Plant manager charged

A manager at a Greenville poultry factory under federal investigation has been charged with telling employees to use falsified immigration documents. Federal court documents show Elaine Crump was charged Tuesday with 20 counts that she told employees to use the falsified forms. Crump is listed as personnel manager for House of Raeford Farms. Court documents show a judge set her bond at $25,000. A May inspection by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents uncovered records showing plant employees had used invalid alien registration numbers and Social Security numbers, or listed numbers as their own that belonged to others. No attorney was listed for Crump, who did not immediately return a voice message left at her office.

--Associated Press

Below is a statement on the immigration issue that was released by House of Raeford Farms...

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

HOUSE OF RAEFORD COOPERATING IN ICE INVESTIGATION

Rose Hill, NC, June 20, 2008

House of Raeford would like to clarify recent news coverage of Federal law enforcement investigations into forged or fraudulent documents submitted to the company by some job applicants and some current or former employees. The company is cooperating, and will continue to cooperate, with State and Federal law enforcement authorities in this investigation.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is conducting a nationwide investigation of the documentation used by some individuals to establish their eligibility to work in this country. As part of this investigation, last December ICE contacted House of Raeford to request copies of I-9 forms that some employees of our Greenville, SC plant completed when they accepted employment. We complied promptly with this request.

A local paper reported Thursday, June 19, 2008 that five supervisors at the company's Greenville, SC, plant had been arrested for making false statements or providing false documentation about their eligibility to work in the U.S. The initial reports erroneously implied that the employees were arrested at the plant. That is incorrect. All five individuals were arrested at locations other than the plant.

House of Raeford does not knowingly hire illegal workers. Every employee is required to complete a federal I-9 form before commencing employment. The I-9 form is intended to verify the employee's eligibility to work in the United States. However, the I-9 was a product of political compromise, and while it requires applicants to submit certain documents to verify their eligibility to work, it also imposes limitations on the documents employers can ask for or examine.

· First, only certain documents may be requested by the employer as proof of eligibility for employment. Some employers have actually been sued by the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel for asking for more documentation than is allowed.

· Second, document forgery has become a very sophisticated business, making detection of fraudulent documents difficult.

· Third, in addition to potentially being sued by the government for going beyond the limits on the I-9 form, our company could be sued by an individual who is eligible to work but denied a job if one of our employees makes an error in evaluating the documents.

· Finally, it should be noted that the Federal government specifically advises employers that they are not expected to be "document experts," and says that employers should have to spend no more than five minutes verifying the employee's eligibility to work, including examination of the documents presented.

The company can only hire people who apply for work, and in recent years a large proportion of job applicants have been Latino. House of Raeford offers competitive pay and benefits, and does not discriminate in its hiring on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, or any other prohibited factor. All of our employees pay their share of State and Federal taxes, including Medicaid and social security. We will continue to support and cooperate in the enforcement of all State and Federal laws, including immigration laws.

***END***