President Joe Biden is expanding the nation\u2019s population of imported child workers, but the establishment media \u2014 and D.C. politicians \u2014 are hiding this child workforce from voters.
\n\u201cOne of the largest food sanitation companies in the United States illegally employed at least 102 children in dangerous jobs cleaning meatpacking and slaughtering plants,\u201d said a New York Times report that did not mention most of the child workers are teenage economic migrants.
\nA report by the Associated Press downplayed the mention of the teenagers\u2019 migrant origin, relegating it to the sixteenth paragraph. However, it quoted a labor department official saying:
\n[T]he Wage and Hour Division has seen around a 50% increase [emphasis added] in child labor violations since 2018, including minors working more hours than permitted in otherwise legal jobs, using types of equipment they shouldn\u2019t while doing legal jobs, and children working where they should never be employed in the first place.
\n\u201cThe company, Packers Sanitation Services, allegedly employed minors as young as 13 to use caustic chemicals to clean \u2018razor-sharp saws,\u2019 head splitters and other dangerous equipment at meatpacking facilities in eight states,\u201d the Washington Post, which buried the lede in the 17th paragraph, said, adding, \u201cMany of the children spoke only Spanish, and at least some Labor Department interviews with minors were conducted in Spanish, investigators said.\u201d
\nRoughly 75 percent of the young migrants are work-ready teenage boys. The vast majority quickly take a wide variety of low-wage jobs at factories, hotels, and farms. They work because they want to work, need to pay smuggling debts to the cartels, and because even small payments are a huge help to their families at home in Central America.
\n\u201cHonestly, I think almost everyone in the system knows that most of the [migrant] teens are coming to work and send money back home,\u201d Maria Woltjen, executive director and founder of the Young Center for Immigrant Children\u2019s Rights, told a ProPublica reporter. \u201cThey want to help their parents,\u201d she said in a November 2020 article.
\nThe growing workforce is so large that officials at the Department of Labor have begun investigating some of the many reports about teenage workers throughout the United States. On Friday, the agency announced that it was imposing a fine of $1.5 million on a staffing firm that supplied teenage workers to meatpacking plants around the country:
\nUnder the Fair Labor Standards Act, the department assessed PSSI $15,138 for each minor-aged employee who was employed in violation of the law. The amount is the maximum civil money penalty allowed by federal law.
\nThe division began the Packers Sanitation Services Inc. investigation in August 2022, and on Nov. 9, 2022, the Solicitor\u2019s Office filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska based on evidence that the company \u2013 which provides cleaning services under contract to some of the nation\u2019s largest meat and poultry producers \u2013 had employed at least 31 children, from 13 to 17 years of age, in hazardous occupations to clean dangerous powered equipment during overnight shifts at JBS USA plants in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Worthington, Minnesota, and at Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall, Minnesota. U.S. District Court Judge John M. Gerrard responded by issuing a temporary restraining order on Nov. 10, 2022, forbidding the company and its employees from committing child labor violations.
\nThe agency statement did not say if the children were migrants or natives.
\nThe media silence about the fast-growing child workforce is a strong contrast to media coverage during President Donald Trump\u2019s presidency. Back then, the establishment media produced many emotional stories about migrants who were temporarily separated from their kids, often because the parents chose to leave their kids with relatives in the United States.
\nWith Mayorkas\u2019 loose border, migrants are increasingly visible at many United States workplaces, Jay Palmer, an Alabama-based immigration and human trafficking expert who works with lawyers on behalf of Americans and migrants, said.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re working everywhere,\u201d he said, adding that companies gain because they prefer cheap and compliant migrants and because some executives get bribes to ignore the illegal hiring.
\nBut state and federal investigations are launched after complaints from Americans and from migrants who hope to get green cards from Mayorkas\u2019s agency, Palmer said.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s reactive,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cI\u2019ve got a case right now where an HR manager is complaining that he feels like he might go to jail because he\u2019s aware of third-party [staffing] contractors that are hiring illegals.\u201d
\nRepublican politicians face pressure from donors to say little or nothing about the exploitation of young migrants \u2014 or even about the employers\u2019 hiring of illegal migrants. Instead, many GOP leaders \u2014 and Fox News \u2014 try to focus voters on border chaos, drugs, and the illegality of Biden\u2019s border policies \u2014 despite the rising opposition to immigration among swing voters.
\nThe staffing firm fined by the labor department is owned by the Blackstone investment firm, according to the Washington Post. Blackstone donated $34 million to the GOP for the 2022 elections.
\nAlongside the GOP, the media\u2019s coverup of Biden\u2019s child-labor policies is routine and nationwide. On February 11, for example, a Washington Post article tried to shift the blame for the growing child-labor workforce to Republicans, saying:
\nThe Iowa bill, introduced by state Sen. Jason Schultz (R), would permit children as young as 14 to work in industrial freezers and meat coolers, provided they are separate from where meat is prepared, and work in industrial laundry.
\nAt 15, they would be able to work as lifeguards and swimming instructors, perform light assembly-line work after obtaining a waiver from state officials, and load and unload up to 50 pounds of products from vehicles and store shelves with a waiver \u201cdepending on the strength and ability of the fifteen-year-old.\u201d
\nHowever, a February 17 report by NBC News spotlighted the underlying cause in the tenth paragraph: \u201cAdvocates and lawyers for the children say some of the child workers for PSSI were unaccompanied minors who recently came across the southern border.[emphasis added].\u201d
\n\u201cPeople I spoke to there said it was common knowledge that there were children working at this facility and going to school during the day,\u201d NBC reporter Julia Ainsley said on-air. \u201cThere were even some police reports where teachers and school officials said that there were children falling asleep in class because of their work overnight at the slaughterhouse.\u201d
\nThe NBC report added:
\nIn January, three officials from the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News that federal investigators were looking into whether any of the children were victims of labor trafficking.
\nHomeland Security Investigations agents have interviewed children who worked cleaning a slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, they said.
\nThere is no indication DHS is investigating PSSI for human trafficking. Instead, two DHS officials said, DHS is investigating to rule out the possibility that outside traffickers may have forced children to work for PSSI and profited off their labor
\nIn recent months, teenagers have been found working for a company that makes auto parts for Hyundai. In August, Breitbart reported on a criminal case in central Illinois:
\nThroughout the approximately five years Victim I resided [in Champaign, Ill.] with Catarina Domingo-Juan, she was subjected to regular physical abuse by Catarina Domingo-Juan including being beaten, stabbed with a kitchen knife, and burned with a pan of oil. Additionally, Victim 1 was sexually assaulted by four male members of Catarina Domingo-Juan\u2019s extended family. Victim 1 told Catarina Domingo-Juan about the sexual assaults. Victim I initially went to school but then starting at the age of 12 was forced to start working, initially cleaning hotels, when she was not in school.
\nThe federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration. This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.
\nThe migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans\u2019 wages and also boosted\u2002rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors. The inflow has also contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.
\nThe population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because it allows elites to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.
\nA 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent \u201cInvasion\u201d majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats.<\/p>\n
Breitbart<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aBiden, immigrant child labor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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