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Undocumented Contractors
 By Tom Shoop | Wednesday, May 30, 2007  |  02:20 PM

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is not happy about recent reports about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid that found an Oregon company working under contract to the Forest Service had employed 14 undocumented workers. Smith sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman today asking, “How can we expect the federal government to enforce a massive new guest worker program when it does not abide by current laws?” Smith asked Portman to require agencies and their contractors to join a pilot employee verification program to prevent such incidents in the future.



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I might buy that argument about cheap labor except federal government "contracts" require that the contractor be paid according to federal labor statutes, like the Service Contract Act, or the Davis Bacon Act. So the government is not getting "cheap labor" it is paying prevailing wage rates, and it is instead getting "ripped off". This is just one more issue associated with rampant undocumented illegal immigrants about which no one in government has any facts or information on which to base sound policy decisions.

Myles  | Thursday, May 31, 2007 |  09:36 AM


This is a problem on every military base in California. The janitorial staff are hired through a subcontractor. None of janitors speak English. Obviously the government is not interested in policing itself. It's interested in cheap labor, just like the private sector.

Haas  | Wednesday, May 30, 2007 |  05:41 PM



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Government Executive Editor Tom Shoop takes a look at news and events affecting the federal bureaucracy, from the perspective of a longtime observer of government.

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