My mother is a regional manager for a large, but sort of obscure department store chain. Just recently her company bought out another chain which was going out of business. Thru the buyout they picked up around 200 new stores with their own inventory and employees.
The process of reopening these stores was done in a hurry. To get it done they just kept on all the old employees who were already knowledgeable about the business. My mother has been in the retail business for over 25 years and working with them for the last few weeks she knows they're great hard working employees. In fact she feels that they're better than the employees she has in her other stores. These are people that have worked with the former company from 1 to 4 years. By last week all the stores have be reorganized and reopened.
Today her managers called her in tears. The company has a policy of running social security checks on all new employees. Across the 200 new stores around 60% of the employees are illegal immigrants. Of the four stores in my mother's region around 40 employees are undocumented. The former company did not do social security checks and seemed to go with a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" rule. At this point the employees in question have until Monday to produce the required documents else they are to be let go.
With the holidays coming up, the economy like it is, and the unsolved issues of illegal immigration it's a very sad situation for these people. The former company thru their willful ignorance of the issue has allowed these people to set themselves up for tragedy. These are people with families to support and there is nothing that can be done for them. Monday around 2000 new people will join the ranks of unemployed and uncounted.
The illegal immigration issue needs to be attended to in the next four years. IMO neither blanket amnesty or swift arrests and deportations are good solutions. I make no excuses here... they are here illegally and have put themselves in this situation. It's also appalling that the former company let this slide for so long and was never caught. But ultimately it's the negligence of our leaders that has allowed this issue to grow into what it is today.