Immigration Raid Cripples Ga. Town

[laststeamtrain]

Immigration Raid Cripples Ga. Town
Messy Aftermath of Immigration Raids Outrages Small Ga. Town
By RUSS BYNUM
The Associated Press

STILLMORE, Ga. - Trailer parks lie abandoned. The poultry plant is scrambling to replace more than half its workforce. Business has dried up at stores where Mexican laborers once lined up to buy food, beer and cigarettes just weeks ago.

This Georgia community of about 1,000 people has become little more than a ghost town since Sept. 1, when federal agents began rounding up illegal immigrants.

The sweep has had the unintended effect of underscoring just how vital the illegal immigrants were to the local economy.

More than 120 illegal immigrants have been loaded onto buses bound for immigration courts in Atlanta, 189 miles away. Hundreds more fled Emanuel County. Residents say many scattered into the woods, camping out for days. They worry some are still hiding without food.

<more>

http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=2449716

I've heard about the same thing happening in the Mid-West. An anti-immigrant law is passed locally and the meat packing plant closes up, all the line workers, middle managers, etc. lose their jobs. All the stores that sell things to the former gainfully employed are hit and forced to close.

I wonder if some of the right wing anti-immigrant ideologues realize the impact their rhetoric has on real people in real towns.

Just askin'?

[MADem]

1. Sure they do.....they want to tamp down those unemployment figurres NT

[Jed Dilligan]

2. Well, their town may be gone

but they can rest assured that no brown-skinned bean-and-rice eating drug dealer is going to undercut their wages ever again. Or choke up their government services. Or something.

:sarcasm:

[OwnedByFerrets]

3. The poll on AOL is overwhelmingly

in favor of this action.

[Warpy]

4. Wow, no wonder they were all illegals

"The poultry plant has limped along with half its normal workforce. Crider increased its starting wages by $1 an hour to help recruit new workers.

"Stacie Bell, 23, started work canning chicken at Crider a week ago. She said the pay, $7.75 an hour, led her to leave her $5.60-an-hour job as a Wal-Mart cashier in nearby Statesboro. Still, Bell said she felt bad about the raids."

The place was paying $6.75 for a dangerous and often nasty job. The employer was a cheapass bastard and the article doesn't mention any fines.

The law stipulates a fine for EACH illegal immigrant employed by a business or individual. It has had lax enforcement from the beginning and NO enforcement since Stupid got in.

We'll slow illegal immigration to a trickle once we make employing them for substandard wages unprofitable.

That's the real issue here, not the poor folks who come here hoping to be less poor.

[brook]

5. Not as bad...

here in central California, but there have been news stories of growers facing labor shortages.
Since I doubt I'll be seeing any pro-* repukes picking brocolli or grapes on a Saturday morning, I imagine we could face rising prices or shortages eventually. Another 'well thought-out * policy' swirls the drain.