Today, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), American Rights at Work (ARAW), and the National Employment Law Project (NELP) are releasing a report, “ICED Out: How Immigration Enforcement Has Interfered with Workers’ Rights,” which documents, according to the ARAW press advisory:
How the federal government’s approach to immigration enforcement in the recent past has severely undermined efforts to protect workers’ rights, to the detriment of immigrant and native-born workers alike.
The reports examines the Bush Administration’s workplace immigration enforcement actions between 2006 and 2008 and it describes, in devastating detail, the problems associated with prioritizing immigration enforcement over labor law enforcement.
Contributing authors Ana Avendaño (AFL-CIO), Julia Martinez Ortega (ARAW), and Rebecca Smith (NELP), will be joined by two immigrant workers, Josue Diaz and Saravan Chelvan at AFL-CIO headquarters today in Washington DC to discuss the report’s findings and recommendations — primarily, “how the division between labor and immigration enforcement has eroded, and what the administration and federal agencies can do to restore the balance.”According to Smith:
In recent years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have taken actions against workers who complained about non-payment of wages, who were injured on the job, trying to exercise collective bargaining rights or who were victims of discrimination. The single-minded focus on immigration enforcement has allowed employers to profit by employing a workforce too terrified to make complaints. The report recommends common-sense rules that will provide policy coherence between enforcement of immigration laws and protection of labor rights.
So, now we’re ticketing people for not speaking English? No, really.
Daphne Eviatar of the Washington Independent reports:
Dallas police wrongly ticketed at least 39 drivers for not speaking English over the last three years, reports the Dallas Morning News.
It seems Dallas police were confused when, after pulling drivers over for other suspected violations, the police checked their in-car computers and a pull-down menu listed the “non-English speaking driver” charge as an option. The violation actually referred to a federal law governing commercial drivers that the Dallas police now say they don’t even enforce. However, at least 39 non-commercial drivers were fined $204 for their limited language skills.
Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle said on Friday that they would be reimbursed.
As Eviatar points out, this certainly raises serious questions about the controversial 287(g) agreements– partnerships in which local cops are now enforcing federal immigration law:
Although Dallas police don’t seem to have been attempting to enforce any immigration laws in these incidents, there’s a parallel to the ongoing controversy over a federal program that allows local police around the country who stop Latinos for minor traffic violations to check their legal status, then turn them over to federal immigration authorities for deportation if they can’t prove they’re in the United States legally.
The federal program, known as 287(g), deputizes some local police to enforce federal immigration law. But abuse of that power, often due to similar misunderstandings by local police officers, has at times led to the deportation of legal U.S. residents and even citizens, and prompted angry complaints from immigrants’ advocates.
This 287(g) program has been abused most prominently by the likes of racial profiler Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Larger issues of local immigration enforcement aside, this ticketing nonsense begs the question, what kind of United States of America do we want to live in? Should my grandmother, who lived here most of my life but could barely carry on a conversation in English, have been ticketed for speaking Hindi? I hope the answer is, unequivocally, no.
I love this country, and we have to do better than this.
Today, the New York Immigration Coalition and the New York Community Alliance released questionnaire responses from Michael Bloomberg, Bill Thompson, and Dein Fein – three of New York City’s eight mayoral candidates – on a number of immigration issues. According to their joint press statement today:
The responses document the candidates’ positions on a host of immigrant issues, from how they will tackle the high-school dropout crisis facing English language learners to what they will do to fight for immigration reform at the national level.
The candidates also answered questions about making adult English classes available to more immigrant New Yorkers, the city’s role in immigration enforcement, health care access, affordable housing, and other immigrant concerns.
Each candidate’s full response to the questionnaire is available in PDF format here – (scroll to the bottom)
Their statement notes that approximately 25-33 percent of New York City’s electorate is made up of foreign-born immigrants, and that “Immigrants also are the fastest-growing segment of the city’s voters. Nearly half (41 percent) of all first-time voters were foreign-born, according to a 2008 study conducted by Barnard College of Columbia University and the NYIC.”
The questionnaires were developed to help New York City’s large naturalized immigrant population (those who have become citizens and can vote) decide on the best candidate for the job, and the fact that so many candidates responded reflects the growing influence of this diverse constituency.
Last week Stephen Magagnini and Susan Ferriss of the Sacramento Bee first reported that Police Chief Rick Braziel had become the latest voice of a growing number of police chiefs across the nation calling for a serious immigration overhaul.
These police chiefs are sick and tired of what they’re seeing on the ground– an unworkable system made worse by politicians’ failure to tackle real immigration reform. Unsurprisingly, these cops favor an approach to reform that prioritizes pragmatism over rhetoric– one that makes their communities safer by dealing with the realities of a badly broken immigration system.
As the Sacramento Bee reports:
Braziel said Congress must take a two-pronged approach: tighter borders and a way to allow undocumented immigrants who are productive to stay in the U.S. legally. Now, many are afraid to assist in criminal investigations, Braziel said.
Such a two-pronged approach, sure to draw criticism and support from both sides of the aisle, is nothing new. Police chiefs standing up to fight for it, however, is very new.
Why are they risking the ire of many in their communities to speak out?
Marcos Breton, reporting for the Sacramento Bee this morning, makes a clear case:
Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel is not an immigration rights advocate.
He supports maintaining strong borders. And he has no sympathy for undocumented felons.
“If you’re a serious criminal, we’re going to use every law – local, state and federal – to get you off the street,” Braziel said last week.
But based on nearly 30 years as a cop, Braziel believes that confusing immigration laws are hindering cops and helping criminals.
Too many undocumented immigrants who are victims or witnesses to crimes are avoiding police for fear they’ll be deported, Braziel and other cops say. This allows criminals to prey on innocent people.
Note: Originally posted by Rachel Labruyere at Standing FIRM.
Today Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) joined the growing chorus of voices calling for comprehensive immigration reform. In a telephonic briefing with New York and national advocates, including the New York Immigration Coalition, Crowley stressed the urgency of the issue, saying:
“This is a moral imperative – the time is now.”
The Representative recently delivered a letter to President Obama that was signed by 110 of his fellow House of Representative democrats, telling the Commander in Chief:
We need [your]leadership to move immigration reform forward and we stand ready to support comprehensive reform that balances our nation’s security needs with a realistic and humane solution for the estimated 12 million undocumented people already living in the United States.
This is a significant step, given the President’s repeated appeals that he needs support to help move legislation through Congress. That support is coming steadily now, from Crowley and his peers, from communities of faith and even from law enforcement agencies nationwide.
In the past few weeks, we’ve been calling for CNN to drop their controversial, anti-immigrant “news show,” Lou Dobbs Tonight, along with organizations across the country.
In anticipation of CNN’s highly-publicized “Latino in America” series, many of these groups were also eager to see what steps, if any, CNN would take to address their own involvement in the difficulty of being Latino in America. On the eve of the “Latino in America” premier, CNN was protested by the very same demographic it was supposed to entice (national protests were organized by our friends at BastaDobbs.com and were covered by La Macha of Vivir Latino).
Many were dismayed. According to the New York Times:
One of the activists featured in the documentary said on Wednesday she tried to bring up what she called Mr. Dobbs’s “hatred” on one of the channel’s news programs, but that her remarks were cut from the interview.
The activist, Isabel Garcia, also said, according to the same NY Times piece, that “CNN was ‘promoting lies and hate about our community’ by broadcasting Mr. Dobbs’s program.”
But that comment, along with several others that she made about Dobbs, never made it on air.
