Source Notes #17 (Journalistic)

Title: No Employers Charged In Immigration Bust

Summary: CBS news reported that over 400 illegal immigrants were arrested in a workplace raid in Des Moines, Iowa.   CBS News is a division of the American television and radio network CBS, which produces the widely popular TV news show “60 Minutes.”

Topic: Should employers be held accountable by the Department of Homeland Security for hiring illegal immigrants?

Category: Journalistic

What is it? News article published by CBS News
Publication Information: CBS News, June 2, 2008
Author: Associated Press
Location: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/02/national/main4143701.shtml?source=related_story
Accessed: 2/20/09

Support: Agriprocessors Inc., U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat whose district borders Postville. Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigration reform group America’s Voice. ICE, SSA, James Carstensen. James Spero, a deputy assistant director for ICE.

Agriprocessors Inc. was caught employing over 400 illegal immigrants. Bruce Braley affirms that until employers are the focus of the immigration problem, then workplace immigration will continue to pose a threat to the U.S.  Frank Sharry says that a good strategy on cracking down on illegal employment would be target and make examples of the employers, so that other employers would see the bad publicity from such events.   These sources agreed that targeting the immigrants is only going to help the problem.  The employers need to be put into the spotlight.  If laws and fines are in place for hiring an illegal workforce, it’s interesting that no employers faced any fines or jail time in this particular case.

Audience and Agenda: According to quantcast.com, 8.6 million people worldwide visit cbsnews.com a month.  CBS is one of the major broadcasting channels along with ABC, NBC, and FOX.  CBS’s total prime time network was watch by nearly 100 million people a week according to cbs.com.

Usefulness:
This is a useful news article because it provides evidence that employers are not being charged for hiring illegal immigrants, even though there are laws in place for doing so.  Realistically, employers have to be the target for reducing immigration levels.  If no jobs are offered by employers, then many immigrants will not look for opportunity in the U.S.  Once the immigrants are in the workplace, then it’s hard to remove them from our system.  It’s unrealistic to deport 12 million illegal immigrants who are currently living in the U.S.  The Department of Homeland Security is stuck with this challenge, and it appears employers need to be the target if true immigration reform is to take place.

Works cited:
cbsnews.com, CBS, wikipedia, quantcast

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