The quiet town of Stillmore, Georgia, 189 miles from Atlanta, just got a lot quieter: federal agents rounded up 120 undocumented workers and forced hundreds of others to flee. The poultry plant that is the main source of local jobs suddenly found itself without much of a workforce. People who run shops for the undocumented workers aren't going to for much longer. A poor town just got poorer.
What I love is that one of those store owners is a die-hard Reagan Republican – i.e., an IDIOT – and even HE is disgusted with what we get with Immigration Idiocy as a national and state policy. All that yap we've been getting from the Goofy Old Party and its xenophobic Tom Tancredo bobblehead dolls sure sounds swell now, doesn't it? Sounds as genius as that old bromide about square pegs and round holes, doesn't it? You KNOW it's out of control when even an IDIOT like Max Burns is for a guest worker program that would have prevented this debacle.
So where has our Undercover Governor Sonny Perdue been while a Georgia town is gutted? Good question.
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9 Comments:
A fitting end to den of illegal activity.
No more illegals to exploit, how sad.
Great that the WalMart employees now have
an oppoprtunity to get higher wages.
A fitting end to den of illegal activity.
No more illegals to exploit, how sad.
Great that the WalMart employees now have
an oppoprtunity to get higher wages.
What part of ILLEGAL don't you understand?
My only question is why isn't every town enforcing immigration the way Stillmore is.
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STILLMORE GEORGIA RETURNS TO NORMAL
STILLMORE, Ga. -- Trailer parks, with broken down trailers which once housed dozens of illegal aliens, now lie abandoned. Criter Inc., a poultry plant is replacing more than half its workforce with legal workers (at higher wages). Businesses where illegal Mexicans once lined up to buy food, beer and cigarettes has dried up.
This Georgia community had begun to return to normal since Sept. 1, when federal agents began rounding up illegal aliens.
The sweep has underscored just how quickly illegal aliens can be replaced when decent wages are paid.
More than 120 illegal aliens were loaded onto buses bound for immigration courts in Atlanta, 189 miles away. Hundreds more fled Emanuel County. Residents say many scattered into the woods, camping out for days. It is presumed some are still hiding out.
One toddler's mother, Rosa Lopez (an illegal alien from Mexico), left her 2-year-old son with a baby sitter when the raids began and fled the state to avoid deportation. The boy's father was deported to Mexico.
Julie Rodas, the baby sitter, had made a living watching the children of illegal alien workers at the Crider Inc. poultry plant, where the vast majority of employees were Mexican illegals.
Federal agents also raided a trailer park operated by David Robinson, where illegal aliens were handcuffed and taken away. Almost none have returned. Robinson bought an American flag and posted it by the pond out front, upside down, in protest.
Robinson, the landlord who had been making money renting the delapidated trailers to illegal aliens made the comment "There ain't no reason to treat them like animals”. Others have made the comment, “They were not treated like animals, they were treated like criminals.”
The raids came as the high cost to Georgia taxpayers for the health care, education, and other public services for illegal aliens are becoming top political issues.
Last month, the federal government reported that Georgia had the fastest-growing illegal alien population in the country. The number more than doubled from an estimated 220,000 in 2000 to 470,000 last year. This year, state lawmakers passed some of the nation's toughest measures targeting illegal immigrantsaliens, and Gov. Sonny Perdue last week vowed a statewide crackdown on document fraud.
Other than the Crider plant, there isn't much in Stillmore. Four small stores, a coin laundry and a Baptist church share downtown with City Hall, the fire department and a post office. "We're poor but proud," Mayor Marilyn Slater said, as if that were the town motto.
Now that Criter Inc. Is raising wages to attract legal workers it appears that Stillmore will be a little less poor. In addition, now that the illegal aliens, which were living with up to 40 people per residence, are gone, the town’s overworked sewage system will not require rebuilding ( at a cost to taxpayers of approximately one and one half million dollars).
The 2000 Census put Stillmore's population at 730, but Slater said uncounted immigrants probably made it more than 1,000. Not anymore, with the illegal aliens gone the streets are are returning to normal.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Marc Raimondi would not discuss details of the raids. "We can't lose sight of the fact that these people were here illegally," Raimondi said.
At Sucursal Salina No. 2, a store stocked with Mexican fruit sodas and snacks, cashier Alberto Gonzalez, who did not say weather he was in the US legally or not, said Wednesday that the owner may shutter the place. By midday, Gonzalez has had only six customers. Normally, he would see 100.
The B&S convenience store, owned by Keith and Regan Slater, the mayor's son and grandson, has lost about 80 percent of its business.
Since the mid-1990s, Stillmore and the surrounding area has provided social services (such as medical care, education, police protection, etc.) for Mexican workers who originally came for seasonal farm labor, picking the area's famous Vidalia onions. Then many were hired by the Crider Inc. plant, who has a workforce of about 900.
Crider President David Purtle said the agents began inspecting the company's employment records in May. They found 700 suspected illegal immigrants, and supervisors handed out letters over the summer ordering them to prove they came to the U.S. legally or be fired. Only about 100 kept their jobs. Mr. Purtle did not say why the government did not prosecute any company officials or levy any fines against the company.
The arrests started at the plant Sept. 1. Over the Labor Day weekend, armed agents with bulletproof vests converged on residences of illegal aliens after obtaining those addresses from Crider's files.
Antonio Lopez, an illegal alien, who came here two years ago from Chiapas, Mexico, and had been hired by the Crider plant, said agents were forced to kink in his front door. Lopez, 32, and his 15-year-old son were handcuffed and taken by bus to Atlanta with 30 others. Because of the boy, Lopez said, both were allowed to return. In his back pocket, he carries an order to return to Atlanta for a court hearing Feb. 2. But now, "there's no people here and I don't have any work," he said. Actually, the same people are there now that were there before Crider Inc. started hiring illegal aliens and Mr. Lopez has never had a legal right to work in this country. The poultry plant has remained open. Crider Inc. has increased its starting wages by $1 an hour in order to recruit legal workers.
Stacie Bell, 23, started work canning chicken at Crider a week ago. She said the pay, $7.75 an hour, led her to leave her $5.60-an-hour job as a Wal-Mart cashier in nearby Statesboro.
Yes, thanks to government finally doing it’s job, Stillmore Georgia is returning to normal.
I am a legal citizen of Stillmore and would like to thank the people out there that feel the way I do about illegal Mexicans. I have seen first hand how hard these people work and I understand they just want better for their families. That's what all hard working humans want. However, they are here illegally and that is the key word ILLEGAL. By having 40 to 50 people living in one house it has put a major strain on our small towns sewage systems while making a few people rich renting these run down houses and trailers owned by people who do not even live in our little town. I venture to say that no one in our little town would ever want any of the Mexicans treated badly, but they are still hear illegally.They receive services that I as an American Citizen cannot get and I go to work everyday and PAY TAXES(Federal, State, Sales Taxes, and Property). However, lets be fair if our government in this great country did not hand out check to people who are just to SORRY to work we would not have jobs in this country for illegals to come to. In such a small towns as Stillmore everyone lives in what some might call a "glass house" in other words some of us have seen several generations of the same family grow up on WELFARE AND THIS IS OUR GOVERENMENTS FAULT. STOP THE YOUNG BUCKS WHO ARE ABLE TO WORK FROM DRAWING CHECKS TO SIT ON THEIR BEHINDS AND YOU WILL SEE PLACES LIKE CRIDER POULTRY HAVE TO TURN PEOPLE AWAY LOOKING FOR WORK AND REMEMBER LOOKING FOR WORK IS DIFFERENT FROM LOOKING FOR A JOB.
I am an undocumented worker.
In all these years, they have accused us of not paying taxes, of leeching the health care system, of trying to reannex the SW to Mexico, of refusing to learn English, of having many children, etc.
But this is a new one: "to overload the sewage system"
I'll refrain from all kind of sewage analogies that jump to mind regarding this "concern(ed?) American".
This people are crazy , many may have fallen out of status , but whoever came before 1999 may got his/her social security number legaly just by providing passport and I 94 , there are many paying to social security nowonder there was a suplus during President Clinton time, other than that, we pay our school fees by working hard, medicall , we are not like the puerto rican or the whites and black who do not want to work, they depend on social security, neither do to school, so where What was the ICE doing in 1999 before giving this people SS number?
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