Bridge builder charged with hiring illegal aliens, some with invalid welding certification

This story helps show how much our entire political system has been affected by corruption:

The owner of Tarrasco Steel, a company that supplied workers on the Biloxi Bay Bridge, was arrested and charged with hiring illegal immigrants on projects in three states. Some had improper welding certification.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Jose S. Gonzalez, 32, at his office in Greenville Thursday, according to a news release. Tarrasco Steel was hired as a subcontractor for rebar installation services to major bridge projects in Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. The federal government considers those bridges as critical infrastructure, and they were part of routine inspections of facilities that if damaged could pose a threat to national security and public safety.

...On inspections of several construction sites March 29, representatives of several federal agencies confirmed the majority of Tarrasco Steel employees were using bogus Social Security numbers, and 77 immigrants were arrested. Twenty-six of them worked for Tarrasco Steel. Some of them worked on the Biloxi bridge, the Huey P. Long bridge in New Orleans, and a project on Interstate 40 in Memphis, among others, the news release said...

It's pretty ironic that Huey Long is involved, if only by name; recall the collapsing staircase from this.

As for political corruption, both the GOP and the Democrats have consistently looked the other way on the hiring of illegal aliens, setting the stage for cases like this. There are probably many similar cases that will never be discovered or prosecuted, until it's too late.

Immigration2007a · Mon, 08/06/2007 - 17:52 · · Importance: 1