May 28, 2009
By Roy Beck
NumbersUSA.com
A bust of a slavery ring in Missouri has typically found that the slave-masters are themselves foreigners. While we have plenty of home-grown, despicable businesses that exploit and abuse illegal foreign workers, the fact is that foreign-born business owners and managers are disproportionately responsible for the mistreatment of foreign workers in this country.
Twelve people -- eight of them from Uzbekistan -- are accused in a federal indictment of luring illegal immigrants to the U.S. to work as "modern-day slaves" in 14 states, including Missouri. Branson and Kansas City were among cities where hundreds of illegal immigrants who worked at hotels, construction sites, and in other businesses were ensnared.
Prosecutors announced Wednesday that a federal grand jury in Kansas City issued a 45-count indictment May 6 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act that included charges of labor racketeering, forced labor trafficking and immigration violations.
Matt Whitworth, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said Wednesday in a statement that the defendants used false information to obtain fake work visas for the foreign workers, who were then threatened with deportation while living in substandard apartments and working for inadequate pay.
-- Associated Press
As NumbersUSA has long explained, high legal immigration creates the circumstances for high illegal immigration. Four decades of renewed mass immigration has allowed the re-introduction of slavery into the United States 150 years after a half-million Americans died in the Civil War that ended slavery.
Although the promoters of mass immigration certainly don't advocate slavery, the results of their lobbying indeed are the spread of slavery, human trafficing, child labor and sweat shops all across the country.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA
