990534 Meatpackers Make Deal on Immigration Crackdown

Washington - The Immigration and Naturalization Service crafted a deal to ease the blow for meatpackers who are facing a U.S. crackdown on illegal workers, industry and INS officials said.

"Operation Vanguard," the name of the government effort to weed out illegal workers in meatpacking plants in Nebraska and in Iowa, has already caused disruptions, Sherry Edwards, director of legislative and regulatory affairs at the American Meat Institute, said.

But under the deal, the INS agreed to stagger interviews at plants that can prove that they could lose a large percentage of their workforce, causing a slowdown in production. The INS will also provide warnings to companies when the government will come into their operations, a move industry hopes will help the plants operate with fewer delays.

"We don't want to have a negative impact on the production capabilities of these companies," INS spokeswoman Mariela Melero said.

The meatpacking industry was targeted last year since it historically has been a "magnet" for illegal workers in the interior United States, Melero said.

The INS on April 12 released a list of names of 4,762 workers at 40 meatpacking plants whose legal statuses were called into question. The INS started meeting with workers on the list this week and hopes to finish this round of interviews in four weeks.

In an INS study conducted during 1996 and 1997, nearly one-quarter of the workers in seven meatpacking plants in Iowa and in Nebraska had "questionable" identification documents.

Meatpackers had argued that the move by the INS could interrupt production while the government conducts the interviews and when perhaps whole lines of workers could be found to be illegal. About 40 meatpackers, government officials and representatives from industry groups and congressional offices met to reach the compromise.

"We're cautiously optimistic that we're heading in the right direction," she said.

But Edwards said the INS has already harmed meatpacking plants as many workers quit when the list was released. One plant in Nebraska lost 20% of its workforce after the list came out, Edwards said, declining to provide more information about the plant.

Melero said the INS went to two major plants in Nebraska this week. Officials visited a plant in Lexington where 293 discrepancies had been found. Of those, 185 of the workers had already quit, one worker was arrested for making false claims and 106 were found to be lawful employees. Several other cases at the plant are still pending.

INS workers went to a plant in Gibbon where 320 discrepancies had been found. Some 189 workers had already quit and 131 workers were interviewed and were found legally able to work. Melero declined to identify the plants.

The INS is working with law enforcement agencies and other industries to thwart the employees who did quit from working in other business sectors illegally, Melero said.

The INS will go to a Grand Island, Neb., plant next week.

Many reasons have cropped up as to why some workers appeared on the list but were legal, Melero said. Some had changed their names, others had someone else illegally using their Social Security numbers and some had just recently become U.S. citizens and were not entered into the INS database.

"Those are discrepancies that are now corrected," she said.

But AMI's Edwards said meatpackers, although they want a legal workforce, are concerned about the crackdown since the U.S. jobless rate is so low, making it difficult to attract workers for what is often a repetitive and gruesome job.

In Nebraska, the unemployment rate fell to 2.3% in March, down from 2.4% the previous month, and below the 4.2% nationwide rate. The Nebraska unemployment rate was the lowest for the state since December 1990, according to U.S. Labor Department statistics.

"Replacing folks is going to be difficult," she said.

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