Who Left the Door Open?

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Securing phony paperwork was part of the scheme, and corporate plant managers often knew in detail how the illegals got their papers. This was apparent in the following exchange between the undercover federal agent arranging for illegals and the manager of a Tyson facility in Glen Allen, Va. The manager is talking about a go-between named Amador who had delivered workers in the past.

TYSON MANAGER: When I went to Tyson and I met Amador, we had very few Spanish-speaking people. With Amador's help, in a couple of years, we went from very few to 80%.

FEDERAL AGENT: My job ... is to get the people in Mexico to come to the border. When they cross the river, I pick them up, and then I take them to Amador. And he says he can get them, you know, their cards—their IDs and their Social Security cards, and they can go to work that way.

TYSON MANAGER: Excellent. That's what we're needing.

Two Tyson managers later pleaded guilty to conspiring to hire illegal aliens. Three other managers were acquitted of the charges, as was the Tyson Corp. itself. The company insisted that it did not know that illegals were being hired at some of its plants. A company spokesman said the charges were "absolutely false. In reality, the specific charges are limited to a few managers who were acting outside of company policy at five of our 57 poultry-processing plants."

One of the arguments that is regularly advanced to justify hiring illegal workers is that they are merely doing jobs American workers won't take. President Bush echoed the theme earlier this year when he proposed the immigration-law changes that would allow millions of illegals to live and work in the U.S.: "I put forth what I think is a very reasonable proposal, and a humane proposal, one that is not amnesty, but, in fact, recognizes that there are good, honorable, hardworking people here doing jobs Americans won't do."

While there is no doubt that many illegal aliens work long hours at dirty, dangerous jobs, evidence suggests that it is low wage rates, not the type of job, that American workers reject. That also surfaced in the Tyson case. The two Tyson managers who pleaded guilty contended that they had been forced to hire illegals because Tyson refused to pay wages that would let them attract American workers.

One of those two managers was Truley Ponder, who worked at Tyson's processing plant in Shelbyville, Tenn. In documents filed as part of Ponder's guilty plea, the U.S. Attorney's office noted, "Ponder would have preferred for the plant to hire 'local people,' but this was not feasible in light of the low wages that Tyson paid, the low unemployment rate in the area from which the plant drew its work force, and the general undesirability of poultry processing work when there were numerous other employment opportunities for unskilled and low-skilled employees.

"Ponder made numerous requests for pay increases in Shelbyville above and beyond what the company routinely allowed, but Tyson's corporate management in Springdale rejected his requests for wage increases for production workers. This refusal to pay wages sufficient to enable Tyson to compete for legal laborers, plus the limited work force in the local area, dictated Ponder's need to bring workers in to meet Tyson's production demands." Needless to say, hiring illegals had benefits for Tyson. A government consultant estimated that the company saved millions of dollars in wages, benefits and other costs.

When asked whether the company has any illegals on its payroll today, a Tyson spokesman said, "We have a zero tolerance for the hiring of individuals who are not authorized to work in the U.S. Unfortunately, the reality for businesses across the country is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine just who has proper authorization. The tangle of laws and the increasing sophistication of those providing false documentation puts employers in a very tough position ... Given the scope of undocumented immigration to the U.S., we and countless other American businesses face a very difficult task in trying to figure out who is eligible to work."

The impact of the below-market wage earners tends to fall hardest on unskilled workers at the bottom of the wage pyramid. "Any sizable increase in the number of immigrants will inevitably lower wages for some American workers," says George Borjas, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Borjas calculates that all immigration, by increasing the labor supply from 1980 to 2000, "reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700, or roughly 4%." Borjas says African Americans and native-born Hispanics pay the steepest price because they are more often in direct competition with immigrants for jobs.

Why Alien Criminals Are at Large in the U.S.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of having 15 million illegals at large in society is Congress's failure to insist that federal agencies separate those who pose a threat from those who don't. The open borders, for example, allow illegals to come into the country, commit crimes and return home with little fear of arrest or punishment.

From Oct. 1, 2003, until July 20, 2004, the border patrol's Tucson sector stopped 9,051 persons crossing into the country illegally who had criminal records in the U.S., meaning they committed crimes here, returned to Mexico, then were trying to re-enter the country. Among them: 378 with active warrants for their arrest. In one week, said border-patrol spokeswoman Andrea Zortman, there were two with outstanding "warrants for homicide."

And those were just the illegals the border patrol determined had arrest records. Most go undetected. Reason: the border patrol's electronic fingerprint-identification system, which allows officers to determine how many times an alien has been caught sneaking into the U.S., has only a limited amount of criminal-background data. The FBI maintains a separate electronic fingerprint-identification system that covers everyone ever charged with a crime. In true bureaucratic fashion, the two computer systems do not talk to each other. In the 1990s, the two agencies were directed to integrate their systems.

They are still working at it. The most optimistic completion date is 2008. Until then, illegals picked up at the border may have any number of criminal charges pending, but the arresting officers will never know and will allow the intruders to return home.

In any event, the numbers suggest that tens of thousands of criminals, quite possibly hundreds of thousands, treat the southern border as a revolving door to crimes of opportunity. The situation is so out of control that of the 400,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered to be deported, 80,000 have criminal records—and the agency in charge, the Homeland Security Department, does not have a clue as to the whereabouts of any of them, criminal or noncriminal, including those from countries that support terrorism.

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