More Evidence

Report raises new questions about Smith Frozen Foods, Inc. hiring practices. Smith should answer honestly about his company’s hiring of undocumented workers.

New reporting from today’s Willamette Week uncovers more contradictions from Republican U.S. Senator Gordon Smith about his company’s practice of hiring undocumented workers.

Although Smith claimed in last week’s U.S. Senate debate that all the workers at his plant are documented, Willamette Week has uncovered a letter to the Social Security Administration from Smith Frozen Foods, Inc. showing that the company must have known it employed an undocumented worker and did nothing about it.

“The letter from Smith Frozen Foods is related to Hernandez’s effort to get Social Security benefits. But it is also a record of one worker’s employment with a fake Social Security number and Hernandez’s successful attempt to change that number when she got a new, valid one. Her move never appears to have raised any red flags with Smith Frozen Foods. The letter runs counter to Smith’s contention, repeated Sept. 10 on Lars Larson’s radio show, that his company follows a ‘very rigid procedure for hiring people.’ It also contradicts Smith’s statements about illegal immigration and casts a new light on his vote last year to kill federal legislation paving the way for undocumented workers to seek legal status.”
(Willamette Week, 10-15-08)

“Every time Gordon Smith discusses his company’s hiring practices, he blows more holes in his already tattered credibility,” DPO Chair Meredith Wood Smith said. “On television, on radio, in debates and to reporters, he consistently repeats a claim he knows is not true – that his company does everything it can to follow the law. When Gordon Smith got caught for exaggerating how often he travels Oregon, he instantly corrected his absurdly false claim. When will he acknowledge his egregious untruths about his company and correct his public statements? When will he instruct his company to follow the law, not circumvent it?”

You can read the whole article here.

You can see the letter from Smith Frozen Foods to the Social Security Administration here.

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