Although details are sketchy, Willamette Week is reporting that Gordon Smith’s frozen food plant near Pendleton has been employing illegal immigrants for years.
Smith Frozen Foods was founded by Gordon’s grandfather in 1919 and has taken good care of the Smith family ever since.
“According to the Center for Responsive Politics,” the Portland alternative weekly writes, “Smith is the 12th-richest member of the U.S. Senate, with an estimated net worth between $8 million and $39 million – wealth that’s allowed him to buy a $3.5 million mansion in Bethesda, Md., property on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, a Park City, Utah, condominium and – more famously – four antique golf clubs worth $1.25 million.
“The workers at Smith Frozen Foods, who clean the machinery, monitor production and pack upward of 50 million pounds of produce each year, earn about $80 a day, four or five days a week, 10 months a year – if they’re lucky.
“One other thing – some of them appear to be illegal immigrants.”
WW says it bases that accusation on interviews with “dozens of current and former Smith workers, Latino advocates, court personnel, public defenders, educators, police administrators, church officials, social service agents and business owners” in Eastern Oregon and Washington
People interviewed by WW included a former employee, Liduvina Ibarra, who estimated that half of the roughly 500 workers at the Smith plant are illegal. Other workers put the estimate at one-third, Willamette Week said.
Frank Herrera, who runs a tax preparation service in Walla Walla, WA, told the paper that “in the past year he has helped more than five Smith employees who didn’t have Social Security numbers file their tax returns.”
Willamette Week says that “according to the workers themselves, roughly 85 percent of them are Latino,” coming from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.
As a senator Smith has taken a strong stand against illegal immigration, and has denied in the past that his plant knowingly employs any illegal immigrants.
On the Lars Larson Show Wednesday, Smith hit back hard at the Willamette Week story: “I’ve never had such a hit piece, hatchet job, slimeball done to me before in my 16 years in public life.” The story, Smith said, was based on “hearsay, innuendo, supposition and racial profiling.”
However, Oregonian political blogger Jeff Mapes reported that Larson later told him he thought Willy Week had “nailed [Smith] pretty well.”
How much effect the accusations will have on the Senate campaign is unclear. “It’s a little hard to figure out,” former Oregon Labor Commissioner Jack Roberts, a Republican, told politickeror.com. “It’s hard for me to believe that real hard-core anti-immigration folks will vote for [Smith’s Democratic opponent] Jeff Merkley.”
“Roberts said that the news could certainly hurt Smith with the extremes of the Republican Party,” politickeror.com continued, “but after touting his centrist record and running campaign commercials featuring John Kerry and Barack Obama, Roberts said the extreme of the party was already angry with Smith anyway.”
“That’s been a problem [Smith has] had all along, and it’s the risk you take when you take a moderate track,” Roberts said. “If Senator Smith had been one of those raving anti-immigration people like Tom Tancredo, then it might be an issue.”
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2008.
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Senator Smith’s entire office staff
John_Easton@Smith.senate.gov; Rob_Epplin@Smith.senate.gov; Catherine_Finley@Smith.senate.gov; Kara_Getz@Smith.senate.gov; Lindsay_Gilbride@Smith.senate.gov; Matt_Hill@Smith.senate.gov; Sue_Keenom@Smith.senate.gov; Esther_Kennedy@GSmith.Senate.Gov; Dan_Knezevic@Smith.senate.gov; Chris_Ornelas@Smith.senate.gov; Andrew_Peek@Smith.senate.gov; Lori_Prater@Smith.senate.gov; Jeffrey_Renner@GSmith.Senate.Gov; Gary_Schmidt@GSmith.Senate.Gov; Beth_Stewart@gSmith.senate.gov; Jacob_Triolo@GSmith.Senate.Gov; Kerry_Tymchuk@GSmith.Senate.Gov; Jason_Vaillancourt@GSmith.Senate.Gov; Valerie_West@Smith.senate.gov
Conservatives don’t dislike Smith because he’s a moderate, we dislike him because he is an asshole…
Setting that aside, how can someone “appear to be illegal immigrants?” Do they look different than those Latino’s with a green card or a citizen?
Apparently, Huckleberry Miller feels that the reported 80 bucks a day earned by these illegals is insufficient compensation for coming here and breaking our laws. Ironically, his reporting this story hopefully will help get 250 to 350 of them fired, arrested and deported, where they will make zero dollars an hour. Good going, Huck. A true Dumbocrat, friend (?) of the working class…
Heather, I didn’t report this stuff — Willamette Week did. I posted it here because it’s a story that Source readers might not otherwise be aware of, and that might have some effect on the Senate race.
Idle question: Why are right-wingers so damn ANGRY all the time?
HBM: Right wing anger: We are so damned disrespectful and/or angry at you in particular because of the way you advocate for your cause, including the obvious lack of respect you show for your opposition. Your demeaning name calling, denigrating slights, personal attacks, all items your boss says to avoid on these posts, is your usual and preferred stock in trade… and your refusal to respond to direct questions by simply avoiding them. We already know you can’t answer them, but it would be interesting, possibly enlightening, to see you actually try. It is not so much anger as it is a total lack of respect for your methods. If your cause is righteous and intellectually sound, you should be capable of mustering the intellectual honesty and demonstrate the authorial capacity to righteously spell it out without resorting to your predictable inflammatory hate speech that does nothing for your cause except alienate the reader. Only a simplistic damn fool who is ‘over his head’ thinks that everyone who disagrees with them is a right wing troll…
“demeaning name calling, denigrating slights, personal attacks … inflammatory hate speech … a simplistic damn fool”
So tell me, “Heather,” who is the one calling names here? Who’s the one using the inflammatory language?
Are you familiar with the psychological term “projection”? If not, you should look it up.
Because the employer does not have to actually go investigate their assertions they are legal. Time and time again…illegal fake document factories have been busted in that area,specifically the Tri-Cites…just across the river. JUST GO SEE IF SMITH FROZEN FOODS DOES THE “E-Verify” check that actually verifies if said employee has a TRUE SSN!! I’ll be they don’t and they just rely on fake documents then they can just state “looked legal to me!” I’ll just betcha. Someone should take Smith Foods to task on that. See if they use the “E-Verify” system set up by the Feds to really see if these workers are legal or just using 300 fake social security numbers. THERE IS A REASON THE U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IS TOTALLY AGAINST THE E-VERIFY SYSTEM. Think about it. OUT