But now the swine flu has Wal-Mart under scrutiny for a very different reason: Accusations that the retailer is leaving employees infected with swine flu little choice but to come to work, due to its punitive sick leave policies.

Citing a report by the National Labor Committee, the Institute for Southern Studies’ argues on its blog Facing South that Wal-Mart is essentially contributing to the spread of swine flu by making it financially prohibitive for employees to miss work when they fall ill.

Employees of the Arkansas-based retail giant — even its food handlers — feel they have no choice but to work when they’re sick. That’s because the company gives workers demerits and deducts pay for staying home when they’re sick or caring for sick children.

It gets worse:

The situation is particularly difficult for Wal-Mart workers who are single parents. The NLC reports on an instance in which an employee got a call from her four-year-old’s preschool telling her to pick up the child, who had a fever of 103 degrees F. Despite the fact that the employee had already worked for four hours that day, she got a demerit point for leaving and lost her wages for the rest of the day.

The report says: “Parents have no choice but to load their children up with Motrin and Dimetap to mask their symptoms so they can go to school.”

Which, of course, leads to a vicious circle of other children at school becoming sick, and spreading it in their families. Not to mention the misery of a sick child facing a full day of school.

What’s particularly interesting is that Wal-Mart includes on its Website some information about swine flu, including frequently asked questions. Here’s the answer to “What should I do if I get sick?”

Stay away from others as much as possible to keep from making others sick. Staying at home means that you should not leave your home except to seek medical care. This means avoiding normal activities, including work, school, travel, shopping, social events and public gatherings.

Unless you work at Wal-Mart. Then, you’d better make it in for your shift if you don’t want your pay docked or possibly lose your job. From Facing South:

Wal-Mart has a demerit system that punishes workers who cannot come to work due to illness. Employees who miss a day due to sickness receive a one-point demerit and lose eight hours of wages.

Employees with more than three absences a six-month period face discipline, and a fifth absence — even for a sick day — will result in what the company calls “active coaching” by management.

A sixth absence leads to what Wal-Mart calls “Decision Day,” when a worker can be either terminated or put on a year-long trial period during which time he or she can be fired for any infraction and cannot be promoted.

The swine flu sometimes can cause people to miss an entire week or more of work. At Wal-Mart, that could get you fired.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the Center for Disease Control was hoping for this flu season, as it tries to contain a life-threatening virus. Wal-Mart’s labor policies have long been contentious, but this one could actually create a public safety issue. If these allegations are true, it may be time for public health officials to step in somehow, perhaps with fines for the retailer for keeping flu-stricken employees on the job. And let’s not just pick on Wal-Mart; it’s very possible that other low-wage retailers and business are doing the same thing. Maybe the best option in the absence of any government action is for customers to walk away. Is a bargain really worth it if employees are forced to work while sick with the flu — and potentially help to spread an unusually dangerous virus?

At the end of April, the Department of Homeland Security announced that its policy would be to target employers who hire illegal immigrants, rather than the workers they hire. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement would still be authorized to arrest the undocumented workers it found in the raids, signaling no big shift from the Bush administration’s policy.

That does little to solve the much bigger problem of an irrational and often cruel immigration system by which workplace raids “netted about 6,000 undocumented immigrants, out of 12 million, and 135 employers or supervisors,” The Times wrote. “They destroyed families, tearing parents and grandparents from children, many of them citizens. The fear they caused went viral in immigrant communities, driving workers further into the arms of abusive employers while bringing us no closer to a working immigration system.”

President Obama has promised to start developing a better solution, though his comments so far have been vague and suggest the discussion of even what kind of bill to support will stretch out through next fall. In the meantime, workplace raids targeting employers are likely to lead some companies to refuse to hire immigrants at all, out of fear that the lawful documents they present are fraudulent — which could mean large penalties for the company.

Despite the anti-immigrant sentiment on the right stoked first by the recession and most recently swine flu, The Times editorial board apparently thinks that a sensible and comprehensive immigration reform — which even Alan Greenspan last week testified would benefit the U.S. economy — shouldn’t be sacrificed to hysteria.

Although Smithfield is still denying that its hogs could possibly have been the source of the virus, I came across this illuminating document from the Center for Disease Control that details just how hazardous such Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, known as CAFOs, are — and why they’re tightly regulated in the United States.

U.S. regulations “require CAFOs to carry a permit and to develop nutrient-management plans designed to keep animal waste from contaminating surface water and groundwater,” according to the CDC.

I don’t know if Mexico has comparable regulations, but according to Mexico’s La Jornada (quoted by David Kirby in The Huffington Post):

Clouds of flies emanate from the lagoons where Granjas Carroll discharges the fecal waste from its hog barns – as well as air pollution that has already caused an epidemic of respiratory infections in the town.

If this is the case, it sure doesn’t sound like strict health or environmental rules there are being enforced.

According to the CDC:

People who work with livestock may develop adverse health effects, including chronic and acute respiratory illnesses and musculoskeletal injuries, and may be exposed to infections that travel from animals to humans. Residents in areas surrounding CAFOs report nuisances, such as odor and flies. In studies of CAFOs, CDC has shown that chemical and infectious compounds from swine and poultry waste are able to migrate into soil and water near CAFOs.

Plus, “manure-related discharges at CAFOs include … pathogens, such as parasites, bacteria, and viruses, which can cause disease in animals and humans.”

The World Health Organization confirms that “Humans usually contract swine influenza from infected pigs…”  And even though Smithfield says its pigs aren’t sick, the swine can be asymptomatic, yet still be carriers of the virus (pdf).

Of course, this doesn’t prove that the swine flu came from the Granjas Carroll hog farms — a subsidiary of Smithfield — in La Gloria, Mexico. (The WHO has sent experts down to Mexico to investigate the potential link.) But it does seem to call into question the claims of the Mexican pig farming industry that “pigs are not the cause of the flu that is affecting the country. It must remain clear that the flu problem is caused neither by the proximity to swine operations nor by the consumption of pork meat or pork products.”

The pork industry, worried about declining sales, has asked the WHO to change the name of the disease so as to protect the industry’s reputation; the health organization, however, insisting that the disease does come from pigs, has declined.

For a more detailed account of the development of this story and its latest twists and turns, check out Tom Philpott’s excellent reporting at Grist.

Glenn Beck of Fox News (Youtube)

If the anti-immigrant reactions to the outbreak of swine flu are any indication, advocates for immigration reform are going to have an uphill battle in Congress this year.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship held its first hearing on Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The hearing was full of powerful arguments for why comprehensive immigration reform would boost the U.S. economy, enhance public safety and reinforce American values of hard work, family unity and entrepreneurship. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified to how legalizing undocumented immigrants would boost economic conditions for everyone, while Thomas Manger, Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief and Chairman of the legislative committee for the Major Cities Chiefs’ Association, testified that legalization would improve relationships between local communities and police officers and help law enforcement do its job.

But one witness, Joel Hunter, a church pastor who spoke eloquently of the humanitarian need for immigration reform, alluded to the dark side of the debate that could ultimately torpedo the reform effort: “A broken [immigration] system tempts many to predatory practices,” he said, including “the talk show hosts that increase their fame and fortune by picturing those without the proper papers only as conniving and dangerous parasites…”

The swine flu crisis this week played perfectly into the hands of those Hunter described.

When it comes to immigration, the facts often don’t seem to matter. Whether it’s a struggling economy or the threat of a pandemic, the crisis of the day becomes fodder for restrictionist activists to claim that immigration reform – particularly if it involves legalization, or what they derisively call “amnesty” – will only exacerbate the United States’ problems.

As Media Matters documented, nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage led the pack last Friday, saying: “Make no mistake about it: Illegal aliens are the carriers of the new strain of human-swine avian flu from Mexico.”

Never mind that the first reported cases in the United States came from schoolchildren at a New York City Catholic School who’d traveled to Mexico for spring break. “If we lived in saner times, the borders would be closed immediately,” insisted Savage, who went on to ask, “could this be a terrorist attack through Mexico? Could our dear friends in the radical Islamic countries have concocted this virus and planted it in Mexico knowing that you, [Homeland Security Secretary] Janet Napolitano, would do nothing to stop the flow of human traffic from Mexico?”

Immigration restrictionists unabashedly argue that the crisis of the day — whatever it may be — is the fault of illegal immigrants.

As the fear of swine flue spread on Monday, Fox News anchor Glenn Beck asked on his radio show: “Gee, it would be nice if we had border security now, wouldn’t it?” He went on: “But if you are a family and you’re down in Mexico and you’re dying and those in America are not, why wouldn’t you flood this border? Why wouldn’t you come across this border? It’s exactly what I warned of — different scenario, different reason of — I was talking about economic collapse. People start to come and rush this border, then what happens?”

William Gheen, head of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, on Monday blamed the Obama administration for risking American lives by its “failure to secure our borders.” In a press release issued Tuesday, he called on Congress to “demand that the southern border be closed to all non-essential traffic and that military troops are deployed to stop the nightly flow of thousands of illegal immigrants into America.”

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) soon chimed in, insisting that the U.S. government close the U.S.-Mexico border until the threat is resolved: “The epicenter of this outbreak is still in Mexico and while we now have several confirmed cases in the United States, we must consider all options to help reduce the number of new cases entering our nation,” said Massa. “I’m glad that the White House has issued a travel advisory and is conducting passive screening at the border, but I think we should consider stronger measures at the border. I am in favor of using all tools available to reduce the spread of Swine Flu.”

Then on Wednesday, The Washington Times, under the banner “Border Still Open,” opened their story on the swine flu outbreak saying, “U.S. officials say traffic across the southern border will not be interrupted by the swine flu outbreak, despite rising numbers of Mexican-origin infections in the U.S. and a warning that the number of infections could reach international pandemic levels.”

And Greta Van Sustren’s show on Fox News yesterday ran with the headline: “Seal the Border?”

Even The Los Angeles Times ran the headline: Swine flu: Time to close the U.S.-Mexico border?

In fact, experts on infectious diseases say that closing down the legal U.S.-Mexico border — even if it were possible — would only exacerbate the problem. “There is no connection between the severity of a pandemic and border crossings,” Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and a longtime adviser to the U.S. government on public health told the Public Radio International show “The World” on Tuesday.

Closing the border could actually inhibit the United States’ ability to obtain what it needs to treat patients and stop the swine flu’s spread. “Few people realize how many of the medical products we use in this country are made outside of the country,” Osterholm said. These products include the circuits for mechanical ventilators that help people breathe in a severe case of the flu. “One of largest producers of circuits in the world is in Mexico,” said Osterholm. “So if we suddenly shut down the border we’d limit how many ventilators we could provide.” Despite those ranting to the contrary, “Border closings in and of themselves do not accomplish walling yourself off from that virus.”  As President Obama said at his press conference on Wednesday, closing the border now would be “akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out, because we already have cases here in the United States.”

Still, it’s difficult to convince border restrictionists and their high-pitched advocates that anything but sealing the U.S.-Mexico border is the solution, whether the problem is a flu pandemic, drug-related violence or high unemployment.

At the Senate hearing on Thursday, although different witnesses emphasized different aspects of immigration reform, seven of eight witnesses, representing a broad range of interests, from labor to law enforcement to civil rights and business, supported some form of comprehensive reform that would provide a path to legalization for many of the nation’s current undocumented immigrants. To be sure, there are policy differences, particularly regarding how many temporary “guest” workers should be allowed, for example — businesses want more, unions want fewer — but there appears to be, at least among most serious advocates, legislators and policymakers, consensus about the need for comprehensive reform.

The biggest hurdle may be getting such sober, rational policy arguments heard above the alarmist.

A member of the security advance team for President Obama’s recent trip to Mexico is suspected of having contracted the swine flu, a senior White House official says.

As I wrote yesterday, based on some excellent reporting in Grist and elsewhere, local residents in La Gloria, Mexico, where the swine flu outbreak may have originated, suspect that the source is the Granjas Carroll industrial pig farm. The facility is half-owned by U.S.-based Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor.

Although some 60 percent of the town was sick with some sort of flu recently, it’s not clear that it was swine flu and Smithfield denies that any of its hundreds of thousands of pigs were infected. Smithfield subsidiaries “routinely administer influenza virus vaccination to their swine herds and conduct monthly tests for the presence of swine influenza,” the company said in a statement.

However, the current swine flu outbreak appears to involve a new strain of H1N1 influenza, so vaccinations against earlier forms of the virus may not work against this one.

The Mexican pig industry, meanwhile, denies all responsibility.

“We deny completely that the influenza virus affecting Mexico originated in pigs, because it has been scientifically demonstrated that this is not possible,” said a statement issued by the National Organization of Pig Production and Producers and its president, Mario Humberto Quintanilla González.

But the industry’s insistence that the disease cannot be transmitted from pigs to people contradicts almost everything the Mexican government has been saying about it, reports David Kirby for The Huffington Post. Mexico’s Health Minister, Jose Angel Cordova, has said the virus, “mutated from pigs, and then at some point was transmitted to humans.”

Fortunately, U.N. health inspectors don’t seem to be taking anyone’s word for it and will conduct their own investigation.

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“There is no connection between the severity of a pandemic and border crossings,” Osterholm said Tuesday during an interview on Public Radio International’s “The World.” What’s more, closing the border could actually inhibit the United States’ ability to obtain what it needs to treat patients and stop the swine flu’s spread. “Few people realize how many of the medical products we use in this country are made outside of the country,” Osterholm said.

These products include the circuits for mechanical ventilators that help people breathe in a severe case of the flu. “One of largest producers of circuits in the world is in Mexico,” said Osterholm. “So if we suddenly shut down the border we’d limit how many ventilators we could provide.”

So despite the hysteria in the United States and in Europe — where the European Union health minister just issued an advisory against travel to the United States and Mexico — Osterholm says: “Border closings in and of themselves do not accomplish walling yourself off from that virus.”

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So what better gift than swine flu?

According to The Arizona Republic, Arpaio — who’s also starring in a new Fox reality show — is now instructing his deputies working on the streets and in the jails where they might encounter illegal immigrants to wear protective gear if they fear they’ve come in contact with someone infected with the deadly swine flu.

According to The Republic:

The sheriff’s office will make masks, gloves and other measures available to 750 deputies working the streets and will add extra deputies trained to identify suspected illegal immigrants based on the theory that some of those inmates might have come from areas in Mexico where the infection was rampant, said Lt. Brian Lee, a sheriff’s spokesman.

“Sheriff Joe,” as he’s known, also made a point of warning that infectious diseases could proliferate throughout the United States if the country doesn’t quickly reinforce its border with Mexico.

The new protective gear is specifically designed “for the arrest of illegal immigrants,” but also “to keep deputies from exposing themselves to infected people before they learn of the suspect’s legal status in the country, Lee said deputies would be encouraged to protect themselves if they come into contact with anyone exhibiting signs of the flu- no matter where the suspect appears to have come from.”

In March, a local chapter of the Laborers International Union of North America filed labor charges against Smithfield in Virginia, claiming the company has refused to bargain with the union as the company plans to close down one of its hometown plants and transfer some workers to other sites. LIUNA filed more charges in April.

This is hardly the first time Smithfield has had labor conflicts.  In 2007, unions charged that Smithfield collaborated with immigration authorities who led an immigration raid at its huge North Carolina pork-packing plant. Union officials said Smithfield was trying to discourage its workers from organizing.

Still, nothing tops this 2006 Rolling Stone story about Smithfield, which claims that “America’s top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history.”

As Rolling Stone put it: “Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat.”

If the suspicions about Smithfield’s pig waste being the source of the swine flu pandemic pan out, the company’s reputation may soon get even darker.

Michelle Malkin writes, “hey maybe we’ll finally get serious about borders now,” adding that she’s “blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration,” but “open-borders ideologues” would never listen. “Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools will.”

William Gheen, meanwhile, head of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, on Monday blamed the Obama administration for putting American lives at risk due to its “failure to secure our borders.” In a press release issued Tuesday, he called on Congress to “demand that the southern border be closed to all non essential traffic and that military troops are deployed to stop the nightly flow of thousands of illegal immigrants into America.”

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has jumped on the train, too. Yesterday, he called on the U.S. government to close the U.S.-Mexico border until the threat is resolved:

The epicenter of this outbreak is still in Mexico and while we now have several confirmed cases in the United States, we must consider all options to help reduce the number of new cases entering our nation. I’m glad that the White House has issued a travel advisory and is conducting passive screening at the border, but I think we should consider stronger measures at the border. I am in favor of using all tools available to reduce the spread of Swine Flu.

Other restrictionist bloggers are picking up on the theme, citing “illegal immigration” as the source of the flu: “Are we all going to die in the name of political correctness?” asks iReport.

Meanwhile, the latest reports suggest, as I wrote earlier, that the disease didn’t spread from illegal immigrants crossing the border, but from mounds of uncontrolled porcine fecal matter at a Mexican subsidiary of a U.S.-based pork processor.