05/22/2016
Tesla is in the news for hiring practices by its sub-contractors involved in the expansion of its automobile production in its Fremont, CA, manufacturing plant. The welfare dependent car producer is not uniquely guilty in the policy of replacing American workers with foreigners. While eventually Tesla can and will be held responsible for replacing American workers with aliens working at low wages, it is more innocent than other American companies who hate American workers, both white-collar and blue-collar.Basically, this is what Tesla did; it was building a modern automobile production plant. It contracted with Eisenmann GmbH, a Germany based multinational corporation with expertise in manufacturing plant construction, which it hired to construct a paint plant where Tesla vehicles would be painted. Nothing unusual about that.
Eisenmann, of course, had to install its unique equipment in the growing Tesla plant in Fremont, CA. To install this equipment, it was entitled to send its own employees to the plant to supervise the installation of the equipment. This is legal based on the principle that Eisenmann had unique knowledge that only its employees could supply. Said employees are admissible to the United States on the B-1 visa for the limited purpose of supervising the installation of its systems. The B-1 visa does not permit the use of said labor for general or skilled construction, only the installation of specific systems unique to the manufacturer, who is also installing the system.
When Gregor Lesnik left his pregnant girlfriend in Slovenia for a job in America, his visa application described specialized skills and said he was a supervisor headed to a South Carolina auto plant.The victim in this case, the Slovenian worker, was performing general and skilled construction work in violation of immigration laws. Tesla claimed that it had an arm’s length relationship with Eisenmann, but in the end, Tesla directed and controlled the work of Eisenman and Eisenmann’s sub-contractor, Vuzem, Inc. It will be held liable, but there was nothing in its relationship with Eisenmann that called for illegal alien workers. In fact, Tesla is claiming that it paid required Eisenmann to pay its workers $55.00 an hour. Eisenmann has, of course, turned on its sub-contractor, Vuzem, so we will soon find out the truth, as Vuzem officials seek to not the one holding the bag. And in more than Tesla, as Eisenmann has contracts with other automobile manufacturers in the U.S., such as Volkswagen.Turns out, that wasn’t true.
The unemployed electrician had no qualifications to oversee American workers and spoke only a sentence or two of English. He never set foot in South Carolina. The companies that arranged his questionable visa instead sent Lesnik to a menial job in Silicon Valley. He earned the equivalent of $5 an hour to expand the plant for one of the world’s most sophisticated companies, Tesla Motors.
Lesnik’s three-month tenure ended a year ago in a serious injury and a lawsuit that has exposed a troubling practice in the auto industry. Overseas contractors are shipping workers from impoverished countries to American factories, where they work long hours for low wages, in apparent violation of visa and labor laws.
About 140 workers from Eastern Europe, mostly from Croatia and Slovenia, built a new paint shop at Tesla’s Fremont plant, a project vital to the flagship Silicon Valley automaker’s plans to ramp up production of its highly anticipated Model 3 sedan. Their story emerged from dozens of interviews conducted by the Bay Area News Group, and an extensive review of payroll, visa and court documents.
[The Hidden Workforce Expanding Tesla’s Factory, by Louis Hansen, San Jose Mercury News, May 15, 2016]
But as unpatriotic as Tesla was, and as Eisenmann USA, the corporate shill for Eisenmann GmbH, is, Tesla is not as guilty as The Boeing Company is. Boeing, as reported before by this blog, is directly hiring illegal aliens using the same visa scheme as Eisenmann or Vuzem. For a number of years, it has been bringing in B-1 workers from Russia to perform general aeronautical design work, replacing American engineering employees directly. Initially U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was deporting these illegal alien workers, but the Obama Regime interfered with the application of immigration law to The Boeing Company, and eventually Boeing was allowed to continue to replace American workers with Russian workers.
With the principle set that The Boeing Company can violate U.S. immigration laws and replace American workers with Russian workers using the B-1 visa, why are Tesla and Eisenmann being held to a different standard? That, obviously, will be part of the legal wrangling in the future if ICE SVU gets off its keister and starts arresting Eisenmann and Tesla corporate officials for alien smuggling and unlawful employment of illegal aliens, violations of Title 8 United States Code, Section 1324, Bringing In And Harboring Certain Aliens, and Title 8 United States Code, Section 1324a, Unlawful Employment of Aliens.
The only question is when the Obama Regime will shut down any investigation as part of the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty, as Tesla and Eisenmann have legal precedent on their side.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.