How strange is it that Wal-Martians would get busted for hiring aliens? Federal agents were all over Wal-Mart this week, as the government arrested on immigration charges 300 cleaning workers from Eastern European nations working at 60 Wal-Marts across the country. Widespread news reports have suggested that U.S. officials are saying some Wal-Mart executives knew all about the use of illegal workers. Wal-Mart has been cited before for using illegal workers in Illinois and Louisiana — among other places — to build their stores. In a clear display of government sarcasm, the Wal-Mart investigation was called “Operation Rollback”. News reports said the government had tape recordings of Wal-Mart executives, and had searched their corporate bee hive in Bentonville, Arkansas. It was even suggested that federal grand jury subpoenas have been issued for unnamed Wal-Mart executives to testify. The federal officials investigating the case were quoted as saying the giant retailer had shown a “reckless disregard” for U.S. immigration laws, hiring some contractors who had already been convicted of felony violations. A Wal-Mart spokesman tried to unload the burden by saying the cleaning crews were hired by “third-party contractors,” who are supposed to “use legal workers.” The company said it uses “hundreds” of outside contractors. Roughly one-third of Wal-Mart’s stores use outside cleaning services. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the arrests made covered a 21 state area. If Wal-Mart is found guilty of knowingly hiring illegal workers, they could face up to $10,000 in fines per person — which is a few seconds worth of sales to Wal-Mart. But the public relations damage could be much more costly to the company. Similar investigations of illegal immigrant workers at Wal-Mart go back at least 5 years.
On Wall Street, Wal-Mart’s stock closed up 47 cents, just to show how important these workforce issues are on The Street. Back in the mid 1990s, Wal-Mart took some heat for using sweatshop labor to make its products, but the company uses ‘plausible deniability’ to say that it does not own any of the factories that make it clothing or sew in its labels…But is it any wonder that a bunch of Walmartians would hire aliens? Isn’t that keeping it in the family? For many small towns, the invasion by Walmartians is like an attack from an alien culture. For more examples of Wal-Mart using illegal aliens, search this database by the word “aliens”.
