The crisis on the southern border is a humanitarian, legal and economic catastrophe.
One thing it isn’t is an attempt by corporate America to make use of the influx as a source of low cost child labor, because the Biden administration is attempting to spin one more policy mess of its own making.
That’s right, of its own making.
Like inflation, stoked by Sleepy Joe’s mindless and excessive spending. Or just like the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and loads more.
Because the Trump-era immigration restrictions referred to as Title 42 are lifted, the country’s economic infrastructure is cratering, as we see each day in excruciating detail with ever more successive waves of migrants pouring across our border.
They arrive to this country penniless and hungry, thus they strain vital services.
Their children will show up at schools with out a basic understanding of English.
They’ll need medical care.
And they’ll seek work — and never just the adults.
If you happen to understand how immigrant families work, children will pitch in as they’ve done for many years.
And they’ll achieve this often using phony documentation, like their parents, so as to slide through the porous US immigration system.
Phony IDs might be easily purchased through the immigrant networks steadily run by cartels that bring the migrants to the US illegally.
Adults and youngsters will get jobs since the US government’s check on whether you’re on this country legally — or for those who are who you say you’re — is a broken-down relic that has been a national disgrace for years.
It’s called E-Confirm. It’s run by the Department of Homeland Security and it’s so easily duped that even children are doing so.
You simply buy a fake ID and Social Security number, each stolen from living and even dead people. Voila! You’re another person.
Migrants who crossed the US-Mexico border on the Rio Grande are denied entry at the bottom of the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge.James Keivom
The cartels and other criminals are apparently good at finding and selling these items. Kids magically turn out to be adults; they’ll and do work at dangerous jobs meant for adults to assist their families survive.
It needs to be one more disgrace for the Biden administration since our immigration system is more broken than it’s ever been.
But these are the identical folks who never let a crisis go to waste.
Faux Dickensian tragedy
They’ve decided not to point out some contrition and fix the border and even E-Confirm; as an alternative they’ve decided to show the migrant crisis into a pretend Dickensian tragedy of massive child-labor abuses by corporate America.
Working example: Sleepy Joe’s Department of Labor conducted a sting operation of an organization referred to as PSSI that operates mainly within the Midwest and South.
A Labor Department investigator photographed a toddler who worked for Packers Sanitation Services Inc. cleansing a slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Neb. U.S. Department of Labor
PSSI supplies employees to perform the menial, often backbreaking work of cleansing animal stays and blood from meat processing plants.
The sting found, not shockingly, 100-plus children under the age of 18 working for PSSI with fake IDs that allowed them to pass for adults. Most appalling, the sting found that children as young as 13 were PSSI employees.
Yes, that is brutal work and never for youngsters.
The cleanup involves spraying down slaughterhouses with water at super-high temperatures to kill germs.
A number of the children sustained injuries in the method, the investigation found.
The probe also found that the kids were doing these jobs on the behest of their parents who needed the cash to pay the rent, eat and God knows what else.
Again, looks like something which may cause the White House to re-impose Title 42, perhaps deport families back to Mexico. Or fix E-Confirm.
As an alternative, the Biden people went into crisis mode, publicizing how they found a bunch of Oliver Twists working in sweatshops and bashing Blackstone, the large private equity firm that owns PSSI, as a modern-day robber baron.
President Joe Biden gives a thumbs up before boarding Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base.AP
It was a twofer that became a three-fer when you concentrate on Blackstone is run by GOP megadonor Steve Schwarzman.
The progressive media loved the story, after all. “60 Minutes” did a blowout last weekend. What might be more scintillating than Wall Streeters getting richer from immigrant child labor?
Nothing, I suppose, which is why the breathless media coverage disregarded some vital details which may make this less of a company scandal, and more of a scandal involving Biden immigration policy.
The youngsters, believed to be as young as 13, were pictured wearing protective glasses, hard hats, gloves and water-wicking jackets while carrying buckets and other tools.U.S. Department of Labor
Watch the “60 Minutes” piece and also you don’t hear much that these children and their parents are sometimes here illegally. You barely heard that there’s no real incentive for PSSI to rent kids; entry-level wages for everybody start at around $20 an hour, plus health advantages, etc.
Also barely addressed: The parents and the cartels want the children to work so that they can repay the illegal entries.
You actually don’t hear how immigrants are teeming across the southern border because stopping them would mean angering the far-left open-border wing of the Democratic Party.
Blackstone and PSSI get beat up loads — and yes, a bunch of it’s warranted.
Let’s be clear, kids shouldn’t be doing the stuff that PSSI does; the corporate deservedly paid a $1.5 million positive to settle the matter with Labor Department.
The lifting of Title 42 has caused an influx of migrants to the southern US border. James Keivom
But PSSI is remitted under law to depend on the flimsy E-Confirm to screen job applicants. People at Blackstone tell me it’s nearly illegal to disclaim work to someone who passes through the background check even when they give the impression of being young. It’s called the “over-documentation clause” in federal employment law.
Perhaps most absurd: The DOL personnel interviewed by “60 Minutes” seemed like they thought E-Confirm was owned by Donald Trump, not operated by the Biden White House.
Not once did “60 Minutes” ask the Biden DOL officials why they didn’t simply walk over to Homeland Security and ask the oldsters there to repair their broken E-Confirm system.
Nonetheless, I did, via emails and calls for comment. Still no answer, and I don’t expect any.
