Let's Hire Them Abroad so We Don't Have to Hire Them at Home

One of the facts mentioned when people discuss illegal immigration in the United States is that employers hire immigrants so they can pay cheaper wages and therefore make more profits. Often times, one hears the examples of how landscapers, restaurant owners, snow removal companies and other businesses hire these people, and how this contributes to lower the quality in medical services, how it affects tax collection and how local communities grow afraid of these "aliens".

The illegal hiring usually takes place precisely in local communities, where the migrants get together at corners to be picked up by business owners who pay them miserable wages for a long day worth of labor. Well, this trend apparently is changing; silently changing...

Business owners decided to save the United States the burden of dealing with illegal immigration, so they now travel to Latin American countries to hire people to cover vacant positions in their businesses. Companies like 3D Global Solutions, Your Solution and EPI & Security(operating in Ecuador without a license), recruit former guerrilla members in countries like Peru, Chile and Honduras and send them as mercenaries to work in security affairs in Iraq. The illegality of these activities go beyond having a permit to operate locally in those countries. Many of those mercenaries go to Iraq after being offered juice pay checks and full benefits, but once they arrive, the story is very different.

According to a report by the Work Group of the United Nations in Latin America, mercenaries are currently the second largest occupation force in Iraq after the American military. The convoys are composed of at least 25000 men; many more than the British army, for example. Since 2003, the American government paid private companies at least 766 million dollars to hire former military and paramilitary men to do the dirty work in Iraq.

Amanda Benavidez, member of the UN Work Group, says that the recruitment criteria include the situations of unemployment and underemployment in each country, the likelihood of the populations to migrate and the weakness of the laws in each nation.

For example, EPI & Security, owned by Jeffrey Shippy, an American contractor, evaded Ecuadorian laws to operate in that South American country where he hired Ecuadorians and Colombians through adds in the newspapers. Most of these contractors hide behind the shadows of local subsidiaries which operate legally and illegally.

In 2005, the coalition "No Bases in Ecuador", presented an extensive report where it details how the United States Air Force hired Dyncorp to operate some of its bases in the area which feature Colombian and Ecuadorian men as part of the "Guerra Sucia" in Colombia.

Other members of the UN Work Group said that at least 105 Chilean men were trained in Honduras along with Honduran men to take on mercenary jobs in Iraq. The group accused the Honduran government for overlooking and omitting the problems Hondurans go through in Iraq.

The report by the UN Work Group concluded with an appeal to all Latin America to defend the rights of the populations against the abuses performed by these American companies.

A recent report published by the Washington Post, mercenaries go to war for big money, and at the same time operate outside most of the laws that govern American forces. According to prisonplanet.com, mercenaries were granted inmmunity by Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004. The presence of heavily armed guards on the battlefield has long been a wild card in the Iraq war. Insurgents frequently attack them. Iraqi civilians have expressed fear of their sometimes heavy-handed tactics, which have included running vehicles off the road and firing indiscriminately to ward off attacks. (prisonplanet.com)

In his article, Steve Fainaru wrote that shooting incidents have gone rampant and few of them have been reported or investigated. Jacob C. Washbourne, a former marine, is quoted to have said: "I want to kill someone today," a day before his return to the Untied States. His conversation was reported by three other men who were together with Washbourne the day he expressed his desire to kill "just for fun".

The presence of heavily armed guards on the battlefield has long been a wild card in the Iraq war. Insurgents frequently attack them. Iraqi civilians have expressed fear of their sometimes heavy-handed tactics, which have included running vehicles off the road and firing indiscriminately to ward off attacks. (Washington Post).

Another explosive expose came to light early in 2006 as it was revealed that the United States government has allowed between three and five thousand Iraqi mercenaries who are in U.S territory and serve the will of the establishment. Those Iraqis are a shadow force who along with the military and local law enforcement officials trained under the sponsorship of the United Nations are ready to detain civilians who protest government policies and the war in Iraq should unrest in the population grew out of control. The main goal of having Iraqi mercenaries as a shadow force, is to make them part of a group of ruthless "law enforcers" who could not be accussed or tried under U.S laws but who in turn would be able to facilitate the take over of the country by the establishment. Iraqi and other mercenaries are in the US with the sponsorship of private contractors who do the government's dirty work.

It not only looks like illegal immigration will eventually end in the United States as the country finds a way to hire people abroad, but also appears that from now on the Americans are the ones violating the laws in other countries, operating without licenses and abusing the rights of the locals.

Let's hire them abroad so we don't have to hire them at home.