Get that sleep you needed over the weekend?  Feeling good because your team is still in the NCAAs?  Maybe spring is coming to your corner of the world?  Well, if you need something to curb your enthusiasm, take a closer look at the March 6 raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security on a New Bedford, MA factory producing backpacks and vests for the U.S. military.  The raid resulted in arrests of 361 illegal immigrants, many of whom were taken to jail as far away as Texas.  The raid offers a dizzying array of screwups from which to choose, if your mood today is up to it.  And they all relate to the question of good government.  A few salient points:

-         the company, Michael Bianco, Inc., recently received a $138 million contract from the Department of Defense, so it is part of the American war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan;

-         The illegal workers at the plant somehow escaped the notice of the Pentagon inspector located at the factory and responsible for monitoring performance of the military’s contract for Bianco Inc.’s products;

-         New Bedford has the highest unemployment of any large city in Massachusetts at nearly 10%;

-         New Bedford natives and legal immigrants rushed to fill the 361 low-paying jobs previously held by illegals, but few of them will be hired because they lack professional stitching skills needed by the plant.

So, there are plenty of Americans willing to work these jobs, if they only had the training.   The factory, which clearly had these illegal employees for quite some time, will be hard pressed to produce the modular backpacks needed by our troops overseas.  And New Bedford will have fewer gainfully-employed people as a result.  Possibly the plant itself will have to close. 

Who even wants to try to navigate this maze of mistakes and illegality?  At Understanding Government, we know that skilled journalists, by following up, can inform the public and get government to follow through.  Jack Spillane, reporter for the Standard-Times of New Bedford, shows in a recent article where real people stand on the raid, illegal immigration, and jobs.  He writes that while people are against illegal immigration, they’re not blindly angry at the illegal immigrants.  Mostly, these Americans want work at any wage, and they are ready to be trained.  In spite of their own problems, they manage to look at this issue in rational and humane ways.   Why can’t our government?  See Spillane’s article here.

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