Creekstone Farms Premium Beef [contact them] is closing on Monday ” to honor its predominately Hispanic workforce.”

Here’s what their head of Cheap Labor Recruitment had to say:

“We really agree with the perspective of the Hispanic community,” said Rusty Wright, the company’s director of human resources. “We don’t like the proposed law, especially building the wall.”

He said that the closure was an attempt by the corporation to influence the political process by getting it’s hundreds of foreign-born workers out in the streets, (I’m paraphrasing):

Wright said about 75 percent of Creekstone’s 750 employees are Hispanic, and the company decision to close down Monday is to encourage their participation in peaceful protest to HR 4437.

“There is a lot of mixed opinions on this controversial bill,” Wright said. “I don’t think we mind having our opinion.”

Kevin Pentz, Creekstone’s operations director, said Creekstone’s largest asset is its employees. “When you have 75 percent of our employees who are Hispanic, you have to support that endeavor,” he said of the protest.[Creekstone closes a day for Hispanics, By Foss Farrar,Arkansas City Traveler, April 7, 2006]

Meatpacking used to be a job Americans would do; it used to pay more than it does now.

Ryan Kennedy writes:

I’d like to rebut WSJ’s latest load of nonsense as succinctly as possible:

BRIMELOW Where does the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page campaign for fixed exchange rates fit into this?

FRIEDMAN You got me! I think that’s just an aberration. My God, how the hell can they stick with that? They’ve just got an idée fixe about it. Like they’ve got on immigration. It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.

[HOOVER DIGEST 1998, Interview by Peter Brimelow:MILTON FRIEDMAN, SOOTHSAYER]

Looks like there’s confusion in the Senate this morning over whether the Martinez-Hagel cave-in will actually pass, but this is all you need to know about it:

In a moment heavy with symbolism, Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., who fled Cuba at age 15 and was a prime broker of the agreement with Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., stood in the Senate press gallery to repeat the deal in Spanish.

“Now that everyone has had a chance to hear this in English, I think an awful lot of Americans that only speak Spanish would like to hear what we’re talking about,” Martinez said. Martinez worked closely on the deal with the administration, where he formerly served as a cabinet secretary.

Senate set to pass immigration bill Compromise would create 3 classes of illegal workers, by Carolyn Lochhead, San Francisco Chronicle, April 7, 2006.

In fact, there aren’t that many “Americans” who “only speak Spanish”…yet. But the phenomenon of second-generation immigrants who don’t learn English is growing…thanks to government policy. And, of course, this ultimately dispossesses real Americans.

“Heavy with symbolism”…yeah, right.

From here in Georgiafornia, an interesting blog thread on Zamarripa’s decision not to run for re-election

It’s Thursday, and that means that Mark Steyn is on Hugh Hewitt again.

Steyn crosses the Canadian border on a regular basis, and thus makes a point that you’d think would be obvious:

“…as someone who crosses the U.S. land border, I would guess, more frequently than 90% of Americans do, what I don’t understand is how they will be able to distinguish these categories. By their definition, illegal immigrants are not people who are in the computer records. So who’s to say whether somebody’s been here five years, or two to five years. Essentially, an illegal immigrant can give his own date for that. And what means do they have of sifting through the evidence? I would say that essentially, these people will be able to declare what it is they wish to declare, and an already overloaded immigration bureaucracy will effectively just take them at their word. [transcript; MP3]

The official description of illegal border crossers is “entered without inspection” (EWI), and that means that unlike visa overstayers, there’s no way of knowing when they entered. And there’s and obvious incentive to fraud, which of course is what happened during the 1986 amnesty. Here are three articles by Juan Mann describing the extent of the fraud:

• Blowing the whistle on 1986 amnesty fraud
• Under the red cover—the truth about the 1986 amnesty
• Ask an amnesty advocate—how much fraud last time?—excerpts from OIG reports on 1986 agricultural amnesty fraud