Do you remember all the fuss that was going on in this country about immigration and all the problems that went along with it? Until this time, did you even realize how many people were in this country illegally? A lot of people knew of some cases where there were a lot of people brought into this country. One place that comes to mind is my hometown in Dakota City, Nebraska. The plant was Iowa Beef Processors, and it is still running and still hiring these workers. I applied and didn't get the job. I was told at the time that they were not hiring, but while I was there they took some of these people to give them drug tests and their name badges.

Our Federal Immigration Enforcement agency had been running a 10-month long raid that brought the arrest of over 300 workers in one South Carolina plant. On top of these arrests, charges have been brought up on 11 supervisors and one Human Resources manager for falsifying employment records in regards to these workers.

All of the ones that were arrested were interviewed, fingerprinted, and photographed before they could be sent to the deportation stations. In late August, this company did a raid on a plant in Laurel, Mississippi where they arrested 595 illegal people at this one plant. They did the same in California in a four-month nationwide crackdown of 53 cities from June 1 to September 30 that included 28 states. 430 crackdowns were made in California alone. This was the most of any state and included 168 in San Angeles, 96 in San Bernardino, and 81 in San Diego. Raids on gang members of 1700 did most of these.

Since 2005, 11,100 have been arrested. Of those arrested, 3,997 have been criminally charged with 7,109 charged with immigration violations and were processed for deportation. It costs us 6,000 dollars per person to deport them home, and many will come back. Every week federal enforcement officers fly 127 that are caught in Ohio and Michigan to a small town in Texas to be sent across the boarder. Last year, they deported 900 from Ohio with it being 3,300 so far this year. I think that if we take away the need for these workers, it will slow down this trend. If we caught them and they have been here for a while, then I think that we should give them the option of signing papers for citizenship with the understanding that they will have to pay their taxes for all the time that they have lived in this country. If we did this, it would stop the want in their hearts.