美国国家公共电台 NPR After ICE Raid, A Shortage Of Welders In Tigertown, Texas

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

More and more businesses are being raided as the Trump¹ administration goes after employers who knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants. The biggest bust² of all targeted a trailer manufacturer in northeast Texas. Immigration police hauled off more than 150 workers from the plant. As NPR's John Burnett reports, the raids have employers howling that the immigration crackdown is undermining another administration priority of boosting manufacturing in America.

(SOUNDBITE OF WELDING METAL)

JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE³: The sounds of raw steel being turned into trailers. It's brutish labor⁴. Cut the metal, hammer it into place, arc weld it, repeat. Business was booming here at the Load Trail plant northeast of Dallas. Their heavy black trailers are popular for hauling hay bales, topsoil and oilfield equipment. Then came the raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in late August.

Jake Thiessen, whose family founded this plant, takes me onto the production floor, and I ask him why it's half empty.

JAKE THIESSEN: Well, there should be a lot more welding going on on this floor right now. It's very slow now.

BURNETT: I hear your production is down, like, 40 percent.

THIESSEN: Yeah.

BURNETT: Over in company headquarters, Load Trail CEO Kevin Hiebert remembers the morning of August 28, when a helicopter thumped⁵ overhead and 300 ICE agents swarmed⁶ into his yard.

KEVIN HIEBERT: It looked like something that you typically would see out of the movies, not something you ever plan on living out in (laughter) real life.

BURNETT: ICE rounded up nearly a quarter of Hiebert's workforce⁷, loaded them into buses and booked them for working in the country unlawfully. A criminal investigation⁸ of the company continues. So far this year, ICE agents have stormed 7-Elevens, a meatpacking plant, dairy and vegetable farms, and a feedlot. Katrina Berger, Chief Homeland Security Investigator⁹ in the Dallas office, read a statement to reporters after the Load Trail raid.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KATRINA BERGER: Businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens create an unfair advantage over the competing businesses. In addition, they take jobs away from U.S. citizens and legal residents.

BURNETT: But you won't hear that complaint in Tigertown. This flyspeck¹⁰ community amid cotton fields near the Oklahoma border is home to a half-dozen major trailer manufacturers, all competitors.

Does the American trailer industry depend on undocumented labor?

HIEBERT: I can make a broader statement. I think the manufacturing industry in Texas, any kind of steel fabrication, construction, depends on immigrant labor, illegal immigrant labor.

BURNETT: That's what Hiebert thinks, and he's not alone. The vice¹¹ president of a competing trailer maker¹² down the road agrees. He says they all depend on illegal labor. He asked not to be named in hopes of staying off ICE's radar¹³. But it's too late for that. ICE is currently auditing¹⁴ employee records of every trailer manufacturer out here to find out which workers have fake identity documents. Some unauthorized employees are so rattled¹⁵, they're not showing up for work. Kevin Hiebert says what his industry needs are legal guest workers.

HIEBERT: Especially now that they're cranking up on the enforcement, everybody hopes that there will be some kind of a real immigration reform before what happens at Load Trail happens to them.

BURNETT: Load Trail has been in trouble before. In 2014, the company was fined $445,000 for employing more than 170 unauthorized immigrants at its plant. Hiebert says they hire who walks in the door, and they pay decent wages - $20 to $25 an hour. Still, they've always had a hard time finding welders¹⁷. So the work is done by men like Ignacio Barrios. He's a sturdy, 36-year-old welder¹⁶ who came here illegally from Oaxaca, Mexico. He wears an American flag T-shirt and sits in the church that's helping¹⁸ to support his family of five now that he's out of work. Barrios paid a $5,000 bond to get out of detention¹⁹. Now he's waiting for his day in immigration court.

IGNACIO BARRIOS: (Through interpreter) You have to work hard. Lots of times, you get injured, burned. You break your fingers. It gets over a hundred degrees in there. I've seen that Americans don't want to do the kind of work that we do.

BURNETT: Lamar County, where the ICE raid went down, is crimson²⁰ Trump country. Yet, to hear the trailer bosses tell it, the administration's aggressive immigration enforcement now threatens one of the county's lifebloods. I took this conundrum²¹ to the old boys down at the Dairy Queen in the county seat of Paris. They meet every morning to solve the world's problems.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Just coffee this morning?

BURNETT: Here's Alan Helberg, a former hospital administrator²².

ALAN HELBERG: This country will not survive if we don't straighten the way they can come over here and work - because I guarantee you the Americans are not going to do that.

BURNETT: And his buddy²³, Jerry Akers, a retired²⁴ dentist.

JERRY AKERS: The Congress of the United States needs to get off their duff and pass some meaningful legislation where people come here and work legally and not have to be afraid of getting uprooted²⁵.

BURNETT: Immigration reform is so far dead in the water in the gridlocked Congress, and back at Tigertown, the trailer makers²⁶ say if they can't find enough welders, they would consider moving their whole operations to Mexico. John Burnett, NPR News, Tigertown, Texas.

1 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

2 bust   

vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部

参考例句：

• I dropped my camera on the pavement and bust it. 我把照相机掉在人行道上摔坏了。
• She has worked up a lump of clay into a bust.她把一块黏土精心制作成一个半身像。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

5 thumped   

v.重击， （指心脏）急速跳动( thump的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Dave thumped the table in frustration . 戴夫懊恼得捶打桌子。
• He thumped the table angrily. 他愤怒地用拳捶击桌子。

6 swarmed   

密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去

参考例句：

• When the bell rang, the children swarmed out of the school. 铃声一响，孩子们蜂拥而出离开了学校。
• When the rain started the crowd swarmed back into the hotel. 雨一开始下，人群就蜂拥回了旅社。

7 workforce   

n.劳动大军，劳动力

参考例句：

• A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
• A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。

8 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

9 investigator   

n.研究者，调查者，审查者

参考例句：

• He was a special investigator for the FBI.他是联邦调查局的特别调查员。
• The investigator was able to deduce the crime and find the criminal.调查者能够推出犯罪过程并锁定罪犯。

10 flyspeck   

n.蝇粪留下的污点, 污点；v.弄脏

参考例句：

• The flyspeck is hard to clean.蝇粪留下的污点很难清洗。
• The maid cleaned the flyspeck off the carpet.女佣把地毯上的污点弄干净了。

11 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

12 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

13 radar   

n.雷达，无线电探测器

参考例句：

• They are following the flight of an aircraft by radar.他们正在用雷达追踪一架飞机的飞行。
• Enemy ships were detected on the radar.敌舰的影像已显现在雷达上。

14 auditing   

n.审计，查账，决算

参考例句：

• Auditing standards are the rules governing how an audit is performed.收支检查标准是规则统治一个稽核如何被运行。
• The auditing services market is dominated by a few large accounting firms.审计服务市场被几家大型会计公司独占了。

15 rattled   

慌乱的，恼火的

参考例句：

• The truck jolted and rattled over the rough ground. 卡车嘎吱嘎吱地在凹凸不平的地面上颠簸而行。
• Every time a bus went past, the windows rattled. 每逢公共汽车经过这里，窗户都格格作响。

16 welder   

n电焊工

参考例句：

• He left school at 15 to become an apprentice to a welder.他15岁离开了中学成为一个焊接工人的学徒。
• Welder done at least once a month when the dust handling.焊机时每月至少做一次除尘处理。

17 welders   

n.焊接工( welder的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Fifty welders were declared redundant. 已公布削减五十名焊工。 来自辞典例句
• Arcs more readily than AC welders, with longer arcing. 起弧比交流电容易，电弧加长一倍。 来自互联网

18 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

19 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。

20 crimson   

n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色

参考例句：

• She went crimson with embarrassment.她羞得满脸通红。
• Maple leaves have turned crimson.枫叶已经红了。

21 conundrum   

n.谜语；难题

参考例句：

• Let me give you some history about a conundrum.让我给你们一些关于谜题的历史。
• Scientists had focused on two explanations to solve this conundrum.科学家已锁定两种解释来解开这个难题。

22 administrator   

n.经营管理者，行政官员

参考例句：

• The role of administrator absorbed much of Ben's energy.行政职务耗掉本很多精力。
• He has proved himself capable as administrator.他表现出管理才能。

23 buddy   

n.（美口）密友，伙伴

参考例句：

• Calm down,buddy.What's the trouble?压压气，老兄。有什么麻烦吗？
• Get out of my way,buddy!别挡道了，你这家伙！

24 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

25 uprooted   

v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的过去式和过去分词 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园

参考例句：

• Many people were uprooted from their homes by the flood. 水灾令许多人背井离乡。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The hurricane blew with such force that trees were uprooted. 飓风强烈地刮着，树都被连根拔起了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

26 makers   

n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式）

参考例句：

• The makers of the product assured us that there had been no sacrifice of quality. 这一产品的制造商向我们保证说他们没有牺牲质量。
• The makers are about to launch out a new product. 制造商们马上要生产一种新产品。 来自《简明英汉词典》