If you need proof that U.S. employers can be every bit as callously disrespectful of the laws of this nation as the illegal aliens they underpay, meet the folks at Speed Fab-Crete. The successful North Dallas construction company is apparently so addicted to the cheap labor of illegals that its repeat violations of U.S. hiring laws have led to one of its top executives facing a serious stretch in prison. It’s about time.
Brazen Flouting of Our Laws
Speed Fab-Crete
Four officials at Speed Fab-Crete have admitted in court filings to concealing 23 illegal alien employees by moving them to a “staffing company” instead of letting them go, The Dallas Morning News reports. The company did this after a federal audit of its operations revealed that it hired illegal labor. That 2015 I-9 audit showed the business employed about 40 illegals, so Speed Fab-Crete resorted to chicanery to retain almost two-thirds of its illegal labor force in defiance of federal law. Carl Eugene Hall, vice president of plant operations for the firm, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to unlawfully harbor illegal aliens, The Morning News states. He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
It would be greatly welcomed news if Hall were to receive and serve that five-year sentence. If this country wants to clamp down on illegal immigration in its interior, employers of aliens must be punished to the full extent of already existing law. The Speed Fab-Crete case is especially vital since it involves the construction industry, notorious for being filled with illegal labor. Northern Texas businesses also seem predisposed to hiring illegals.
“This fiscal year, the North Texas region led the U.S. in the number of civil arrests of immigrants for the third year in a row,” The Morning News observes. “The relative lack of criminal cases against companies and their owners, however, has been a long-standing trend that also existed under the Obama administration.”
American Workers Pay the Price
The negative effects of illegal immigration on the wages of working Americans are acute when it comes to the construction industry. Such jobs once offered middle-class wages to qualified workers. That was before massive illegal immigration.
An independent contractor who worked in the construction industry in California in the 1980s and 1990s told the group Progressives for Immigration Reform in a 2018 interview that the rise of illegal alien labor gutted construction wages in the Golden State.
“The reality is that a person that was hired as a laborer in 1988, I paid $15 an hour and within a month if I could leave him on the job alone, he got $20 an hour,” Blaine Taylor stated. “If I hired somebody that already knew how to do certain types of labor or certain types of operations, they would get $20 an hour.
“Now, the average wage in Los Angeles for construction workers is less than $11 an hour. They can’t go lower than the minimum wage.”
From $20 an hour in 1988 to almost half that 30 years later. Is it any wonder the execs at Speed Fab-Crete were so reluctant to give up their illegal employees?
Culture of Disrespect
On Nov. 26, many Americans were horrified to learn that an illegal alien who killed four children in a 2008 school bus crash in a rural Minnesota town had snuck back into the United States after being deported following a jail sentence and was living only three hours away from the scene of her bloody crime. Olga Marina Franco del Cid felt perfectly comfortable about returning to Minnesota because she had seen the immigration-enforcement system at work: People like her were able to flagrantly violate the law without repercussions for years. The employers of illegal aliens have learned this same ugly lesson. They simply do not believe this nation is committed to enforcing the law on illegal immigration in a meaningful way.
The Trump administration has vowed to go after offending employers, so it is hoped many more Speed Fab-Cretes will face prosecution in the near future. “Those employers who continue to knowingly violate federal laws not only risk hefty fines but also spending time in prison,” Ryan L. Spradlin, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Dallas, said of the company, The Morning News reports.
It has been shown, for decades now, that fines and similar slaps on the wrists are not a deterrent. Locking up greedy executives is the only way to get a handle on our border security crisis and to restore respect for the laws of this country in the employment sector.
Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
