Volume 1, Number 11: Stolen Identity/Illegal Immigration Scheme

(Note: I originally posted this entry on December 12, 2006 on a blog I had created on GeoCities. Yahoo! has since shut down GeoCities, and furthermore, their blog service sucks. That's why I am reposting the whole blog here.)

Federal agents have raided six Swift meatpacking plants across the country, targeting illegal immigrants who obtained jobs by stealing the identities of U.S. citizens.

It's bad enough when Americans lose jobs to illegal immigrants, but when their IDs are being stolen in the process, that's downright terrible. Heck, it can be harrowing. What if you were out of work and the company you apply with for a job you need tells you that you've been working for Swift in Greeley, Colo. for the last ten months?

In a press release, Swift said the raids "violate agreements it worked out with the federal government and could violate its workers' civil rights."

Uh, hello, do you give a damn about the civil rights of those U.S. citizens--and there are hundreds of potential victims involved in this case alone--or their families?!?

"Swift has never condoned the employment of unauthorized workers, nor have we ever knowingly hired such individuals."

Like hell you haven't. You, like most other corporations, probably condone such practices at maximizing profits and maximizing executive retirement packages while minimizing rank-and-file employee benefits. It's all part of the high-tech Holocaust that Corporate America has been waging against the American Middle Class for years. I'll bet someone at the top at Swift knows fully about this bald-faced scheme. It's The Jungle all over again--in meatpacking plants, no less--except that instead of Jurgis Rudkus working under his own name, he would be working under the alias of a dead man, or worse, some guy whose credit card was stolen.

The six plants represent all of Swift's domestic beef processing capacity and 77 percent of its pork processing, the company said.

But they may well represent 0% of the beef and pork that winds up on my table. In the six-plus years that I have lived in Royal Oak, I have not purchased any Swift products--I don't buy breakfast sausage, unless you count the little sausage patties in those Aunt Jemima frozen breakfasts--and this report is discouraging me from considering buying Swift in the future.