Bakery manager and Republican Texas state representative candidate Thomas McNutt lists a number of “magnets” in the immigration and border security section of his campaign website. Tuition. Healthcare. Education. Despite the tough talk, McNutt is leaving one significant incentive of illegal immigration: jobs, including the ones he is in charge of procuring as hiring manager of the fruitcake maker Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas. Some residents who worked for the bakery without legal permission are speaking out out against the candidate, saying that his stance is “shameful,” according to the Dallas News.
“While border security is a federal responsibility, we must act as a state to secure as much as we can. In conjunction with a stronger presence on the border, we need to put our citizens first and turn off the magnets that drive further illegal immigration,” McNutt writes on his website.
Yet according to the Dallas News, the candidate hasn’t pursued policies that might discourage illegal immigration in his own corner of the world. For example, McNutt, who oversees hiring at the bakeries, could institute E-Verify. The voluntary government program is used at around 2 million work sites and allows employers to run the Social Security Numbers of new hires through a database to make sure they have permission to work.
The news is gold for McNutt’s Republican opponent, Byron Cook.
“To say you’re opposed to illegal immigration as a candidate and then to employ illegal immigrant workers in your business is political hypocrisy and business dishonesty,” he told the Dallas News.
McNutt says that he didn’t know that any of his workers were in the country illegally. It’s unclear if the “revelation” will lead to any reassessment of his policy priorities. Has it made him rethink the punishments for workers in the country illegally? What about the people, like him, who hire them? As of press time, McNutt has not responded to our request for comment.
If charged with the infractions his former employers report, his company could face fines of a few hundred dollars per offence. If caught in the country without a visa, current employees could be deported or jailed, possibly separating them permanently from their families.
It is hard to believe that McNutt didn’t suspect the immigration statuses of his employees. But that just goes to show: it is hard to make illegal immigration your business when you’re in the business of employing the cheapest labor around.
McNutt might take a lesson from GOP candidate Donald Trump, whose business regularly employ immigrants without legal permission to work. Instead of denying the practice, he put it into his large things-I-do-because-I’m-a-businessman category, along with exchanging cash for influence and participating in habitual bankruptcy.
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
