FLDS Child Labor

[shesinsane]

Non-rhetorical question: How is it that child labor laws were traditionally enforced? It has always been the case that everyone involved with child labor had a monetary reason to keep it a secret. The parents would get money, the company would get cheap labor, the clients would get cheap labor. And yet child labor used to be common in the US and now it's incredibly rare. How did this change come about? What are the factors that enabled this to work the first time but wouldn't work against the FLDS?

Also, why not go after the FLDS on racketeering or anti-mafia laws? They have monopoly power and I can't see much difference from where I'm standing between them and organized crime.

Finally, couldn't you also go after them for tax or welfare fraud? In the FLDS compound most mothers are on TANF as "single mothers" despite being married. I'd think reducing welfare fraud, in particular, would play very well in Republican-controlled states.

Unions had a big hand in ending child labor, these days their reputations are rather diminished. They're likely too busy trying to save the benefits promised their workers to worry about a few kids doing construction in the desert.

FLDS has something the mob and other criminal organzations don't - religion. They hide behind their FLDS shield and any attacks on the group are dismissed as religious persecution. Also, those photographs of women and children being dragged away from fathers in handcuffs (when authorities raided Short Creek in the 50s) still trigger powerful emotions and no one wants to cause another situation like that.

You'd think the rampant welfare fraud would get more attention, but you've got to remember a) it's poor whites in a rural area (which is not what most Americans think of when you say welfare fraud) and b) with women and children easily "reassigned" to other families, it's hard for the bureaucracy to keep up. Also remember that (and I'm not sure if this has changed) local law enforcement/city government was part of the FLDS. When the voting population is mostly FLDS, no politician that wants to win can campaign on a platform of cracking down on FLDS related fraud.