Breast Men

Mexican immigrants want to fillet our chickens. The INS is determined to stop them.

Melinda Ammann from the July 2002 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

Logue, a Shelbyville police officer for 13 years, says violent crimes remained steady during the influx of Hispanic immigrants, while misdemeanor offenses such as driving under the influence and hit-and-run collisions increased. "They learned that in Mexico if they hit someone and called the police, the police would beat them up or extort money from them," he says. Mexicans learn to view government authorities, including local police officers, more as abusive antagonists than public servants.

The most serious crimes to increase have been forgery and ID theft, both of which carry felony charges. Most immigrants arrested with false documents face such charges, but "99.9 percent" of them, according to Logue, are downgraded to misdemeanor charges because the courts simply cannot process that many felonies. Besides, the individual with false documents is not the law's main concern. "I'm not interested in prosecuting the little guy who comes across the border to build a better life," says Logue. Although he believes nearly all the immigrants who get false papers know they're breaking the law, the people he really wants to nab are the middlemen who provide false documents to the little guys.

Faked Out

You get what you pay for when purchasing false documents. A Social Security card or green card can be procured for as little as $100. Some are obvious fakes to anyone who's seen the genuine article before. A well-forged birth certificate and Social Security card may cost up to $1,500. Most of the Social Security cards Logue has seen are forged with numbers in a series not yet issued by the Social Security Administration (SSA), so a familiarity with issued numbers and a simple check reveal them as fakes. Better are cards with "good" numbers -- ones already issued by the SSA to other individuals -- that are stolen, purchased, or forged.

Matthew Baez of Esperanza del Barrio, a nonprofit group that provides social services for the Hispanic community in Chattanooga, says most undocumented Hispanic immigrants start cheap and trade up. A first set of documents might cost $100 and will be good enough to get a job in dry cleaning, landscaping, or construction. After a few weeks or months, an immigrant will have saved enough money to purchase higher-quality documents that will help him or her secure a better job.

Social Security cards with good numbers pass the scrutiny of screening systems, such as the one used by Tyson Foods, designed to catch illegal immigrants presenting false papers. Tyson claims to be one of the first large companies to use INS-provided software called the Employment Eligibility Verification Program, a.k.a. the Basic Pilot Program, to filter illegal immigrants out of its work force. Tyson started using the program in 1996.

According to the indictment against Tyson, "If the document, such as a Social Security card or a green card, provided by the employee was counterfeit but contained a true Social Security number or alien registration number issued to a real person of that name (even though the person supplying the card was an imposter and not the person stated on the card) it would pass the EVP/Basic Pilot Program, even though the card was counterfeit and was obtained illegally, as the defendants and the other coconspirators then and there well knew." The indictment quotes defendant Truly Ponder, former complex manager at Tyson's Shelbyville operation, saying to an INS undercover agent while arranging for new immigrant employees that applicants must provide documents that will "in the computer...look like they're good [Social Security] numbers."

Another defendant, Spencer Mabe, former complex personnel manager and former plant manager in Shelbyville, is quoted as saying to an INS undercover agent posing as a recruiter, "We can pay you $100 a head....All I need to know, a guarantee these people are going to stay a while....But I need about 15. Quick as you can. They're able to go through the computer, right?" The INS agent responded that his friend in California had "been getting some numbers....He probably, you know, can give me a good deal...good numbers." Mabe replied, "I understand that if they go through the [Tyson] computer like you said, there will be no questions asked on my end."

Finder's Fee

According to the indictment, Anchondo-Rascon would receive a "recruitment fee" of $200 per employee. He had to guarantee that the applicant's Social Security number would pass muster and that he would work at Tyson for at least six months. If the employee left early, Anchondo-Rascon would have to supply a replacement.

Another method by which Tyson allegedly conspired to hire illegal immigrants was by arranging for temporary workers to fill full-time slots without full-time benefits. The temp agencies did not use the Basic Pilot Program, and the indictment charges that Tyson knew many of the workers were not authorized for employment in the U.S.

Ironically, since the indictment for conspiracy to hire illegal immigrants, Tyson has been put on notice by another division of the Department of Justice for being too scrupulous in checking the legal status of immigrant applicants. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division sent letters to Tyson in May 2000 and January 2002 regarding its inquiry into allegations that the company's plants in Sedalia, Missouri, and Noel, Missouri -- both of which are named in the conspiracy indictment -- discriminated against immigrants by scrutinizing their employment verification documents too closely. It seems Tyson is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.

Tyson says it highly values the Hispanic immigrants who work at its plants. These immigrants are essential to the daily operations that put dinner on tables across America. Rebutting the claim that immigrants take jobs away from American workers, Tyson spokesman Ed Nicholson says immigrants make up a substantial proportion of the company's work force only where unemployment is very low. He points to Tyson's Pine Bluff, Arkansas, plant as an example of a site where few immigrants work because the unemployment rate is relatively high, so local people take the jobs. In general, he says, "The Latino work force is not competing with the local available work force; they're augmenting it. Anybody who wants to work can work."

And here is where the crux of the INS's real problem lies. The U.S. demand for laborers is simply too high for Hispanic immigration to stop or even slow down. Anchondo-Rascon's attorney, Michael Friedman, who has represented many Latino immigrants, observes that getting a U.S. work visa in Mexico is a long and harrowing process. "If it was easy to do -- if it was possible to do -- believe me, they wouldn't be risking their lives to come here," he says.

Undocumented immigrants flow northward through a dangerous underground railroad, paying "coyotes" to escort them through the desert and past the Border Patrol's checkpoints. After they leave loved ones behind, pay anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, and endure the physically demanding trip, there is still no guarantee of success, as Anchondo-Rascon can attest. He was caught and escorted back to Mexico by the Border Patrol the first time he made it to the U.S., when he was 16. But working through the legal process to be documented and immigrate legally is often an even more frustrating, expensive, and time-consuming process, also without assurance of success. As long as there are jobs to be had and workers south of the border making less than they can in the U.S., there will be immigration, whatever the law says.

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