PhillyDeals: Benefiting in their labor, but refusing legal status

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20080810_PhillyDeals__Benefiting_in_their_labor__but_refusing_legal_status.html

Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2008

By Joseph N. DiStefano

Inquirer Staff Writer
The 42 janitors busted last week in Norristown for sweeping without papers, and the Bryn Mawr and Cherry Hill car-wash managers indicted in May for giving dozens of car-buffers phony IDs, and the 64 Christmas-novelty workers charged earlier this year with being "illegally present" at their Bristol jobs were caught in a growing crackdown on foreign laborers who lack U.S. work permits.

At the rate it's going, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement district based in Philadelphia will detain 7,000 workers this year, up from 5,600 last year, 4,000 the year before, and 3,700 in 2005, said ICE spokesman Harold Ort.


ERIC MENCHER / Inquirer Staff Photographer
Marchers in Kennett Square in May show solidarity for migrant workers. Is less immigration good? Not for U.S. employers who want immigrant workers or for consumers who buy their products.


Nationally, immigration prosecutions are also way up. Immigration-law violations accounted for more than half the 16,000 cases filed by U.S. attorneys in April, and phony-work-document charges have replaced drug charges as the lead accusation in federal district court prosecutions, says Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

"We've ramped up the enforcement efforts. We're going to continue to do so," Ort said.

Agents don't like it when we call them raids. "Everything we do is the result of a lengthy investigation," Ort said. "We believe strongly in what we do."

The Norristown job was smooth: ICE had the janitors' boss, ABM Industries Inc., call suspected foreign workers to a King of Prussia meeting, grabbed them, and let the working moms - half the group - go home with electronic monitors. Plans are to deport them all.

FULL story at link.