Free To Be....
Does a Newest Crime category hang out in the Guinness Book of World Records, Vanity Fair's roundups, somewhere like that? Add to it "working while brown", as the nation discovered yesterday. Raids on processing plants in such places as Cactus, TX, netted a haul of those evil criminals who work for a living in places where they can find jobs. Not great jobs, by the way, and from living on the Eastern Shore of Virginia where chicken processing plants employ large numbers of immigrant workers who in many cases live in shifts in packed trailers, I am aware that keeping us fed is a pretty dreadful industry. I have been told by a friend who worked in the Employment Office here that serious injuries are commonplace, and disability is often the result.
What great matter of concern then did I see the Dallas Morning News taking up this a.m.? The problems Swift industry, the employer, had encountered from the raids. Seriously.
For business owners already trying to comply with federal immigration laws, Tuesday's nationwide raids at Swift & Co. meat processing plants served as a stark reminder that their best efforts may not be enough.
The largest raids in the nation's history highlight the problems faced by businesses in verifying the status of immigrant workers. And they place a spotlight on Basic Pilot, the federal government's voluntary program in which employers use government databases to check Social Security numbers.
Around the country, employers are asking whether Basic Pilot vaccinates the worksite from an immigration raid and legal problems. And how does it protect a company from identity fraud?
Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that Swift would not face charges in a nearly yearlong identity fraud investigation because of its "good faith" participation in Basic Pilot and its cooperation with immigration authorities. But Basic Pilot is a program that doesn't detect identity fraud.
"While Basic Pilot inoculates a company against one kind of illegal immigration fraud, it doesn't inoculate against all kinds of fraud," Mr. Chertoff acknowledged Wednesday in a Washington news conference.
While I am pretty amused that the federal government's lax regulations are once again threatening industry, in this instance by 'Basic Pilot, the federal government's voluntary program', it's just objectionable that businesses are the only object of concern on our newspaper's business page.
Families were torn apart, children left abandoned, hardworking laborers deprived of their livelihood, but avoiding prosecution is the real threat in this mentality.
In an atmosphere of this sort, it's no wonder that the removal of consumer protections from frauds like Enron and Tyco are being proposed by this administration.
The Securities and Exchange Commission agreed Wednesday to ease financial-control rules for smaller public companies, proposing changes in how U.S. companies must apply a sweeping antifraud law enacted in 2002 amid the wave of corporate scandals.
The SEC also proposed to raise the minimum financial requirements for individuals wanting to invest in hedge funds, a burgeoning industry that has seen a rise in fraud as well as an increase in the number of ordinary investors getting into the high-risk pools.
The five SEC commissioners voted unanimously at a public meeting to tentatively adopt the control-rules plan, which gives corporate managers more flexibility in assessing the strength of internal financial controls. It could be formally adopted sometime after a 60-day public comment period.
The vote culminated an intense monthslong lobbying campaign by numerous companies, which complained that Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley law -- requiring companies to file reports on the strength of their internal financial controls -- is overly burdensome and costly.
Thank you, protectors of the wealthy and those who can afford attorneys to look out for their interest from the marauding consumer/investor and weak system of checks for proper i.d.'s. What would we do without this brave crew of law enforcement officials to keep our businesses safe?
Live better, I would suspect.
What great matter of concern then did I see the Dallas Morning News taking up this a.m.? The problems Swift industry, the employer, had encountered from the raids. Seriously.
For business owners already trying to comply with federal immigration laws, Tuesday's nationwide raids at Swift & Co. meat processing plants served as a stark reminder that their best efforts may not be enough.
The largest raids in the nation's history highlight the problems faced by businesses in verifying the status of immigrant workers. And they place a spotlight on Basic Pilot, the federal government's voluntary program in which employers use government databases to check Social Security numbers.
Around the country, employers are asking whether Basic Pilot vaccinates the worksite from an immigration raid and legal problems. And how does it protect a company from identity fraud?
Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that Swift would not face charges in a nearly yearlong identity fraud investigation because of its "good faith" participation in Basic Pilot and its cooperation with immigration authorities. But Basic Pilot is a program that doesn't detect identity fraud.
"While Basic Pilot inoculates a company against one kind of illegal immigration fraud, it doesn't inoculate against all kinds of fraud," Mr. Chertoff acknowledged Wednesday in a Washington news conference.
While I am pretty amused that the federal government's lax regulations are once again threatening industry, in this instance by 'Basic Pilot, the federal government's voluntary program', it's just objectionable that businesses are the only object of concern on our newspaper's business page.
Families were torn apart, children left abandoned, hardworking laborers deprived of their livelihood, but avoiding prosecution is the real threat in this mentality.
In an atmosphere of this sort, it's no wonder that the removal of consumer protections from frauds like Enron and Tyco are being proposed by this administration.
The Securities and Exchange Commission agreed Wednesday to ease financial-control rules for smaller public companies, proposing changes in how U.S. companies must apply a sweeping antifraud law enacted in 2002 amid the wave of corporate scandals.
The SEC also proposed to raise the minimum financial requirements for individuals wanting to invest in hedge funds, a burgeoning industry that has seen a rise in fraud as well as an increase in the number of ordinary investors getting into the high-risk pools.
The five SEC commissioners voted unanimously at a public meeting to tentatively adopt the control-rules plan, which gives corporate managers more flexibility in assessing the strength of internal financial controls. It could be formally adopted sometime after a 60-day public comment period.
The vote culminated an intense monthslong lobbying campaign by numerous companies, which complained that Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley law -- requiring companies to file reports on the strength of their internal financial controls -- is overly burdensome and costly.
Thank you, protectors of the wealthy and those who can afford attorneys to look out for their interest from the marauding consumer/investor and weak system of checks for proper i.d.'s. What would we do without this brave crew of law enforcement officials to keep our businesses safe?
Live better, I would suspect.
Labels: Free Markets;
posted by Ruth at 10:31 AM
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