An Idaho county tries a racketeering law against employers who hire illegal workers.
CALDWELL, Idaho — Like many communities, this fast-growing agricultural pocket of southwestern Idaho is paying a high tab for illegal immigration.
When an illegal worker gave birth to a premature baby, Canyon County wound up with a $174,000 hospital bill. County officials say the jail spent thousands to house another illegal immigrant at a motel, after his tuberculosis threatened to infect fellow inmates.
But where others have merely chafed at paying costs like these, officials in Canyon County are trying a novel approach: The all-Republican county commission has filed a racketeering lawsuit against four big businesses in the area, charging that they deliberately hire illegal workers.
The spectacle of the county's political leaders taking its businesses to court has touched off a bitter local debate. But it has also put Canyon County, a largely Republican community of about 160,000, at the forefront of an emerging national effort to use racketeering laws to crack down on illegal immigration by seeking damages from employers.
So far, a handful of workers and businesses around the country have filed civil lawsuits under the RICO statute, known formally as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The targets are companies that, the lawsuits say, have unfairly used illegal labor to cut wage levels or prices.
In Washington state, workers who filed a civil suit against their employer, a fruit company, won a $1.3-million settlement in January. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear another of the immigration-related RICO cases this year.
But Canyon County is the first municipality to bring a suit of this kind against employers. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal district court but has been appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. If it succeeds, it could touch off similar actions, says the county's lawyer, Howard Foster.
"There are other county officials who are looking at this, who have called me," said Foster, an advocate of tougher immigration controls, who is behind most of the other RICO lawsuits.
In Canyon County, where working farms sit cheek-by-jowl against new residential developments, locals have traditionally welcomed the Latino immigrants who moved in seasonally to take agricultural jobs. But since the early 1990s, many immigrants have been finding year-round work in other industries, leaving some long-time residents struggling to adjust to permanent neighbors with different customs.
Even though the Senate aims to pass immigration legislation by early next month and the House has already produced an enforcement-only bill, people here are angry that the federal government has not done more to stop the influx.
Yet even some who want an immigration crackdown say the county commissioners stepped over the line when they went to court against two local seed companies, a meatpacker and large cheese-making operation.
"I think they should shut down the border and end services" to illegal immigrants, said Joel Bettancourt, a grocery store owner in Caldwell, Idaho, who described himself as Mexican American. "But to do the RICO Act — that's too far. Who knows who they're going to go after next?"
But some people say they are so fed up with changes they attribute to immigration — increasing gang violence, competition for manual labor jobs, and more services devoted to immigrants — that they hope the lawsuit succeeds. Letters to the local paper appear to be running slightly in favor of the commissioners.
"We have young guys, white and Hispanic, in here legally who want [construction] jobs — but companies give them to people who they can pay half the going wage," said Joyce Yelm, who grew up pulling beets alongside migrant farm laborers but has hardened after watching her old neighborhood become, in her words, a largely Spanish-speaking "shanty town."
Much of the controversy also centers on the man who has been the primary force behind the lawsuit — County Commissioner Robert Vasquez. A former radio commentator and veteran who was wounded in Vietnam, Vasquez, 57, has long been a provocative force in the immigration debate.
The grandson of legal Mexican immigrants, Vasquez was elected to the county commission in 2002 and soon after sent the Mexican government a $2-million bill for services he said his county had provided to illegal immigrants. He has asked Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne to declare the county a disaster area because of illegal immigration and to grant it emergency funds. And he has proposed unsuccessful state legislation that would have denied welfare payments to illegal immigrants.
"For every dollar for an illegal alien, it's one less dollar in my constituents' pocket," said Vasquez, who is running for Congress. In 2005, Vasquez heard about Howard Foster.
The Chicago lawyer has largely spearheaded the use of RICO statutes as a tool against illegal immigration. A member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates immigration restrictions, Foster took note when Congress toughened immigration laws in 1996 and amended the RICO statute to make knowing employment of illegal immigrants a violation.
"For the first time ever in the country, it became possible for a person to bring a private lawsuit against an employer … for violating immigration laws," Foster said.
latimes.com |
