Immigration fines cost 14 New England companies
Fourteen New England companies were fined a combined $285,000 during the past fiscal year for failing to document that their workers were in the country legally, federal authorities announced yesterday.
The fines followed audits by the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement of federal I-9 forms, paperwork that must be filled out by employees when they are hired to show they have legal authorization to work.
Eight of the cited companies were in Massachusetts, including Commercial Cleaning Service in Allston, which was fined $100,000, and masonry contractor D’Agostino Associates Inc. in Newton, fined $22,792.
The immigration agency said it also fined Andover Healthcare Inc. of Salisbury, All In One Insulation Inc. of West Boylston, Polcari Enterprises Inc. of Saugus, Seatrade International of New Bedford, Harvest Co-op Markets of Cambridge, and Collt Manufacturing Inc. of Millis. The amounts of those fines were not released.
Some of the companies were found to have “suspect documents,’’ said Bruce M. Foucart, head of investigations for ICE in New England. “That means more than likely they had an illegal workforce,’’ Foucart said by phone yesterday. “By not having the proper paperwork, workers had to be let go.’’
Fine amounts were calculated based on the seriousness of violations, whether companies were cooperative, and whether there were multiple offenses, he said.
While none of the 14 companies appealed, some negotiated lesser fines; others agreed to pay the initial amount ordered.
A voice mail left yesterday afternoon at the Allston cleaning company was not returned.
The owner of D’Agostino Associates, Romeo D’Agostino, said his company was fined for not properly filling out paperwork. “I didn’t dot my I’s and cross my T’s,’’ he said by phone. “. . . I don’t hire’’ illegal immigrants.
In 2006, the Globe reported that the company “had 19 instances of workers with bogus or questionable Social Security numbers on public school projects in Littleton and North Easton.’’
Blueberry grower Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge, Maine, was fined $118,000. In November, the Globe reported that the firm had been cited “for violations that range from paperwork errors to the possibility that more than 200 of its 1,200 person workforce over two years were in the country illegally.’’
Edward R. Flanagan, president and chief executive of Wyman, told the Globe then that he never knew the workers lacked proper documentation. He said he had started using a federal verification system that lets companies check the legal status of workers.
Foucart said yesterday that the blueberry grower also cooperated with ICE officials in fall 2008 during the arrests of eight potentially illegal employees. They were arrested on administrative, not criminal, charges and went through court deportation proceedings, he said.
Nationally, ICE says nearly 4,000 businesses have been fined nearly $7 million combined on such violations.
SOURCE
Even Leftist Spain is biting the immigration bullet
Spain Restricts Romanians Job-Market Access to Ease Pressure on unemployment
The Spanish government will temporarily restrict Romanian immigration to those who can show a job contract as the country seeks to ease pressure on its labor market, which has the highest jobless rate in Europe.
“The job market has completely changed since 2008, so the government decided to adopt a mechanism that enables it to require that Romanians coming to Spain to work apply for authorization,” Development Minister Jose Blanco told journalists in Madrid today. Approval will only be given to those who have a contract, he said.
Spain’s Socialist minority government is battling with a 21 percent unemployment rate that threatens the country’s fragile recovery and its ability to rein in the euro area’s third- largest deficit. Exports drove growth in the first half as the most drastic austerity measures in the last three decades weighed on demand.
“The measure is a negative sign for the free-labor movement in Europe,” said Raffaella Tenconi, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research in London. “It will reduce competition in a country where the rigidity of the job market is already a structural weakness.” About 800,000 Romanians work in Spain, representing 14 percent of the country’s foreign workforce, Tenconi said.
The right to restrict immigration from the most recent European Union members was designed to enable other EU countries to adjust during a transition period, not to change the rules depending on internal growth while targeting a specific country, according to Tenconi.
The restriction is temporary and may be suspended, depending on how employment evolves in Spain, Blanco said.
Spain can enforce the rule until 2014, after which Romanians will be able to move as freely as other EU citizens.
Blanco said the new rules won’t affect Romanians who are already working in Spain but didn’t specify what would happen to those whose contracts had ended.
SOURCE
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
No comments:
Post a Comment