There is a Republican currently running for the Texas House of Representatives. He is heavily relying on a platform that cracks down on immigrants. His campaign website states that Texas needs to “turn off the magnets that drive further illegal immigration,” which includes “policies of in-state tuition, sanctuary cities, and free healthcare and education.”
This man’s name is Thomas McNutt. Take a moment to reflect on how awesome this guy’s name is.
Mr. McNutt (chuckle) serves as Vice President of Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, which is well-known for its fruitcakes (there are easily a hundred jokes here).
All puns aside, while Mr. McNutt stands firmly against allowing immigrants to come into Texas and find jobs, Mr. McNutt is also a hypocrite. According to a couple of prior employees, Collin Street Bakery has employed at least two undocumented immigrants over the years.
Though if chef Anthony Bourdain’s testimony regarding the degree at which the culinary industry hires undocumented immigrants is any indicator, I would surmise that Collin Street Bakery has employed more than two over the years.
Both Jose Manuel Santoyo and Luis Aguilar worked for Collin Street Bakery, the former in 2012 and the latter during the 2009 holiday season. Both are immigrants, having come into the United States as children — aged 8 and 2, respectively — and continue to work and live in the United States because of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
DACA grants immigrants who arrived as children temporary deportation reprieve and work authorization. However, at the time the two were employed at Collin Street Bakery, DACA wasn’t in effect. They were both employed as unauthorized immigrants. From the Dallas Morning News:
“‘It’s no big news in Corsicana,’ Santoyo, now 23, said of the bakery hiring unauthorized workers. ‘They gave opportunities to everyone in the community, so for him to come out and speak publicly against some of his own employees really is shameful.'”
But Mr. McNutt, who presumably has no relation to anyone in Candy Land, claims he was not aware any undocumented immigrants were employed at Collin Street Bakery. From the Dallas Morning News:
“‘I am completely opposed, personally, to employing illegal immigrants, and to my knowledge, we have never done that at the Collin Street Bakery,’ McNutt said. ‘We do everything that the law requires us to do to prevent that from happening.'”
How do undocumented immigrants get jobs without the necessary paperwork? According to Bill Beardall, director of the Transnational Worker Rights Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin, employers typically either ignore the law and pay undocumented immigrants under the table or unauthorized immigrants obtain counterfeit documents, like Social Security numbers or green cards. Mr. Beardall refers to the practice as a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell tradition” and that if the counterfeit documents looks genuine enough, employers will “accept them on their face” and will not “ask any more questions.”
Even though the federal government offers an E-Verify system, which determines whether the Social Security numbers and permanent resident ID’s match the name of job applicants, less than 10 percent of employers use E-Verify. E-Verify is free for employers and completely voluntary.
Collin Street Bakery does not participate in E-Verify.
Perhaps if Mr. McNutt were as committed to uprooting undocumented immigrants as he claims, Collin Street Bakery would participate in E-Verify. Of course, there exists another reason worth speculating. Perhaps Mr. McNutt does what plenty of employers (especially in Texas) do and hire undocumented immigrants because it’s cost-effective? It’s not as if that’s a rare practice in Texas.
