What are they thinking?
As I've noted before, Memorial Day weekend in Iowa was wonderful!
However, there are a few things that caused disturbance....
I seem to only catch the news in fits and spurts, and somehow I totally missed the immigration bust in Postville.
For those of you who don't know anything about this town, let me give you a little history. I grew up in Elkader, which is about 20-30 minutes from Postville. What I remember about this town growing up is the big church on the corner, the chiropractor, the railroad tracks and ice cream stops. Like most small Iowa towns, it was a small white community.
Since the 1990's, there's been all sorts of crazy immigration! We're talking Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hesidic Jews, and others. Suddenly they have a whole lot of Mexican/Latino themed stores and lots of men in big beards and hats walking around. It's always seemed a really odd mix to me, but as far as I knew living hundreds of miles away now, it was working. (Although I have heard mixed words about illegal immigrants causing problems, car accidents without insurance, etc....)
So a couple of weeks ago there was a huge crazy government raid of the kosher meat packing plant in Postville.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080512/NEWS/80512012/1001
Here's what they don't tell you.
They showed up with buses with blacked out windows.
They hauled off 300 + (400?) workers.
According to what my dad has heard, the owner's son was running the business. They would bring immigrants up here to work, telling them they owed them thousands of dollars they had to now work off. They would also make them buy vehicles from a son's car business.
They made illegal immigrants wear one color hat in the plant, legal immigrants another color hat.
They deducted social security payments from their paychecks and never sent them in to the government.
Families flooded the local Catholic church after the raid, afraid to leave, afraid they'd be taken away, too. Some children were left parent-less.
The plant refused to give the families the paychecks earned by their loved ones after the raid, stating the worker would need to sign a release for their spouse to pick up their check. They are being detained - how are they to sign a release? I believe they can pick them up now, but they have to come to the plant. Most are too scared to show up, fearing another raid. For many of these families, the plant worker was the sole income provider of the family.
What is the government thinking???
I understand illegal immigration is a problem. And at first I didn't have much sympathy because I know it's a problem. But who is this raid helping and hurting? So far, no arrests have been made of the plant owners or CFO, etc. The plant has 300+ less workers, but no other repercussions yet. So far, they've hauled away hundreds of people that were working jobs that most probably don't want to work anyway, who were having money taken out of their checks for the government (even though the plant didn't get that money to the government), scared hundreds of families, left children without parents, spouses without spouses, families without incomes, and hauled away 10% of the town's population!
No US town has delt with loosing that large of a chunk of the population since the Civil War.
And frankly, the buses with the blacked out windows are a little reminiscent of the trains taking away people in the Warsaw ghettos.
Last I heard, immigrants were being sentenced to time in prison and deportation.
Yes, this is a risk with illegal immigration.
But is the government punishing the right people?
***
I also watched the "news" program about the raid in Texas two months ago last night. The 9-1-1 call they went in on was a hoax. The Texas government had a past beef with the compound. They went in with guns and those damn buses again and took children out by gunpoint and loaded them up. Children - gunpoint! These words should not be in the same sentence!
I think the compound leader, "The Profit", is a world of scary and yes, any child being abused should be saved from the situation and given a decent home. But were all 400+ children being abused? Weren't there decent parents there loving and caring for their children? Isn't there a better way of doing this?
Again... guns, children, buses... remind you of anything?
Is the government punishing the right people?
If we let these two instances go by as OK, what happens next? Who is next?
However, there are a few things that caused disturbance....
I seem to only catch the news in fits and spurts, and somehow I totally missed the immigration bust in Postville.
For those of you who don't know anything about this town, let me give you a little history. I grew up in Elkader, which is about 20-30 minutes from Postville. What I remember about this town growing up is the big church on the corner, the chiropractor, the railroad tracks and ice cream stops. Like most small Iowa towns, it was a small white community.
Since the 1990's, there's been all sorts of crazy immigration! We're talking Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hesidic Jews, and others. Suddenly they have a whole lot of Mexican/Latino themed stores and lots of men in big beards and hats walking around. It's always seemed a really odd mix to me, but as far as I knew living hundreds of miles away now, it was working. (Although I have heard mixed words about illegal immigrants causing problems, car accidents without insurance, etc....)
So a couple of weeks ago there was a huge crazy government raid of the kosher meat packing plant in Postville.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080512/NEWS/80512012/1001
Here's what they don't tell you.
They showed up with buses with blacked out windows.
They hauled off 300 + (400?) workers.
According to what my dad has heard, the owner's son was running the business. They would bring immigrants up here to work, telling them they owed them thousands of dollars they had to now work off. They would also make them buy vehicles from a son's car business.
They made illegal immigrants wear one color hat in the plant, legal immigrants another color hat.
They deducted social security payments from their paychecks and never sent them in to the government.
Families flooded the local Catholic church after the raid, afraid to leave, afraid they'd be taken away, too. Some children were left parent-less.
The plant refused to give the families the paychecks earned by their loved ones after the raid, stating the worker would need to sign a release for their spouse to pick up their check. They are being detained - how are they to sign a release? I believe they can pick them up now, but they have to come to the plant. Most are too scared to show up, fearing another raid. For many of these families, the plant worker was the sole income provider of the family.
What is the government thinking???
I understand illegal immigration is a problem. And at first I didn't have much sympathy because I know it's a problem. But who is this raid helping and hurting? So far, no arrests have been made of the plant owners or CFO, etc. The plant has 300+ less workers, but no other repercussions yet. So far, they've hauled away hundreds of people that were working jobs that most probably don't want to work anyway, who were having money taken out of their checks for the government (even though the plant didn't get that money to the government), scared hundreds of families, left children without parents, spouses without spouses, families without incomes, and hauled away 10% of the town's population!
No US town has delt with loosing that large of a chunk of the population since the Civil War.
And frankly, the buses with the blacked out windows are a little reminiscent of the trains taking away people in the Warsaw ghettos.
Last I heard, immigrants were being sentenced to time in prison and deportation.
Yes, this is a risk with illegal immigration.
But is the government punishing the right people?
***
I also watched the "news" program about the raid in Texas two months ago last night. The 9-1-1 call they went in on was a hoax. The Texas government had a past beef with the compound. They went in with guns and those damn buses again and took children out by gunpoint and loaded them up. Children - gunpoint! These words should not be in the same sentence!
I think the compound leader, "The Profit", is a world of scary and yes, any child being abused should be saved from the situation and given a decent home. But were all 400+ children being abused? Weren't there decent parents there loving and caring for their children? Isn't there a better way of doing this?
Again... guns, children, buses... remind you of anything?
Is the government punishing the right people?
If we let these two instances go by as OK, what happens next? Who is next?