U.S. fast food caught in immigration crosshairs

[Rage for Order]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110207/us_nm/us_usa_immigration_fastfood

Dependence on illegal labor is the elephant in the room for the U.S. restaurant business. And experts say the Chipotle ICE investigations are a wake-up call for an industry that is one of America's biggest employers and generates over $300 billion in annual sales, according to research firm IBISWorld Inc.

Chipotle -- a Denver-based company whose motto is "Food With Integrity" -- is one of the most well-known names caught in the immigration enforcement shift that began two years ago.

It is hard to know the extent of hiring of illegal immigrants in restaurants. But immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- account for about a quarter of workers in the restaurant and food services industry and their numbers are up in recent years.

Their share fell from 24.5 percent in March 2006 to 21.4 percent in March 2008 -- before and during the recession -- but then recovered to 23.6 percent in March 2009 and March 2010, according to an analysis of the government's Current Population Survey (CPS) data conducted for Reuters by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Chipotle, which has more than 1,000 restaurants mostly in the United States and plans to open as many as 145 more in 2011, pays its workers more than the average burger flipper but its building binge has stoked its appetite for new hires. Alejandro, one of the Chipotle workers fired in Minnesota who asked that his last name not be published for fear of reprisals, worked there for five years and earned $9.42 per hour, taking home $1,200 a month. That allowed him to send up to $800 per month to his daughters to keep studying in Mexico.



much more at the link

[ileus]

1. you can't say crosshairs...

[Rage for Order]

2. You'll have to take that up with Reuters

They wrote the headline for the article; I simply copied & pasted

[underpants]

3. This is stepping over the elephant in the room that is the food industry (picking and fishing)

as is typical with our media they don't take the lazy next step in finding the source.

Illegal immigration has within it the solution - make them legal or give them the chance.

Until Smithfield packing, Tyson foods,and the Western Growers Association want to end illegal immigration (they openly recruit) it will not happen. It won't happen because on the producers side paying even minimum wage would cut into profits and the politicians won't let it happen because they might organize. Ceasar Chavez is purposely forgotten these days.

[Wilms]

4. .