What Is Wrong With This Picture?

[HARDCORE]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniont...24workers.html

Company audit finds 135 illegal employees

Lakeside drywaller operating on base

By Leslie Berestein
STAFF WRITER

May 24, 2006

A federal audit of a drywall company operating at Camp Pendleton has revealed that out of 364 employee records reviewed, more than one-third of those employees were undocumented.

Yesterday morning, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego arrested 29 employees of Standard Drywall Inc., a company based in Lakeside that according to its Web site employs about 1,300 people and has multiple locations in Western states.

The employees, who were arrested at their homes, were among 135 San Diego-area workers found to be in the country illegally after a four-month audit of the company's payroll records. Records for 364 employees of the company's Lakeside location were audited, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack.

Agents set out yesterday morning in search of 56 unauthorized Standard Drywall employees but found only 29 of them, mostly Mexican nationals save for one Honduran, Mack said. At least a dozen counterfeit Social Security cards and legal-resident documents were found among them.

The rest of the 135 who turned up in the audit no longer are employed by the company, Mack said.

According to the agency, the employees arrested yesterday did not work on the 125,000-acre Marine base, which has a daytime population of about 100,000, including military personnel, family members and contractors. They were targeted because the company has an active contract with Camp Pendleton, where federal agents are auditing businesses.

?They don't really have any correlation with Camp Pendleton,? said Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Garcia, adding that Standard Drywall had been subcontracted by another company operating on the base.

The drywall company was hired to renovate an old mess hall into a band hall, and its workers had no access to sensitive areas, Garcia said.

Blaine Caya, co-owner of Standard Drywall, would not comment when reached by phone at the company's Corona office. In addition to locations in Lakeside and Corona, the company has offices in Utah, Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada.

Since last fall, nearly 100 companies that do work at Camp Pendleton have been audited as part of ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement effort to review employers that could present a security threat.

Dubbed ?Operation Safe Cities,? the operation has resulted in audits of 882 companies in San Diego and Imperial counties since December 2003. It has turned up 970 employees who are unauthorized to work in the United States, 464 of whom have been arrested and placed in deportation proceedings.

Only one of the companies found employing those workers, Golden State Fence Co., has faced criminal charges. Standard Drywall, which immigration officials said cooperated, does not face criminal penalties.

The employees arrested yesterday also will be put into deportation proceedings. One man, who was found with a gun, also faces criminal charges of being an alien in possession of a firearm, Mack said.

[39mto39g]

Is that whats wrong

[Seascamp]

Among the many things wrong with the picture, Lakeside is probably not unlike many more that do not have access or HR infrastructure to run down SS or Immigration status bona fides to any great depth. That situation is far more common than not, and there is no real requirement for organizations to do more than go on presented documentation and really not a great deal to access to run things to ground if there is a fish smell.

And it?s a certainty that the purveyors of bogus doc know exactly what can be checked and to what level. We?re talking the Mexican Mafia doing the bogus doc and they know what?s up and what they can get away with. So sure, the Feds roll in, they have tons more access plus connects, and can flush the interlopers out with great ease.

In the big corporate world, there is a lot more HR infrastructure, including immigration experts, tons more down side risk if nailed, and so the probability on someone slipping through the net as a DIRECT employee is slim, but not impossible.

That being said, I would venture a guess that any big name non-defense corporate facility in the southwest will have immigration illegals in the facility and working. The corporate by-word for more than a decade now is ?outsourcing? and totally separate contracting companies take care of food services, janitorial and outside grounds keeping, etc.

In turn, these contractors get their employees from employment agencies who allegedly do all the screening, etc., etc., and present employee doc bona fides. Push comes to shove, and the ?agency? goes poof, never to be seen again. Everyone is clean; the agency proprietor is living high in Mexico City, the unfortunates get carted off and the cycle repeats.

I don?t think it?s a situation of big corporations finding the situations as much as the situations finding big corporations, the gaps in the net, and then the userious gang perps just taking advantage of the opportunity to get into labor racketeering and make the big bucks.

Scamp

[HARDCORE]

SCAMP et al -

That being said, I would venture a guess that any big name non-defense corporate facility in the southwest will have immigration illegals in the facility and working. The corporate by-word for more than a decade now is ?outsourcing? and totally separate contracting companies take care of food services, janitorial and outside grounds keeping, etc.

Unfortunately, the first line of defense at these facilities, military or not, is at the front gate. Camp Pendleton's recent disclosure about illegals working for contractors on base, should give some cause for alarm!

And as was said before, if these people are illegal, and maybe even other than Hispanic, then just their presence on any United States Military Facility could pose a threat, regardless of how menial the position they occupy - "Anything for a buck so to speak!"

The United States has relied far too heavily upon foreign suppliers, both for manpower and parts. And this could come back to bite us right in the ass some day!

Foreign-made and inferior parts for military hardware would be one way of doing us dirt, and the affiliations of this rapidly growing number of foreign workers could pose yet another problem. How many of these people, after all, have any true loyalty or love for the United States? They would abandon us in a heartbeat if the need or opportunity arose, just like they did their own native lands!

"Could you imagine if we had hired "Card-Carrying Commies" in our defense agencies during the height of the Cold War, just as Joe McCarthy claimed?" As such, can anyone guarantee the actions and eternal loyalties of each and every one of these - "Gee, all I want is a chance, sovereignty-invaders?"

And isn't it even a bit strange (or coincidental if you prefer) that El Presidente Vicente Fox of Mexico, the "Number Two Man In Our Government These Days (another opinion)", just happened to be "In Country (USA)" on the very date that this Amnesty Bill passed the Senate?

Now don't take me wrong as I am sure that many, if not most of these neo-illegals are genuine in their ambitions and desires, but how many zealots does it take to cause us grief.

Even some of those involved in the events of 9/11 may have appeared benign on the surface. And if this is paranoia to a degree, then maybe that is what is needed - a little more paranoia! Chamberlain could have uses more, Hull could have used a little more, and our military leaders prior to 7 December 1941 certainly could have used a bit more paranoia, in my opinion!!

We got to the top relying upon ourselves and our own! Now however, there are those who claim that we can only survive with foreign help and alien interference? "As far as I am concerned this is a recipe for impending disaster!!"

Why is this so? Because corporate greed has become far more important than American Pride. It is my opinion that this Enron thing is just the tip of the iceberg, the few so engaged who were caught so to speak! The rest, and again in my opinion they are numerous, are hiding under their beds waiting for the stench to blow away. "This Enron outcome was just a token to appease and satiate the masses, again in my opinion!!"

VERITAS

[Seascamp]

In current times, I have subcontracted to DOD contractors. One a munitions manufacturer and the other a military vehicle manufacturer. In both instances I was thoroughly checked out before I could even read the scope of supply document, let alone do anything at the facilities. So the procedures are in place as far as I can tell. If the procurement office at Camp Pendleton is blowing by procedure or ?doing favors? or has somehow got themselves all wrapped up in the California sanctuary-think malaise then they are in harm's way and no small wonder they got the Fed auditors all over their butts.
Then the question becomes if or not Camp Pendleton has outsourced local services contracting to some 3rd party procurement agency. If so, they done stuck their head in the lion?s mouth and said, ?now bite?, especially in sanctuary States like California, Colorado, Arizona or Oregon where immigration laws and bona fides are so much pap to be end run, ignored, faked or bought off. La mordita, se, Gringo no, eh. Now who says we don?t acquire neighboring culture?

As to Enron and their ilk; hang m?, but they are mere pikers compared to the State of California. They been cooking the books over there for a couple of decades and managed to hide at least $110 billion in long term debt and as things are infectious, L.A County has been doing the same thing and now that the cover is blown, they have no idea how to pay for all those unfunded and generous programs that includes County and State employees pensions.
This set of circumstances has been billed as potentially the largest transference of wealth in human history, now all they have to do is figure out how to acquire the wealth to transfer. Watch your six Uncle Sugar, the pocket pickers are a comin.

And with the significant demographics changes that are shifting to non-taxpayers plus the ongoing corporate exodus, it would appear that the ?Golden State? is rapidly becoming the ?Pyrites and cuperous oxide State?.

Scamp

[Seascamp]

N/T

[SuperScout]

Not being awash in cynicism and pessimism, I found the verdicts in the Enron trial just to my liking. It is a wondrous reflection of a justice system that works at least part of the time, and for that, I'm grateful.

Speaking of tips of proverbial icebergs, I think that we are just beginning to see some long-awaited enforcement of existing laws against the hiring and employment of wetbacks, For too long, the winky-winky mindset has prevailed, and now has infected whole city governments who are willing to not only play winky-winky, but to mandate a non-enforcement policy for their local police departments. It's time for the feds to put the financial gun to the heads of city government, and demand cooperation in enforcing immigration and employment laws, or face total cash recall of the billionsof grant moneies floating around.

[Seascamp]

Sen. Clinton put the jockey shorts sand burr of the immigration debate on the floor when she proposed the US Government pay the social services cost being incurred by the illegals. Her rational being that, after all, it is the US Governments failure to control the border that caused the problem, therefore should incur the cost, not the individual States.
This concept is so fraught and oozing with irony that it is the proverbial chicken bone caught in the gullet. States like California, Colorado and Arizona talk out both sides their head and one moment directly defy Federal immigration laws for starters, and the next whine and wail about lack of border security and the all-consuming and smothering social services costs.
Seems to me they dumped in their own mess kits, now aren?t so happy about the meal and have Sen. Clinton trying to set up an alternative gourmet feast for the specific benefit of one group of individuals and their advocates, and at the exclusion of all others.

We all should be so lucky, but not to be. The curse of the native born and naturalized citizen I reckon, and more evidence that the ?not for sale? legal vote comes at a very painful cost.

Scamp