Press Release: Statement By IFCO Systems
PRESS RELEASE
Statement By IFCO Systems
Friday April 21, 10:15 am ET
IFCO Systems today released the
following statement regarding information presented yesterday at a U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement press conference in Washington:
As it is IFCO’s policy to comply with all federal and state employment
provisions, we take the allegations made by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) very seriously and are committed to resolving this matter as
soon as possible. We are very disturbed by these allegations and have
immediately begun a thorough investigation of the facts.
The activities and attitudes outlined in the allegations are counter to
everything we stand for at IFCO. We have the highest respect for our nation’s
employment and citizenship laws and are committed to complying with them.
IFCO is the industry leader with a business model built on the
efficiencies of our logistics systems and physical network and we are deeply
committed to our employees. We are proud to offer a level of compensation and
benefits to our employees that many of our peers do not. These include
competitive wages, workers’ compensation insurance, affordable health
insurance, 401k, and various other benefits.
We are cooperating fully with ICE and other authorities including
voluntarily allowing ICE to visit many of our facilities this past Wednesday.
We are now working to understand the facts and will implement any additional
changes necessary to further improve our current procedures. So that we will
be able to move forward with confidence, we have begun an internal
investigation that will be headed by outside counsel. Pending the outcome of
our investigation, the local IFCO managers arrested yesterday have been placed
on temporary leave from the company. In cooperation with ICE, we will be
reviewing the status of our temporarily detained hourly workers across the
country on a case by case basis.
All of our facilities are in operation and we are continuing to meet all
of our customers’ needs.
Source:
IFCO Systems North America, Inc.
U.S. Issued 304, 374 Visas to Chinese
Filed at 6:18 a.m. ET
BEIJING (AP)
— Chinese citizens received the highest number of U.S. visas on record
last year as China’s economic power expanded, a U.S. Embassy official
said Friday.
The number of U.S. visas granted to Chinese had
fallen sharply with tighter security screening after the Sept. 11,
2001, terror attacks, but rebounded in the following years.
Last
year, the United States issued 304,374 nonimmigrant visas to Chinese
tourists, students and others, a 29 percent increase over 2004, said
Michael Regan, the U.S. consul general in charge of visas.
Chinese
citizens ”have more and more legitimate reasons both to travel for
business and tourism, and (as) students,” Regan said in an interview.
Maryland woman sentenced for conspiracy to commit involuntary servitude and harboring an illegal alien for financial gain
14-Year-Old Nigerian Girl Brought to U.S. and Held Against Her Will
Via Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
|
GREENBELT, United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein stated, “This “Too often human traffickers bait young girls with promises of the “The acts committed by this individual — holding a child as a On November 18, 2004, Stella Udeozor was convicted by a federal jury Testimony showed that the couple induced the young girl to come to In addition to constantly yelling at and insulting the victim, the The jury also returned three special findings relating to George Udeozor, age 49, is a fugitive and has not yet been tried in this case. He is currently facing extradition from Nigeria. United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein thanked the U.S. Department |
|
— ICE — |
Immigration arrests 9 bosses along with 1,000 workers
Via CNN.com
Strategy to focus more on companies that employ illegal workers
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Federal immigration
authorities arrested nine people linked to the firm IFCO Systems and
rounded up more than 1,000 illegal immigrants in multistate raids,
federal law enforcement officials said.
Among those arrested
and charged in connection with the employment of immigrants are seven
current and former managers and two lower-level employees of the
company, said U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby.
The operation came
as Bush administration officials and a federal prosecutor plan a new
strategy aimed at companies that employ illegal immigrants. IFCO is an
industry leader in the manufacture of wooden pallets, crates and
containers. The criminal complaint involving IFCO charges the seven
managers with conspiracy to transport, harbor, and employ illegal
immigrants for private gain.
Federal
authorities checked a sample of 5,800 IFCO employee records last year
and found that 53 percent had faulty Social Security numbers, an
Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said.
“That
is, they were using Social Security numbers of people that were dead,
of children or just different individuals that did not work at IFCO,”
ICE chief Julie Myers told CNN.
Path to Deportation Can Start With a Traffic Stop
Via NYTimes.com
Henry Rosales Lopez, left, and Fredy Reyes are among the illegal immigrants in custody in Suffolk County, N.Y.
While lawmakers in Washington debate whether to forgive illegal
immigrants their trespasses, a small but increasing number of local and
state law enforcement officials are taking it upon themselves to pursue
deportation cases against people who are here illegally.
In more than a dozen jurisdictions, officials have invoked a little-used 1996 federal law to seek special federal training in immigration enforcement for their officers.
In
other places, the local authorities are flagging some illegal
immigrants who are caught up in the criminal justice system, sometimes
for minor offenses, and are alerting immigration officials to their
illegal status so that they can be deported.
In Costa Mesa,
Calif., for example, in Orange County, the City Council last year shut
down a day laborer job center that had operated for 17 years, and this
year authorized its Police Department to begin training officers to
pursue illegal immigrants — a job previously left to federal agents.
In
Suffolk County, on Long Island, where a similar police training
proposal was met with angry protests in 2004, county officials have
quietly put a system in place that uses sheriff’s deputies to flag
illegal immigrants in the county jail population.
In Putnam
County, N.Y., about 50 miles north of Manhattan, eight illegal
immigrants who were playing soccer in a school ball field were arrested
on Jan. 9 for trespassing and held for the immigration authorities.
Farmers Say They’ve Got Fruit but No Labor
In Washington state, migrants increasingly pass up apple orchards for better-paying jobs.
Via LATimes.com
YAKIMA, Wash. — While much of the country frets about too many illegal
immigrants, farmers in this famed apple-growing region east of the
Cascade Range complain they can no longer find enough.
During
the last two years, Yakima-area apple growers were so short of the
migrant field hands they rely on to prune and pick their prized crop
that a few brought in workers from Thailand.
Others said they never did find enough workers and watched in anguish as precious fruit was left dangling on trees.
This
summer, with farmers expecting a bountiful apple crop, they also
predict that the worker shortage will worsen, threatening a
hand-harvesting industry valued at more than $1.5 billion in Washington
state. In the last big-crop year, growers employed an estimated 42,300
seasonal apple workers, according to state officials.
A lesson in immigration
Guest worker experiments transformed Europe
BERLIN — Germany needed workers. Turks needed work.
So starting in 1961, the country invited Turkish ”guest workers” to come do the dirty jobs that Germans didn’t want.
Only
7,000 ”gastarbeiter,” as they were called, arrived that first year, a
curiosity in a country where non-European faces were rare. Press
flashbulbs popped. Politicians made speeches of welcome. Ordinary
Germans watched, bemused.
Nobody grasped that the country — and
the continent, because neighboring nations soon undertook similar
experiments — was on the brink of a transformation whose effects are
still reverberating across Europe.
In Berlin, which today ranks
as the largest ”Turkish” city outside Turkey, falafel stands and kebab
joints far outnumber eateries offering schnitzel. In the Dutch city of
Rotterdam, Islamic calls to prayer are as common as church chimes. In
the raw-knuckled housing projects ringing Paris, graffiti are more
likely to be scrawled in Arabic than in the language of Voltaire.
”The
idea, originally, was that the foreign workers would stay for as long
as economically necessary, then go home,” said Michael Bommes, director
of the Institute for Migration Research at Germany’s Osnabrueck
University. ”It didn’t quite go like that.”
As the US Congress
wrestles with comprehensive immigration reform, one idea under
discussion is a new program that would allow guest workers to enter the
country, but not necessarily to stay on and become citizens.
In
Germany, guest workers — mostly poorly educated young men who were
issued special visas allowing them entry for one or two years to take
unskilled jobs — helped the nation to become the third-richest in the
world. The fabulous post-war prosperity of France, the Netherlands,
Denmark, Sweden, and other West European countries was also boosted by
immigrant labor, mainly from Turkey and North Africa.
But more
recently, as economic growth has slowed, swelling numbers of Muslim
immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa — many of them
arriving without any visas, or overstaying their visas and melting into
the ethnic suburbs — are being blamed for social stresses from urban
blight to chaotic schools.
In the words of the late Swiss writer Max Frisch: ”We wanted workers, we got people.”
Georgia enacts tough new law targeting illegal migrants
Via Yahoo.com
MIAMI (AFP) – The US state of Georgia has enacted one of the toughest
laws targeting illegal migrants in the United States, requiring
employers to verify the immigration status of workers before hiring
them and penalizing those who hire undocumented workers.
“Georgia is a welcoming state that wants to treat our guests with
Southern hospitality, but we cannot tolerate activity that distracts us
from our ability to embrace those who come here legally,” said Governor
Sonny Perdue in signing the sweeping measure into law on Monday.
“We recognize that immigration is ultimately a national issue that
needs a national solution,” Perdue said. But the new law was necessary
“because we need to know who is living here in Georgia, and for that
matter, who is living in our country”.
The law requires the verification of immigration status for anyone
seeking state social benefits, public jobs or government contracts.
It prohibits businesses from claiming tax credits for undocumented
workers they employ, retains a six-percent salary tax on immigrants,
and demands that police verify the immigration status of anyone
arrested on a serious criminal charge.
Chertoff: U.S. Still Plans Passport Rule
Via Yahoo.com
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Tuesday it still plans to
require passports from all foreigners entering the United States by the
end of next year, despite calls for a delay by some Republicans worried
about strained relations with Canada.
At issue is a 2004 law, being phased in over three years, to tighten
U.S. borders against suspected terrorists and other criminals. But
critics on both sides of the nation’s northern border fear the passport
requirement will hamper commerce and tourism between Canada and the
U.S. — the world’s largest trading bloc.
Immigrants’ Interest in Citizenship Surges
Via Yahoo.com
WASHINGTON – Efforts by Congress and local governments to crack down on
illegal immigration — and the protests that followed those efforts —
have produced a surge of interest in learning how to become a U.S.
citizen.
More of the nation’s 8 million legal immigrants are showing up at
citizenship classes and seminars sponsored by churches and community
groups.
“I didn’t think it was important before, but now I think it’s very
important to be a citizen,” Leonida Santana said during a break in a
Saturday morning class discussion about the separation of powers among
Congress, the president and the courts.
Santana, a Dominican Republic native, arrived in the United States
in 1983 and a year later secured a green card, signifying permanent
legal residency. She signed up for the 10 weeks of citizenship
preparation classes after the House last year passed a bill that would
deport illegal immigrants as felons and erect 700 miles of fencing
along the U.S.-Mexico border.
US immigration debate opens up great divide in Republican party
April 18, 2006
Yet again, a key issue for businesses has been
turned into an internal political battle, pitting social conservatives
against more economically liberal voices, writes Stephen Ellis
WHILE the most visible reaction after proposed reforms to US
immigration laws, stalled in Congress last week, was the hundreds of
thousands of mostly Latino demonstrators drawn onto the streets, behind
the scenes most US business leaders were equally disappointed.
Most US business leaders and lobby groups have vigorously supported the
Bush administration’s push for reforms that would legalise the
residency and work status of most illegal immigrants, and put many on a
path to US citizenship.
There are an estimated 11 million people who live and work illegally in the US, up from an estimated 3 million in 1985.
Over recent years, despite increased border security and heavy
spending on fences, aircraft patrols and fancy detection technologies,
the annual inflow is estimated to have hovered around 850,000.
As these individuals have become integrated into the economy, many industries have become dependent on them.
This is particularly true of labour-intensive areas such as
agriculture, low-tech manufacturing, hotels and hospitality,
residential construction and domestic services, where unskilled or
semi-skilled illegal immigrants often form the backbone of the labour
force.
Firms in these sectors have warned of the economic disruption
that would follow if laws were changed to force employers to scrutinise
the credentials of would-be workers more closely, and to increase
penalties on companies found to be employing illegal workers.
This would be a radical departure from the current environment,
where the federal Government, more or less, ignores breaches of the
immigration rules by businesses that hire these workers, in what is a
tacit acknowledgement of economic reality.
But there has also been more general business support for the
reforms proposed by the White House, which would have created a new
category of legal guest workers, and allowed the majority of the
illegals already in the US to stay and eventually become citizens if
they could present a solid work and tax-paying history.
Here Illegally, but Choosing to Pay Taxes
Via LATimes.com
Some undocumented workers hope that by establishing a record of their
time in the United States, it will be easier to gain citizenship later.
They may be here illegally, but tens of thousands of undocumented
immigrants are expected to abide by Uncle Sam’s rules by filing tax
returns — with the hope of someday becoming U.S. citizens.
Though there is no way of knowing how many people are filing taxes in
response to the national debate on immigration, Southern California tax
preparers are seeing a steady stream of clients eager to be on record
as taxpayers.
“There has definitely been an increase,” said Noemi Munoz, a senior tax
advisor at H&R Block in Los Angeles. “After whatever they’ve heard
on TV, I guess that’s why they want to file taxes.”
Some illegal immigrants have long paid taxes through special
identification numbers issued by the Internal Revenue Service for
people who are not eligible for Social Security numbers — whether out
of a sense of duty or hope for eventual citizenship.
But now that the U.S. Senate is considering a broad proposal that
could lead to citizenship for migrants who have lived here for at least
two years, there is a greater incentive to file a tax return. Some are
pulling out their W-2s and heading to the nearest tax office — not just
to pay this year’s bill but to catch up on back taxes. In interviews,
many said they wanted to prove how long they had lived in the United
States and that they would be good citizens.
“It’s important for all of us to pay our taxes, to have proof
that we are working in this country,” said Efrain Santa Cruz, 44, an
illegal immigrant from Mexico who recently filed his return, “so
someday maybe they will give us papers.”
The U.S. Immigration Law Blog by Ashwin Sharma 
Immigration or recession?
By Susan Strother Clarke
Via The Orlando Sentinel
As the great immigration debate continues, I’ve wondered about a couple of things.
What would happen to the U.S. economy if immigration — legal and illegal — stopped tomorrow?
Taking it a step further, what would happen if the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants here now simply went away?
For answers, I turned to number-cruncher Mark Zandi, chief economist at
Moody’s Economy.com. He based his data not on emotion, but on the
things that economists look at, such as employment, income and buying
power.
Granted, my scenarios are extreme. When Congress
continues its discussion next week about illegal workers, it’s highly
unlikely that enough lawmakers would support either case.
Still, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric in some quarters, it’s interesting to play out the extremes.
Zandi tells me that if the United States could seal its borders and
stop all immigration, the country would be looking at a half-point
decline in growth of the gross domestic product.
Given that GDP
is projected to expand by 3.5 percent this year, a half-point slip
isn’t earth-shattering. But it’s not great, either.
For a
little perspective, Hurricane Katrina, with the unemployment and high
fuel costs it caused, shaved as much from the GDP as would an end to
all immigration.
But the real economic woes would start if the illegal immigrants already in the country flat-out went away.
Instead of expanding, the economy would shrink by 2.5 percent. What
does that feel like? Well, a decline even approaching that level hasn’t
happened since 1982, when the economy shrunk by 2 percent.
As
for an idea of what 1982 felt like, unemployment then averaged almost
10 percent and inflation was about double what it is now.
“If
the illegals left, relatively quickly, it would mean a fairly
measurable recession. We would have a year of negative numbers,” Zandi
said.
One year, maybe more. That’s because there wouldn’t be
enough people to fill certain jobs. About 6.5 million of the illegal
immigrants in this country are employed. That’s 4 percent of the work
force — and that’s a chunk of people who can’t be replaced overnight.
In Florida, the workers play big roles in citrus, tourism and
construction. Eventually, employers would be forced to pay more money,
and new people would move into some of the jobs.
But that would
take time. And prices would go up. The economy is like that old song
about the knee bone being connected to the leg bone. Everything is
entwined.
If I pay more for my food and house, I can’t afford
to buy a car. That means that someone loses a sale at the local
dealership, his family has less money to spend and so forth.
It’s also true that illegal immigrants suppress wages. That’s something that hurts the poorer native-born people.
But the low wages that are paid to illegal immigrants help the rest of the economy.
Said Zandi: “Adding up the winners and losers, with immigration, the economy overall benefits.”
That’s something all members of Congress should keep in mind.