about New York City chidren of immigrants, as reported in the NY Times. The study shows how assimilation into the education system and labor market varies by country of origin. “A decade-long study of adult children of immigrants to the New York region has concluded that they are rapidly entering the mainstream and doing better than their parents in terms of education and earnings — even outperforming native-born Americans in many cases.”
The study was published as “Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age,” by Harvard University Press.
The data are old – based on survey work done and followed up on between 1999 and 2003. The following groups were studied: Dominicans, Chinese, Russian Jews, South Americans (consisting of Colombians, Ecuadoreans and Peruvians) and West Indians. The Chinese children are doing best and the Dominican children from the West Indies are doing worse.
The article in full:
Continue reading Second generation immigrants doing well – study in New York City
Canada recruiting Mexican labor
It is more than interesting – it is engrossing – to compare the policies of the U.S. and Canada with respect to Hispanic immigrant worker policy. I have posted on this before. This article describes how Canada is coping with labor shortages arising out of a booming economy.
It reports that “A Canada-Mexico working group on labour mobility was announced by Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier and his Mexican counterpart, Patricia Espinosa, after the North American Leaders’ Summit in Montebello, Que., last August. As the visiting workers program is expanded, the group will deal with developing a certification process that provides Canadian employers with the assurance that a bricklayer or welder will meet their specifications, as well as defining the length of temporary stays.
Currently, more than 100 National Employment Service offices throughout Mexico recruit workers and maintain a data bank, vetting applicants for appropriate work experience. They then match their data with requests from employers across Canada, funnelled through the Human Resources and Social Development ministry. The number of potential job placements in Canada can be as high as 800,000, said Jorge Rodriguez, Chief of International Affairs at Mexico’s Labour Secretariat.”
The article in full: