September 10, 2013, - 2:35 pm
Is Your Donut Funding Illegal Aliens? Donut Shop Owners Tampered w/ Witnesses
Dunkin’ Donuts is one of many corporations that uses E-Verify to make sure its employees are not illegal aliens, and it insists that its franchisees do the same. But that’s not the case for many of its “mom-and-pop” competitors, who not only employ illegal aliens but take all sorts of other illegal actions to cover it up. That’s the case with Kim Hout Lor and Bun Vireak Long, who were arrested today by federal authorities for witness tampering on top of the fact that they employed and underpaid illegal aliens at their “Pat’s Donuts, Kolaches, & Tacos” shop. Note that these two were only charged in the first place with underpaying their employees, not with knowingly hiring and employing illegals, which they did.
HOUSTON—Kim Hout Lor, 66, and Bun Vireak Long, 19, have been taken into custody on charges of tampering with witnesses in a pending official proceeding, announced United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson today. Lor is also charged with making false statements.
The indictment, returned August 20, 2013, was unsealed upon their arrests this morning. . . .
According to allegations, the mother and son operated a donut shop in Porter called Pat’s Donuts, Kolaches, & Tacos, which had been under an investigation by the Department of Labor (DOL)-Wage and Hour Division for allegedly not properly compensating its work force.
Lor allegedly withheld information from investigators about undocumented aliens under her employment, the total number of employees she employed, and the number of hours her employees worked, according to the indictment. Additionally, Lor and Long allegedly contacted witnesses and undocumented aliens they employed during the pending investigation to intimidate, threaten, or corruptly persuade them in an effort to influence or prevent their testimony to DOL investigators.
You might ask, “Why should I care that illegal aliens were underpaid by a donut shop?” But that’s exactly it: if they can get away with paying illegal aliens below minimum wage, that’s who they’re gonna hire, and it takes jobs away from American citizens. (That the minimum wage creates an environment ripe for hiring illegals–who will take less–is another point and a discussion for another post.)
The thing that irritates me about this case, though, is that it seems only the Department of Labor cared about this case, NOT ICE–Immigration and Customs Enforcement–which should be (but isn’t) enforcing our nation’s immigration laws. I get the feeling that if these illegal aliens were paid enough wages, the fact that the donut shop owners were harboring and employing illegal aliens would go untouched, and there would be no indictment here.
In fact, I don’t just get the feeling. I know this to be the case.
Note that ICE is not mentioned anywhere in the Department of (In)Justice press release, which means that immigration investigators were not involved in any way. . . because they simply aren’t enforcing immigration law much these days.
Tags: Bun Vireak Long, Department of Labor, donuts, Houston, ICE, Illegal Aliens, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Kim Hout Lor, Pat’s Donuts Kolaches & Tacos, Porter, Texas
“…if they can get away with paying illegal aliens below minimum wage, that’s who they’re gonna hire”
Good point.
DS_ROCKS! on September 10, 2013 at 3:15 pm