Fullerton Illeg immig ICE raid -background

Illegal immigration: Immigration raid at Fullerton factory leads to 43 arrests - latimes.com

A short comment on ICE raid on a Fullerton factory in NE Orange County, CA. That area of Fullerton, on Raymond Ave off Riverside Freeway 91, is a large industrial region in NW OC. It is in fact OC's second largest industrial region after the Irvine industrial belt. I know for a fact that lots of firms there use illegal/green card/H1-b workers.
The entire area around there is packed with recent immigrants, which are concentrated in nearby Anaheim, Orange, South fullerton, parts of Placentia, La Palma, ect. A large immigrant community has sprung up in that part of OC. It is a large immigrant work force, and more skilled and educated than Los Angeles' impoverished immigrant population. I have been into quite a few industrial firms in OC, and most of them employ recent immigrant labor, including the large Alcoa-Fullerton metals fabrication plant. If not illegals they use low-skilled anchors/immigrant green carders. Rarely do you see native born Caucasians on the production floor in these firms, except in management/executive capacity. The nature of the work: processing metals or food, low-level warehousing, metals fabrication, lumber warehousing, furniture manufacturing, is such that these firms prefer docile, lowly paid, recent immigrants, mostly from Mex or central america, but also including Philippinos or other Asian immigrant groups.

NE OC dosen't have nearly the extent of illegal alien sweatshop operations as parts of Central and east LA however. Los Angeles area has plenty of small & medium sweatshop factories, some them barely above shoplevel, and most of them employing a largely illegal/green card labor workforce. These sweatshops are concentrated in East San Fernando Valley, dwtn area of La(garment district),east LA, south LA/Vernon area, or along Alameda Corridor. These are usually small/mid-sized processing shops. The work is grimy and tedious, and these firms are usually located in such dismal ghettoish, grimy areas of LA that the owners can escape inquisitive state labor investigators, and get away with using illegal labor. Google Vernon Overhill Farms ICE raid, a 2009 raid on a food processing plant. That is a fairly large firm, but there are 10,000+ firms large, med, and small, similar to Overhill Farms, employing predominantly illegals & green CARD Immigrants.

ICE would run into political problems in LA if they really went after all the LA firms using illegals, as these shops are deeply imbedded in LA's impoverished communities, and are protected by the LA political establishment. Ice barely got away with the Vernon raid, as there were lots of howls and screams from the LA activists, ACLU,and immgrant rights lawyers. There will not be any more ICE raids in LA till either Obama leaves office, Republicans get heavy majorities in congress and/or CA turns majority Republican, an unlikely event.


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