I love it when the government does its job.
Last Thursday federal agents arrested over 100 mostly Mexican illegal aliens working at a Wal-Mart construction site. In an effort to weasel out, Wal-Mart claims it isn’t responsible because the illegal aliens were hired by a subcontractor. We’d probably buy it if 250+ illegal aliens hadn’t been caught working in Wal-Mart stores.
I’ll confess. I (used to) love Wal-Mart. I could spend hours walking around those gigantic stores piling my shopping cart with all that low-priced stuff. I’m not much of a protester, but I think a boycott against Wal-Mart is in order.
Blogger Debbie Schlussel frequently blogs about our lax and suicidal immigration non-policy. Also see Michelle Malkin, Beyond Borders Blog, and Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Sources: 100 Arrested at Wal-Mart Construction Site, Suspected Illegal Immigrant Raid in Schuylkill County, and We Hire Aliens.
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Out here in flatlander country where I’ve been stuck living for the past several years there is absolutely nothing but Wal-Mart. Central Illinois is a very dull place (read: hole in the ground) and believe me, shopping at Wal-Mart is the only major social event for those of us who choose not live in a perpetual drunken stupor. Wal-Mart is great in desolate areas like most of Illinois. But the word is that they want to put up a super Wal-Mart in my hometown of Sheboygan, Wis. right at the intersection of I43 and Hwy 32. I’m not sure I like that as much. I just hope it doesn’t choke out all the other stuff that’s there now. Once Wal-Mart comes in, smaller store like Piggly Wiggly and Pick-N-Save will probably be long gone. There is already a regular Wal-Mart over on Taylor Drive, so I’m not sure why they need another, bigger one.
Comment by John — 11.19.05 @ 9:26 am
Illegal Workers at Wal-Mart Site Deported
Federal officials say the arrest of 125 workers at a construction site for a new Wal-Mart distributi
Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator — 11.19.05 @ 9:46 am
Ordinariy it would be impossible for a client to regulate the employment practices of a subcontractor on a jobsite…usually a small developer is lucky to get a crew onsite at all.
But if Wal-Mart, facing the scrutiny it is, hasn’t built severe penalties into its contracts concerning just this type of thing..well.. it’s hard to believe.
I’d expect any contractor working on a Wal-Mart to face surrender of his first born if illegals are found onsite.
Comment by Peter Crowl — 11.19.05 @ 10:10 am
Having worked in the construction industry for a decade I do have some understanding of this problem.
Wal Mart is an owner, they in turn hire a General Contractor who hires all of the subcontractors for the various trades required to complete the project. I would assume that Wal Marts contract with its GC(General Contractor) contains all sorts of provisions about obeying all laws federal and state concerning hiring practices including hiring of minority’s and women. It is not Wal Marts job or for that matter the General Contractor’s to go thru every subs hiring records and do a check on every single employee. Don’t blame Wal Mart for this. This is a massive problem in the construction industry and I have yet to meet a single owner who gave a rip if someone on the job was illegal. This includes everyones beloved unions!
Comment by shastarob — 11.19.05 @ 12:03 pm
I was like you, LaShawn. I used to love to grab up the bargains at Wal-Mart. But now I have two reasons to avoid shopping there anymore.
I was annoyed to hear that they are abandoning the use of the greeting “Merry Christmas” this year. Wasn’t Sam Walton a devout Christian? Isn’t that why Bibles and several Christian books are sold at Wal-Mart? Correct me if I’m wrong but does it appear to anyone else here that ever since Sam Walton passed on into eternity whomever has taken over the every day decision making at this once Christian-owned/oriented company has now turned it upside down into the typical, bigoted, anti-Christian kind of business?
And now we find out they are hiring illegal aliens to work at their stores? Sheesh!! Talk about going to hell in a Wal-Mart basket!
Comment by Christine — 11.19.05 @ 12:58 pm
(HT: LaShawn Barber)
Pingback by internet128.com — 11.19.05 @ 1:08 pm
La Shawn:
Get over it. Wal Mart is just like any other corporation - thay hire who is available.
In New Orleans, union enthusiasts cry bloody murder about “illegal aliens take our jobs” -
Yet I haven’t seen a single single mother (pun intended) - mostly Black - just jumping on the job bandwagon when employers are just begging people to come for work to clean up after hurricaine Katrina.
Wal Mart is no exception. Where are the (mostly Black) single mothers waiting in line for jobs that employers are begging for in New Jersey and everywhere else? The Mexicans (legal and illegal) got there first.
Comment by Frank Zavisca - Home — 11.19.05 @ 2:02 pm
Why aren’t the people who hired them being arrested?
Frank Zavisca, you’re really barking up a nutty tree if you think Wal Mart is forced to hire illegal immigrants simply because single black moms don’t want to work there. Look at the population of single black mothers in the respective states, compare to the number of illegal immigrants working and work it out.
Comment by m — 11.19.05 @ 3:51 pm
Shop Wal-Mart and help strengthen China’s balance of trade!
Comment by Bleacher Dave — 11.19.05 @ 5:59 pm
I’m from Illinois, but unlike John, I don’t live anywhere near a Wal-Mart, so I’ve never been in one. I’ve only seen one from the outside on the way to some boondock area. Aren’t they also accused of using Chinese “companies” that use Chinese prison labor? Supposedly, that’s one of the ways they keep their prices low.
And Sam Walton was a Christian? I met someone from Tennessee, with the same last name, who said she was one of the descendents of his illegitimate kids.
Comment by mj — 11.19.05 @ 8:13 pm
I cant really blame Wal-Mart for this one.
Keep in mind alot of people are gunning for them these days. They need to quit drinking all that hatorade.
Hey Frank, I dont see any single white moms working down there either! What gives?
Comment by lukeNC — 11.19.05 @ 8:23 pm
Glad to see you fighting the good fight on this one La Shawn. I have been avoiding Wal Mart for years and working on everyone I know to not shop there as well.
Then Target goes and bans the Salvation Army from their stores last Christmas so we don’t shop there either.
As for Illegal immigration. I literally grew up with the mexican border as my back yard fence and I worked construction in my youth. For some reason the political elites are completely disconnected with the American people on this one. Last week on george snufalufagus’ show Cokie Roberts, Sam Donnalson, and George Will were all agreeing what a non starter immigration reform was for the Republican Party. Is there any more clueless triumverate on television?
If either party had a candidate running on enforcing immigration laws they would win in a landslide.
Comment by The Ugly American — 11.19.05 @ 9:05 pm
The Ugly American: Yes, Target stopped allowing SA to solicit. But it was because their overall policy forbids solicitation and they’d been making an exception for SA. Rather than leaving the door open for other groups to be exceptions, they closed it. If you want to give money to SA, they’re pretty easy to find.
Back to your regularly scheduled discussion. :o)
Comment by LawWife — 11.19.05 @ 10:21 pm
Back when sam was alive and running Walmart, it was a great place to shop and work also. He tried to buy American made items and treated his employees very well. Buy when he died and his family took over the business, it went down the tube.
I agree with you on a boycott, but I would not count on it working. There are to many people who would go there, no matter what. Walmart should be fined for working illegal workers, but I don’t see that happening. Big business always seems to be able to get around the law.
One day Walmart will face there crimes like Martha : )
Comment by Cornbread — 11.20.05 @ 6:01 am
And “they” say illegals are doing work nobody else will do…a complete and total lie as evidenced by this story. Construction never pays minimum wage. Walmart should be prosecuted. The subcontractor should be prosecuted. “they” being all the spineless politicians on both sides of the aisle as well as the bleeding heart liberals and the press who seem to think they speak for us. grrrrrr
Comment by dianne — 11.20.05 @ 6:58 am
I do believe the only criticism of Wal-Mart that I have seen to be valid is that of its association with illegal aliens. La Shawn Barber gives the story, Last Thursday federal agents arrested over 100 mostly Mexican illegal aliens working at a Wal-Mart construction site. In an effort to weasel out, Wal-Mart claims it isnÂ’t responsible because the illegal aliens were hired by a subcontractor. WeÂ’d probably buy it if 250+ illegal aliens hadnÂ’t been caught working in Wal-Mart stores. LaShawnBarber.com
Pingback by s o f y s t - i c a t i o n — 11.20.05 @ 8:07 am
Why single out Wal-Mart? Why not do the unexpected and go after a liberal law firm which charges such exhorbitant prices that no regular American could ever afford them, and scrutinize their cleaning services? I guarantee that the majority of businesses in the US that have contracted services will be in the same dilemma. In fact, I’d go one further and say that a high percentage of government contractors use illegals…Wal-Mart is such an easy punching bag and gets much closer scrutiny than anyone else. I say, go after some of the accusers… I wonder who cleans up the offices for the ACLU?
Comment by jan brauner — 11.20.05 @ 11:02 am
On this whole issue, employee prosecutions under Bush have gone down to almost zero.
The illegals will be deported, but will any of the companies that hired them be held accountable?
That’s the real question, the “we’re deporting them” is smoke and mirrors.
There was just an incident on the border where some Mexicans in army uniforms felt free to face down our BP people and haul a truck filled with pot out of the Rio Grande.
Bush has left our border open to terrorists, drug smugglers, and other criminals.
Comment by beth — 11.20.05 @ 11:48 am
In the past I’ve worked with mexicans who were illegal. My observation was that they showed up early, worked their ass off, even working 16 hours, 7 days a week doing horribly hard work for a pittance, so they could send most the money home to their wife and kids. If I were from Mexico, I might well be cleaning houses in Los Angeles right now. It is difficult for me to resent anybody for doing what I might do in the same situation.
Now concerning government though, I figure the thing most likely to screw up all the freedoms and unique qualities of this country is a hardline on the ‘homeland security’ stuff, and that is most likely to happen if we find we cannot protect ourselves from internal terrorism, which is most likely to happen if our borders are sieves. So to me, a decent lockdown on the borders and increased concern about illegal aliens is a political, military and safety issue, and does need to be done. In fact I feel some surrealism when I look at the politics of this because NOT forcing this, not taking this seriously, seems like braindead suicide to me, and I can’t understand why the conservatives aren’t flipping out about it.
From a human perspective, I wish Mexico were in better shape.
I am not sure why the strong feelings about walmart’s hiring though. What am I missing?
Where I live, Super-Walmart is the closest thing to civilization. Of course, its existence killed 3 grocery stores, leaving only the tiny one across town, a few gas stations, a stationery store, and several other businesses that folded when SW took the business. They underbid any other store by far; for example, the cat food that is $6.50 in the tiny grocery near my house is about $4.20 at SW. The place is huge, they need a freakin tram to drive around the edges or something. We shop there because we have no choice. We could buy some basics at the other store and pay 10-30% more, but Super Walmart has damn near everything. Seriously. I think someday they can just open up apartments around the store for employees, build a playground, and it’ll be Wally World for real.
Comment by McTANK — 11.20.05 @ 12:27 pm
A real reason to boycott Wal-Mart
The documentarian Robert Greenwald made a film about Wal-Mart recently that may have attacked them for offering low-wages. But if Wal-Mart is being openly honest about their benefits, then that’s not what’s wrong with them. No, what IS wrong with Wal…
Trackback by Tel-Chai Nation — 11.20.05 @ 1:18 pm
We all enjoy buying our goods for the best price. However, Walmart, above all other retailers, has the capability and resources to police their hiring practices. Instead, they will fight this in court…they will blame it on their subs. The bottom line is that money talks. As long as we shop there, we sanction their practices. I have to agree with LaShawn on this one. They will get no Christmas dollars from me.
Comment by dianne — 11.20.05 @ 1:31 pm
For two years I lived in a town with where Wal-Mart was practically the center. The were obviously the largest employer. The were cheapest place to shop, and so my wife and I did.
I’m almost a little ashmed at how much we did shop there. There weren’t many other places to shop, but they were there. They just were not as conveinent. I’ve always been a sucker for one stop shopping. I wonder if that’s Walmart’s thinking when it comes to keeping an eye on the sub-contractors, its just better to be conveinent…
Conveinance will kill us all.
Comment by DM — 11.20.05 @ 10:01 pm
Yep, most people enjoy a bargain. I do too, but the allure of Walmart wore off a long time ago. It’s always a zoo (or rodeo, as Ambra Nykol put it), and the hassle isn’t worth the shekels saved. And the type of lighting they use is irritating; I forget where I read it, but their type of lights actually do end up giving some people headaches. Maybe it also contributes to the zoo-like atmosphere.
Comment by FL Mom — 11.20.05 @ 10:09 pm
Walmart does business with some 10,000 factories in China. That’s Red China! Those 10,000 factories sub-contract to how many thousands of others. Walmart, almost single-handedly, is building what will become our greatest competitor on earth. Even Taiwan now is eager to do business with China and will probably become absorbed into the mainland within fifty years.
China holds some 600 billion dollars. In effect, they are financing about 1/8 of our national debt. That gives them leverage not only economically, but politically. They are quickly becoming a major competitor for international oil reserves and they are busily upgrading their armed forces, already fielding a two million man army.
If it isn’t so already, China will soon be our biggest foe economically, militarily, politically, morally, unless we self-destruct first. Walmart is pushing the process along at a rapid clip.
We’d better wake up. It begins and ends with education. If we don’t graduate more of our own students instead of foreign ones, students who can speak at least two languages, have some physical skills, some deductive abilities, and some willingness to earn their keep we are destined for the backwaters of history.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Comment by SickAndTired — 11.21.05 @ 12:10 am
Walmart may make some perfunctory statements about not condoning the hiring of illegals, but it’s for show, not for go.
A big corporation like Walmart likes illegal immigration, for several reasons:
1. Cheap labor.
2. Walmart caters primarily to the lower end of the consumer market, and that demographic has a higher percentage of immigrants, legal and otherwise. So of course Walmart likes illegals, they are their customers. (And yes, I know that middle class people shop at Walmart too, but they do that because they can, not because they have to.)
3. Most large corporations support amnesty and loose borders because they see it as a way to ingratiate themselves with Hispanic consumers.
4. A large business like Walmart has the financial resources to deal with the bilingual market that is developing. In officially bilingual Canada, businesses spend billions of dollars every year to comply with government language regulations. These sorts of regulations are a sort of a tax on business that raises operating costs, and shuts out smaller, more modestly capitalized competitors. Walmart would naturally be all in favor of anything that raises the price of entry to compete.
Comment by Gary — 11.21.05 @ 5:18 pm
I am truly neutral on Wal-Mart. But I recall an old ditty aimed at Henry Ford: “Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy sings. He’s no longer shoeing horses; he’s fitting piston rings.”
Times change and the future gobbles up the past. In the process, there are sea changes in how business is conducted and what we will accept and what we will legislate against. For example, the 1800’s were dependent on slave labor, child labor and unmarried girls. Slavery went in the 1860’s, child labor was alive and well in the 1920’s when the orphan trains sent children to be “adopted” by farmers in the grain belt. Young women manned the switchboards, looms, typewriters, classrooms, hospital corridors, sales counters and secretary desks until the 1960’s.
Wal-Mart is not a lick different from Sears. In 1910, you could get more variety, quality and a lower price from the Sears catalog than from a month of careful shopping.
So far as Wal-mart and China is concerned, the trade deficit to China is a hoax. If China wants to “cash in” its surplus dollars, what would it do? Trash the US economy and eliminate its (China’s) holdings? Come to the US and drag six states over to China?
The namby-pamby US Department of Justice goes after Wal-Mart because it is the proverbial “500 pound gorilla.” The old adage in advertising is that if you want to shoot ducks, you go where the ducks are flying. Wal-Mart has huge exposure. If you trace the illegals in Herndon, Va. (for instance) to the job site the chances they will be indirectly involved with Wal-Mart are far greater than that they will be involved with Mr. Muffler.
Wal-Mart would be s-t-o-o-o-o-p-i-d beyond calculation to have any part of their corporate structure or profitability based on evading or obfuscating the law. That would put them in the position of having to outsmart every adversary.
Furthermore, we must not forget that Montgomery Ward tanked and Sears and Penney’s are holding on by a fingernail. Target, Sears, Penney’s, etc. are not in collusion with Wal-Mart. They are traditional market forces against Wal-Mart. If they could help bring the giant to his knees, they would do so ASAP.
If you go back to the “illegal immigrant” market in Herndon, Va., you will doubtlessly find that the vast majority of the employers of illegals are bit players who are trying to shave a contract.
I particularly agree with #17 Jan Bruner who posted: “Why single out Wal-Mart? Why not do the unexpected and go after a liberal law firm which charges such exhorbitant prices that no regular American could ever afford them, and scrutinize their cleaning services? I guarantee that the majority of businesses in the US that have contracted services will be in the same dilemma. In fact, I’d go one further and say that a high percentage of government contractors use illegals…Wal-Mart is such an easy punching bag and gets much closer scrutiny than anyone else. I say, go after some of the accusers… I wonder who cleans up the offices for the ACLU?”
Comment by Heliotrope — 11.21.05 @ 6:59 pm
My friend lived in rural Kentucky and said WalMart was a good thing for the poor people living there–it created jobs and offered affordable items. A very poor area of Chicago didn’t let WalMart in–there are no other stores in that area, it’s gang-ridden and dysfunctional, but they thought WalMart would be destructive. How silly.
People want cheap goods, so they’ll go wherever the price is right, whether there are illegals working there or not.
Comment by mj — 11.21.05 @ 11:45 pm
Any more reason to close our borders?
Comment by BIRDZILLA — 11.23.05 @ 9:25 pm