990721 INS Aims at Illegal Meat Plant Workers in Iowa

Washington - U.S. immigration officials said they will move their crackdown on illegal workers at meatpacking plants to Iowa next month, possibly slowing production and further depressing already low pork prices.

Thousands of workers quit their jobs at meatpacking plants in Nebraska this spring when the Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated its “Operation Vanguard” program in that state. The move to make sure immigrant employees had legal permission to work greatly slowed production and pressured cattle prices in Nebraska, industry officials said.

Now, the American Meat Institute is concerned that the Vanguard program will hurt the pork industry in Iowa, the nation's largest pork producing state.

The INS is currently sifting through legal documents on 20,000 workers employed by the meatpacking industry in Iowa and preparing a list of workers they want to interview. The list should be released in the next several weeks, INS spokeswoman Mariela Melero said.

But the American Meat Institute, a trade group representing most major packers, asked the INS to release the list of names bit by bit to avoid the slowdowns that happened in Nebraska. Some plants reported slowdowns of 15 to 30%, said Sherry Edwards, AMI's director of regulatory affairs.

INS officials are considering AMI's proposal, Melero said.

The meatpacking industry has been targeted because it is a magnet for illegal workers in Midwestern states.

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.

Earlier this year in Nebraska, the INS reviewed 24,148 documents and identified 4,495 people whose legal status was called into question. Out of those, 3,152 quit their jobs, 303 did not show up for interviews with INS officials and 34 were arrested for falsely claiming they were U.S. citizens.

Although the meatpacking industry typically has a high rate of turnover, INS officials are concerned that many illegal workers quit their jobs and simply moved across state lines to work at other plants. In addition to Iowa, INS officials also plan to interview workers in Kansas and in Missouri.

“We are assuming that most of those individuals were not entitled to work,” Melero said of the employees who quit their jobs once the INS list was released.

“We have to get out of Nebraska and start looking at the industry from a four-state perspective and eventually from a national perspective,” she said.

Although meatpackers have said they want a legal workforce, the industry has expressed concern that plants will have a tough time replacing illegal workers when the U.S. jobless rate is so low. Jobs at meatpacking plants are often described as repetitive, unpleasant and sometimes dangerous.

Edwards said major slowdowns in production could cost pork producers money.

Pork prices have already slid over the past year, prompting the USDA to provide emergency aid for hog farmers in 1998. Hog prices fell to $33.80 per hundred pounds last month, down $2.60 from May and $8.60 below a year ago.

Before the INS went to Nebraska, the agency agreed to stagger interviews at plants that proved they could lose a large percentage of their workforce, forcing a slowdown in production. The INS also agreed to provide warnings to companies when the government will come into their operations.

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