Obama's Convention Warm Up - Accuse the Jews

Agriprocessors Puts Barak Obama In The ‘Meat-Grinder’ - YWN
Besides Barry Hussein Obama not knowing what city he was in yesterday (listen to his remarks in his brief appearance last night and his confusion first saying he was in Kansas City and then saying he was in St. Louis. Even his daughter asked him "Daddy, what city are you in?" Obama responds: "I'm in Kansas City sweetie". Now if he only knew whether that was Missouri or Kansas. All that after saying "you want a persistent President." Obama's appearance begins at the 3 hr 34 sec mark at CSPAN convention day 1 coverage part two) may experience long load time
In any event, Obama took time out during the day to pass judgment against Agriprocessors for "taking advantage of undocumented workers".

"When you read about a meatpacking plant hiring 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds - that is some of the most dangerous, difficult work there is. ... They have kids in there wielding buzz saws and cleavers? It's ridiculous. And the only reason they're hiring these folks is because they want to avoid paying decent wages and providing decent benefits."

Those poor undocumented workers (IE. id thieves), you victims of greedy Joos making wages and benefits at or above industry standards. How ungrateful you are to make allegations after being arrested by ICE and put in line to go to your home countries after a visit to a US Federal prison where you eat 3 squares and have access to free medical care. Obama fell into the trap of believing what he wanted to believe. Maybe it was just a natural willingness to accept unproven allegations and maybe the reason is, that something inside him allowed him to do so. Its believable, you know, the Joos own that place.

Obama at least paid lip service to being a nation of laws but only after discussing the hardships for those who break the law. What better way to warm up for the Democrat National Convention than to throw a bone to the union bosses and the immigration amnesty crowd.

Nat Lewin contradicts and chides Obama in his piece hyperlinked above and copied below. Lewin contends that Obama, the law professor, should know better.

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August 26, 2008
On Monday, YWN reported that Barak Obama had blasted Agriprocessors in a comment to a reporter. The following is the official response to Barak Obama issued by Nathan Lewin on behalf of Agri:

This is a shocking statement from a former president of the Harvard Law Review and former constitutional law professor who has sworn, as a United States Senator, to uphold the Constitution which prescribes a presumption of innocence until guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Before he made public accusations accusing a meat-packing plant of hiring 13 and 14 year olds “only……to avoid paying people decent wages and providing them decent benefits” and declared that the minors were assigned to work with “buzz saws and cleavers,” did Senator Obama look at the evidence or consider the plant’s categorical denial of these allegations?

Agriprocessors recruited only those who were over 18 and knowingly accepted for employment only applicants who said they were over 18. Applicants may have lied about their age to get a job.

Agriprocessors fired four girls in 2007 when it discovered, from its own internal investigation, that they were under age.

The Iowa Labor Department conducted an on-site inspection in April 2008 with an expert at spotting minors and did not identify to Agriprocessors any person on its work-force who looked to be under 18.

No one alleges that any employee who was later identified as under 18 was working at Agriprocessors with “buzz saws and cleavers.”

Everyone on the Agriprocessors payroll, regardless of age, received wages and benefits at or above industry standards.

(Nathan Lewin: Washington attorney for Agriprocessors who was an officer of the Harvard Law Review, a law clerk for a Supreme Court Justice, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in the 1960’s, and now teaches a constitutional law seminar at Columbia Law School.)

Obama on Agriprocessors - Des Moines Register

The Victims of Postville

The victims of the Postville ICE raid are not the undocumented workers as both the articles below have distorted the story. The real victims are the American citizens whose personal identifying information was used to document these workers so they could be hired. Illegal entry into the US, stealing personal identifying information and flaunting labor laws should not be defended with sympathy. Please lefties, stop trying to turn this legal action into a union, right to organize fight. It isn't. In addition, for those lefties who are Jews, the claims you make against Agriprocessors should be tempered with benefit of the doubt. Please refrain from guilt by allegation and merely say, certain business practices should be reviewed for consistency with halacha and the practice we expect Jews to exercise. Alas, I know I am asking for too much but please, it is almost Av.

If I should be angry and resentful, I would say the secondary victims of this raid are the Kosher consumers whose food prices have risen as supply and thereby availability of meat and chicken has decreased.

I harp back on what Rabbi Pesach Lerner of Young Israel said in responding to Uri L'Tzedek's ridiculous call to boycott Agriprocessors, paraphrasing, {there are locations in the US which would not have had access to kosher meats if not for Agriprocessors}. That's nothing to take lightly and certainly buys the company some benefit of the doubt. Damage-Control Mode For Embattled Kosher Meat Giant

As far as the politics are concerned, the left is merely playing up to needed voting constituents, the unions and the perceived Hispanic vote which theoretically is more concerned about other Hispanics illegally entering the US to work than they are about upholding the rule of law which is a pretty cynical approach and one for which I would say is insulting.

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A U.S. congressional subcommittee investigated the federal immigration raid at a kosher slaughterhouse. - JTA

Published: 07/25/2008

A U.S. congressional subcommittee investigated the federal immigration raid at a kosher slaughterhouse.

In a hearing Thursday, a subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee considered whether law enforcement agencies guaranteed due process of law in its prosecution of 389 illegal workers at the Agriprocessors meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, May 12.

The raid, said to be the largest single-site workplace raid in American history, led to a "fast-tracked" legal process in which some 300 Spanish-speaking defendants pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to document fraud and identity theft. The bulk were sentenced to five months in jail to be followed by deportation in a legal process completed in less than two weeks.

"I saw the Bill of Rights denied, and it all appeared to be within the framework of the law," Erik Camayd-Freixas, a certified translator who participated in the legal proceedings, told the committee.

David Leopold, the national vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the committee that defendents were faced with an impossible choice: They either could accept a government plea, serve five months in jail and then be deported, or they could plead not guilty, wait several months for trial and risk a two-year mandatory jail sentence. However that turned out, they ultimately would be deported anyway.

"Faced with the choice of five months in prison and deportation, or six months in prison waiting for a trial which could lead to two years in prison and deportation, what choice did the workers really have?" Leopold said. "The spectacle was a national disgrace."

House members grilled representatives of the Department of Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the two federal agencies chiefly responsible for the raid and its legal aftermath.

Deborah Rhodes, a senior associate deputy attorney general, told the committee that defendants were permitted to meet with experienced counsel, were given seven days to consider their legal options and that measures were taken to ensure that the charges were understood before the guilty plea was accepted.

"While the sheer number of illegal aliens in this unusual case presented challenges that we do not often face," Rhodes said, "we believe that the defendants’ constitutional rights were carefully protected and exercised throughout the operation and that each defendant was treated fairly and with respect and dignity."

A standing room-only crowd was on hand when the hearing opened. It was followed by a news conference that included Father Paul Ouderkirk, a Postville priest who has ministered to many of those affected by the raid, and Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

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Liberal Jewish Groups To Rally At Postville Plant - The Jewish Week (Weak).

JTA

An interfaith coalition is planning to demonstrate next week in Postville, Iowa, in support of justice for workers and comprehensive immigration reform.

Conceived by Jewish Community Action, a Minnesota-based social justice group, the rally comes in response to allegations of worker mistreatment at Agriprocessors, the largest kosher meat producer in the United States.

The rally, scheduled for July 27, will follow by one day a visit to Postville by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The group, led by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), will meet with the families of plant workers, as well as community organizers and local religious leaders.

“An immigration system that is predicated on fear tactics and piecemeal, deportation-only policies profoundly worsens our immigration crisis by creating broken
homes and tearing the fabric of our society,” Gutierrez said. “It is my sincere hope that in bringing the stories of the parents, children and workers of Postville back to Congress, our lawmakers will see the very real consequences of punitive actions in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform.”

Both the congressional visit and the rally promise to keep the spotlight on Agriprocessors, whose Postville facility was the target of a massive immigration raid on May 12.

In the wake of the raid, the plant’s workers claimed, among other allegations, that they were underpaid and made to suffer an atmosphere of rampant sexual harassment. Company officials have denied the charges.

Among the groups supporting the rally are the Chicago-based Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish Labor Committee and Workmen’s Circle. Funds for transportation were provided by Mazon, a Jewish hunger relief group.

“There are two targets here,” Jane Ramsey, the executive director of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, told JTA. “One is a message to the government for comprehensive immigration reform on the one hand, and secondly to Agriprocessors for the permanent implementation of livable wages, health care benefits and worker safety.”

The plant’s purchase in 1987 by the Brooklyn butcher Aaron Rubashkin injected a much-needed dose of economic vitality into Postville, which was a struggling farm community. With a workforce of approximately 1,000, Agriprocessors was said to be the largest employer in northern Iowa.

The arrest of nearly half its employees in the raid has significantly cut the plant’s production.
Agriprocessors is hardly alone. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, 4,940 workplace arrests were made in the 2007 fiscal year, up from 510 in 2002. As of May, the agency has made 3,750 arrests this year.

Critics say such arrests are devastating to workers and their families and can have crippling effects on communities. Jewish Community Action raised $10,000 for Postville families, according to its executive director, Vic Rosenthal. The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs has delivered another $5,000.

“We think that this was a very poorly conceived action by ICE that hurt people and didn’t bring any further safety to you and me,” Ramsey said. “Who did this help? They swept into a little town of 2,500 that has now been devastated, that has a just-opened playground and now there are no children for that playground.”

Steven Steinlight, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Study and a leading critic of the mainstream Jewish position on immigration, says such stories are sad on a human level but are not a basis for making policy.

“I can’t get bleary-eyed about these people,” Steinlight said. “They’re here in violation of federal immigration law. You don’t know if these people are from Mexico or from al Qaeda. They have engaged in identity theft. They have engaged in felonies. These are not minor issues. I don’t consider the violation of America’s sovereignty to be a minor issue.”

While Steinlight defends the raid as a legitimate exercise in law enforcement, he shares the sense of outrage over allegations of worker mistreatment even as he opposes the call for a path to legalization for Postville workers.

“The reason they’re hired is because they are exploitable,” Steinlight said. “And if they were legalized, they wouldn’t be any better off.”

Chaim Abrahams, an Agriprocessors representative, said the company is committed to abiding by all state and federal laws.

“Mr. Steinlight has apparently joined the chorus of those who accept the allegations and several newspaper accounts as fact,” Abrahams said. “Agriprocessors will have no further comment on those allegations, as they are part of an ongoing investigation. It merely urges all fair-minded people to reserve judgment until this investigation process has run its course.”

The demonstration is scheduled to begin with an interfaith service at St. Bridget’s, the Catholic church that has taken the lead in providing relief to immigrant families. It will be followed by a march through town to the plant and then back to the church for a rally. Organizers expect about 1,000 people to attend.

“We think that Jews as consumers of kosher food need to understand the importance of who is producing the food and how they get treated, how they get paid,” Rosenthal said. “We really want to energize the Jewish community to think much more clearly about the role they play as consumers.”

Heartland Jews Amidst Flooded Iowa

Chabad Flood Relief

1,000 pounds of meat donated by Agriprocessors distributed by Chabad through the Red Cross

more photos here

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Its been called the greatest flood in Iowa history, a "500 year flood". Cities have been submerged, lives lost, homes washed away in torrents of rain, thunder and tornadoes. It seems like daily a new story of a levy on the verge of collapse or giving way to the rush of out of control rivers, stills the hearts of Americans. People await the answers to their prayerful calls for help.

In response, Americans have donated money and volunteered for relief operations. Yet two stories on opposite ends of a spectrum have caught my attention. While in no way to diminish in any way the suffering, displacement and heart break experienced by the people of Iowa, I was moved by thoughts of gratitude for the actions taken by the Jewish community in Iowa, namely the Chabad Flood Relief
program. It seems that everytime, no matter where a disaster occurs, a Chabadnik is there managing a volunteer effort, sending food, coordinating contacts between the disaster victims and their families, and in some cases actively involved in rescue operations not to mention serving in a pastoral role.

Iowa's Jewish population according to the Jewish Virtual Library is all of 6,140 (I would venture there are street blocks in Brooklyn with equivalent census numbers) out of a state population of 2,966,334 registering 0.2 percent of the state's population (including Postville). Jews, no matter how well represented in the overall population seem to always contribute to the cause when the chips are down. However, Jews are already pretty visible in Iowa these days, thanks to the media coverage of the Agriprocessors ICE bust. It should be noted (see picture above) that Agriprocessors donated 1,000 pounds of meat to the relief effort. I wonder if those people who refuse to buy Rubashkin meat and who look forward to every opportunity to skewer the company and it's founding family, would accept Agriprocessor meat in times of need? Is it good enough only when you have lost everything? How about a mere "thank you"?

This leads me to the next not so nice subject found in the IsraelEnews report below.

Anti-semitic attack on Mikey Weinstein`s home; Jewish vet blamed for Iowa flood - IsraelEnews.

How ironic, in light of the above relief operation story to find this piece of nostalgic antiJewism. Nostalgic, in a sense that in these days, religious Jews are led to believe that they have nothing to fear from their Christian neighbors and for the most part this is true. Maybe it makes a difference when Jews point out a fundamental difference, a irreconcilable separation between Jewry and Christian doctrine. Jews as children of G-d and American citizens have a right to oppose and reject missionizing. This is indeed an issue which has been brought to public attention in Israel of late. And in America, where proselytizing has always gone on, it seems that some Christians do not take too kindly to being told to go the hell away.

Intruders attacked the Albuquerque home of Mikey Weinstein, a leading critic of fundamentalist Christian activity in the armed services. The attack came after nightfall, according to Weinstein, who said family members heard someone running across the roof; they subsequently found a swastikas and a cross scrawled next to the front door.

Weinstein has reported receiving dozens of threatening telephone calls in the years since he filed a lawsuit against the Air Force for religious coercion of Air Force Academy cadets and established the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which represents members of the armed services who have been subjected to aggressive fundamentalist Christian proselytizing. Authorities are investigating the attack on Weinstein's home.

Meanwhile, in flooded Iowa City, neighbors today blamed a disabled Jewish veteran for the rising water. David Akiva Miller, who is fighting the Veterans Administration over aggressive Christian proselytizing during his hospitalization (see our earlier report), was buying groceries on Sunday when an older couple, also shopping, approached him. In an email, Miller wrote that
The man said something to the lady I couldn't quite make out, and they turned around and stepped back towards me. The man said to me, "You're that Jewish fella that's been stirring up trouble over at the Veterans Hospital, aren't ya?" (Okay, I'll admit I kind of stick out in Iowa City with my long beard, kippah and tzit tzit.) I said, "Excuse me?" And he said, "It's because of folks like you that we got this flood." Mikey Weinstein's Military Religious Freedom Foundation is representing Miller in his struggle with the Veterans Administration.

David Akiva Miller is a disabled Navy veteran and an observant Jew. When he moved to Iowa City and went for care at the Veterans Administration Hospital there, he endured repeated efforts by Protestant chaplains to evangelize him in his hospital bed. Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, held a news conference with Miller in Iowa City and declared his support for the vet -- including a lawsuit, should that become necessary.

Not to drag a drama play into a disaster story, but I wonder how wide spread these thoughts are amongst our non-Jewish neighbors? I would like to think such ideas are not very common however world history begs to differ. But since there are those from within Jewry (see Lazar Brody's comments) that the natural disasters that have occurred in America in the last few years are punishments for forcing unneeded and unwanted negotiations on Israel than I guess the Iowa flood conspiracies can be filed in the "all's fair..." category. Rabbi Brody, I presume has explanations for the natural disasters that occurred in America and elsewhere prior to the last 10 years or so.

Now, I am not one who insistently says that HaShem does not have a plan for the world, that reward and punishment is a fable, and that the biblical promises given to the Patriarchs an eternal promise that those that bless the Jews will be blessed is untrue. It is very much true. I am not in a position to point to specific events and say, "see there is the proof". Maybe Rabbi Brody can. Maybe the Rebbe could (probably did), all is in divine hands. What we can say is that the efforts of one Jew to prevent other Jews from being evangelized in a US military hospital or in the military in general is hardly the reason for a 500 year flood. If anything, we would like to say it is the reverse. I hope the "neighbor" buying groceries is afforded the opportunity to read this. Those who bless you, will be blessed, those who curse you, I will curse.




Coralville, Iowa DOT



Cedar Rapids - ENS Newswire





Counties declared disaster area by Governor Culver's Proclamation.


General flood information - Iowa Governor's office

Visions of Fraud - Agriprocessors Cheshbon Nefesh

Part of the teshuva process for Agriprocessors employees, managers, owners, etc. whomever the scales of justice will eventually point to as responsible for the employment fraud in Postville, IA, should be to read this article every day for at least a year. It documents the difficulties of an American consumer whose identity was stolen to enable an illegal resident to work. APRPEH briefly explained in theory, the reality this consumer, subject of the post by Bob Sullivan of MSNBC had to undertake in order to solve her identity theft process. The tough part here is that even with professional assistance, the victim must still actively play a role in the restoration. There is no easy way out of a SSN fraud.

Pay close attention to the part of the story where the victim relates the difficulty of facing an employment only identity theft where the identity was not used for credit purposes. We have a backward morality in this country. Employment or SSN fraud is just as vicious a crime as fraudulently taking out a Visa or Mastercard and should be treated as a serious criminal offense. Don't ask me to feel sorry for the perpetrator who merely wished to work in the US. The article below is long but worth the effort.

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TWO LIVES, ONE SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER - MSNBC Red Tape Chronicles
Posted: Tuesday, May 27 at 06:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan

Like arriving home to see a broken window, Holli knew something was wrong when she pulled up the statement from her new 401(k) account and saw a stranger's name there. Under her name and account information, she found a second name: Paulino Rodriguez. But was it an accident, random vandalism or a serious crime? She opened the virtual door to her account and sorted through the broken glass. Her worst fears would soon be confirmed.

After some frantic research, Holli pieced together part of the story. Rodriguez, the 401(k) Web site revealed, lived in Escondido, Calif., about 90 minutes south of Holli’s home in Fountain Valley. He was a restaurant worker in an Escondido Burger King. This was no prank -- though Holli would soon feel like several government agencies, corporations and a criminal were having fun at her expense. She was a victim of something experts call Social Security number-only identity theft, generally committed by immigrants who don’t have the necessary credentials to work legally in the U.S.


Holli wondered what else the imposter had done to her credit and her good name. (Msnbc.com has agreed to conceal Holli’s identity in this story.)

Escondido is Ground Zero of the immigration debate. Just a few minutes north of the Mexican border, near San Diego, Escondido is home to thousands of Mexican immigrants who battle their way every day into the country and into gainful employment. Mexicans have been fighting in Escondido for a long time. Not far away, in 1846, U.S. forces were routed in the Battle of San Pasqual during the Mexican-American war, the worst American defeat of the conflict. Today, some say, Mexicans are again overwhelming American forces in a different kind of battle.

For the past three years, Paulino Rodriguez used Holli's Social Security number for the right to work at the Escondido Burger King. Recently, with his wife and four children, he took up residence in a middle-class subdivision on Espanas Glen Street in Escondido, a short block near Interstate 15.

Rodriguez, according U.S. immigration officials, is a Mexican national with no right to work in the United States. But thanks in part to Holli’s Social Security number, he had found a decent life for his family in Escondido, which means "hidden" in Spanish. But that that life was safe only if no one found out he was sharing Holli's identity.

Across America, perhaps millions of U.S. citizens are sharing their identities with undocumented workers who are virtually hiding behind Social Security numbers like Rodriguez. The data on the subject are incomplete, but each year nearly 10 million workers pay their taxes using the wrong Social Security number. While this can happen for a variety of reasons, most often it involves restaurant and farm workers, suggesting many of those 10 million workers are employees who are using someone else's SSN to satisfy federal employment requirements.

Information at her fingertips
Holli, a woman in her 50s, panicked one month ago when she saw Rodriguez’s name on her 401(k) account, then she started putting the pieces together. It wasn't hard -- she had all of Rodriguez's personal information right there on her screen, including his age: 38. She called his employer, Reddy Restaurants Inc., which supplies workers to Burger King. Holli says she was told that nothing could be done because Rodriguez fulfilled the requirements for employment when he started work -- namely, he supplied what appeared to be a valid Social Security card.

Mike Holly, owner of Reddy, confirmed that Rodriguez was an employee but refused to otherwise discuss the situation.

Holli then called the local police, who took a report but said nothing could be done. She contacted the Social Security Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, even her 401(k) administrator. The message she heard from each was the same: We can’t help you. She even went to an attorney, who delivered bad news.

"(He) said since my credit hadn't been affected, they couldn't do anything for me," Holli recalled.

But Holli was persistent. She eventually convinced her local police department to take a report, and to forward it to Escondido police. Then, she pestered the dispatcher in Escondido enough that the file was passed on to the investigations department. Detective Damon Vander Vorst took an interest in the case.

Rodriguez entered the country nearly 20 years ago, public records suggest. It's unclear where in Mexico he grew up, or how he crossed the border. At about the same time, Holli was just starting her career.
Precisely when their lives were blended isn't clear. But about three years ago, Holli remembers getting a funny look from a clerk while she was filling out insurance paperwork at an optometrist’s office. "There's someone else's using that (SSN) number," she remembers being told. Then, "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but the name Paulino Rodriguez."

Holli assumed it was an error. But around that same time, Rodriguez signed up with Reddy Restaurants and began working -- using her SSN -- at Burger King.

Holli has no solid information on how her number was stolen, but she has one guess: About five years ago she was laid off from her job and went back to school to finish her college degree in finance. Her school, Long Beach State, used her SSN as her ID number during that time. Her first brush with Rodriguez happened within a few months of her graduation.

Three years passed without incident. Then in April, she opened up the Web site for a new company benefit – a 401(k) plan – and saw the name Paulino Rodriguez again. Holli’s heart sank and her quest began. It ended a month later when she talked to Vander Vorst. On May 13, Vander Vorst staked out a home in a gated subdivision named Villas Espanas, waiting for his suspect.

While there is an obvious Latino majority, the neighborhood looks just like any other middle-class San Diego suburb, full of neat white stucco townhomes with red-tile roofs. Most store signs are in English only. A dry cleaner, grocery store, and school are just a few blocks away. During a recent visit by an msnbc.com reporter at midday, the neighborhood was quiet. The subdivision has a large pool; hanging in Rodriguez’s front window, three pairs of child-sized goggles were visible from the sidewalk.

Just outside the home, Vander Vorst arrested Rodriguez. Police allege he had falsified Social Security card and work visa.

Getting such documents is hardly an obstacle for illegal immigrants seeking work. Fake Social Security cards and work visas can be purchased in Los Angeles for around $200, law enforcement officials say -- a small investment for the opportunity to work in the United States.

Rodriguez was charged with identity theft and with falsifying government documents, according to Escondido police spokesman Lt. Craig Carter. He was shipped to nearby Vista Detention Facility, where he awaits his fate on the criminal charges. meanwhile, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency has placed a "hold" on him. That means he is "subject to deportation," according to Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for ICE.

Rodriguez refused an interview request by an MSNBC.com free-lance reporter who visited the jail.

Mixed feelings
Holli had mixed feelings when she began her quest to track down her imposter.

"When all this began a month and a half ago, I was worried I might be ruining his life when all he wanted to do was work," she said. But the bureaucratic tangle had changed her. "Now after spending numerous hours of my time trying to find out what is going on as well as worrying, losing sleep and using my work vacation time, I no longer feel bad for Paulino. He made the choice to steal my number. And the fact that privacy laws keep me from being able to see what he is doing with my number infuriates me."

She also fears possible retribution for her actions; that’s why she insisted that msnbc.com preserve her anonymity. She also wants to prevent Rodriguez from finding out who she is. Generally, SSN imposters don't commit full-blown identity theft, and don't know who their victims are – Rodriguez likely never even knew Holli’s name.

Immigrant imposters usually just provide a Social Security card to their employer on their first day of work to fulfill what's known as the “I-9” requirement. Since new employment rules took effect in 1983, U.S. workers must supply documentation to prove they are eligible to work; nearly always, a Social Security number is used. While employers can call the Social Security Administration to perform limited verification of the information, that's seldom done. So it's possible -- in fact common -- that employees’ names and numbers don't match. When that happens, no one gets credit for the taxes paid by the worker. The money simply ends up in the U.S. Treasury. Since 1983, more than $500 billion in uncredited Social Security wages have been earned by so-called "no match" employees like Rodriguez. That hidden financial benefit for the government is one reason, Holli suspects, that agencies don't act more quickly on reports of SSN-only identity theft.

San Diego-based immigration rights advocate Lilia Velasquez sees similar cases in her practice all the time. Imposters run the spectrum from hardened criminals who ultimately take out loans in the victim's name to well-intentioned Mexicans who are simply doing what they need to do to get a job and feed their families.
"It's not that these people intentionally and maliciously stole someone's name and identity. ... They may feel that they are using the number out of sheer need," she said.

But victims like Holli should do what they need to do to protect their identities, Velasquez said. "That's a situation which needs to be investigated until the issue is resolved."

37 people shared one SSN
If not, what appears to be a simple bout of ID theft can spin out of control. Immigrant workers who successfully use someone else's identity can pass the information around. Three years ago, a Chicago-area victim named Linda Trevino discovered that her Social Security Number had been used by workers at 37 different companies.

When another person is using a consumers' Social Security Number for employment purposes only, there is almost no way to discover the identity theft. The misuse will not show up on a credit report; it won't be detected by credit monitoring. Because the wages earned are not credited to the victim, they won't show up on annual Social Security statements either. In fact, there is no way for anyone to inspect the history of their Social Security Number, or to find out where and when it's been used. Only an anomaly or coincidence – such as having an imposter show up on a 401(k) Web site -- betrays the theft.

That's why this is an important victory for Holli; she's among the first to find her SSN imposter and stop the ID theft. Of course, she has no way of knowing if her identity is now secure, because her number may have been used by other immigrants.

"The fact that I can check my credit but not my whole credit is absurd," she said. "In any case, this is my identifier that follows me around and I should be able to protect myself (and my identifier) by knowing what is attached to it." She plans on urging Congress to fix the problem. Meanwhile, she’s left with a sour taste in her mouth -- she acted in self-defense, but worries that some will see her as a villain who caused Rodriguez’s arrest. She’s angry at the criminal who stole her identity and at the system which put her in this compromising situation.

The future of Rodriguez and his family is unclear. If his children are U.S. citizens, law enforcement officials say, he may be allowed to remain in the U.S.. Otherwise, deportation is a likely outcome, but not right away. Before the immigration issue is settled, he will likely face state criminal ID theft charges in state court.

Jacqueline Dizdul reported from San Diego.

FOLLOW UP TO AGRIPROCESSORS RAID - THE SECRET CABAL OF KOSHER SLAUGHTER

May 13, 2008
Hundreds Are Arrested in U.S. Sweep of Meat Plant - NYT
By SUSAN SAULNY

In the biggest workplace immigration raid this year, federal agents swept into a kosher meat plant on Monday in Postville, Iowa, and arrested more than 300 workers.

The authorities said the workers were suspected of being in the United States illegally or of having participated in identity theft and the fraudulent use of Social Security numbers.

A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not say how many people had been rounded up beyond the initial 300 or whether the management and owners of the plant, AgriProcessors, would face criminal charges.

The plant has 800 to 900 people and is the country’s largest producer of meat that is glatt kosher, widely regarded as the highest standard of cleanliness.

The plant shut temporarily.

The agents set up a perimeter around the 60-acre plant, in northeastern Iowa, and entered on the morning shift, carrying out two search warrants, federal authorities said. An affidavit filed in court before the raid by the Homeland Security Department cited “the issuance of 697 criminal complaints and arrest warrants against persons believed to be current employees” and to have acted criminally.

The affidavit said a former plant supervisor had told investigators that a methamphetamine laboratory had operated at the plant and that some employees had carried weapons to the plant. The former supervisor, the affidavit said, estimated that 80 percent of the employees were in the United States illegally.

A spokesman for Representative Bruce Braley, Democrat of Iowa, said the number of arrests was expected to increase, perhaps even double, as the investigation continued.

Federal officials leased an expansive fairground area in nearby Waterloo to process and house the arrested workers. Among people at the fairgrounds and in Postville, “there is a lot of fear,” said Prof. Mark A. Grey, who focuses on immigration at the University of Northern Iowa.

“It’s absolutely devastating to the local economy,” Professor Grey said.

In a news release, Matt M. Dummermuth, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, called the sweep “the largest operation of its type ever in Iowa.”

Federal authorities have been conducting workplace raids across the country in recent years, with the pace accelerating since the failure of immigration legislation last year in Congress.

The raid had been planned for months and was conducted in coordination with local law enforcement, according to the news release, released jointly by Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for the ICE regional office in Bloomington, Minn.

Calls to AgriProcessors, a global giant in the kosher meat market and the major employer in Postville, a town of 2,200 people, were not answered. A lawyer for the plant did not return a call.

According to a company Web site, Aaron Rubashkin, whose family controls the plant, bought a defunct meat factory in Postville in 1987 and turned it into the present plant.

According to Menachem Lubinsky, the editor of Kosher Today and a marketing consultant, AgriProcessors provides 60 percent of the kosher retail meat and 40 percent of the kosher poultry nationally, and most retail chains depend on it for supply. Mr. Lubinsky said the company was also the sole American packing plant whose products are accepted in Israel.

The raid was not the first moment in the national spotlight for the plant. In 2004, it was asked to change its slaughtering methods after an animal rights group secretly documented workers cutting the throats of living steers and letting them bleed to death.

The company has also been a target of environmental pollution complaints.

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As of today, the Postville meat plant is supposedly back to production and a story carried on VIN squashed rumors that the OU is withdrawing it's hechsher.

My real question is how you lose so much of your labor and continue production without either a loss of volume or quality? The employees that were taken away were likely the non-skilled labor (in kashrus) and support staff. So even if the numbers of "shochets" haven't changed, who will do all the labor to support the slaughter operations?

The units likely impacted (my best guess) is animal movers, cleaning, packaging, shipping, custodial, etc. If so, who is going to make sure that meat is processed and stored correctly and in a timely fashion, packaged correctly and not contaminated waiting to be worked on? I am not familiar with kashrus plant processing operations so I am asking these questions as a concerned consumer. Certainly the USDA will be watching, so some of this concern may be mitigated.

In any event, if the reader made it through the NYT article above you should be laughing. Did you catch this gem:

In 2004, it was asked to change its slaughtering methods after an animal rights group secretly documented workers cutting the throats of living steers and letting them bleed to death.

For those not familiar with kosher slaughter you may not be smiling now. For the rest of us, a good laugh after this embarrassing story doesn't hurt.