20 former Agriprocessors workers get visas

Source: Daily Sun

Twenty former workers at a Postville kosher slaughterhouse raided by federal immigration agents last year have received visas under a law that protects crime victims.
The first wave of women and children arrested last year at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant have been granted U-visas by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, allowing them to legally live and work in the country for four years. They can apply for a green card in the third year.

Sonia Parras-Konrad, a Des Moines attorney who led the effort, says the visas are a big step toward vindicating the immigrants and giving them justice.

"A government entity has found, indeed, that these women and children have been subjected to extreme emotional or physical harm by Agriprocessors," Parras-Konrad said. "These people have been exploited, have been assaulted, have been humiliated, have been verbally and emotionally abused by this employer."


Read more: http://www.beatricedailysun.com/articles/2009/05/14/ap-state-ne/d986adlg1.txt

Owners of businesses who employ illegal immigrants should be held responsible for verifying social security and legal status of workers. Capitalist big business benefits from the vulnerable exploitable situations of illegals. What big business wants (in their short-sided way) is to keep labor costs low. Ultimately that hurts us all. It will eventually get where the capitalists will lowball themselves out of customers.