Interview: What Do The New Immigration Rules Mean?

By Julia Kann, Labor Notes
December 18, 2014

Immigrant rights activists are assessing the new presidential executive order and what’s next in the fight for immigrant rights. Photo: Light Brigading, CC BY-NC 2.0.

Responding to years of pressure from immigrant activists, President Obama took executive action on November 20 (see box below for details). We interviewed two activists about the executive order and what’s next in the fight for immigrant rights.

Arianna Salgado is a Chicago-based immigrant and education activist and member of the Immigrant Youth Justice League.

Guillermo Perez is the President of the Pittsburgh Labor Council on Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), a member activist in the steelworkers union (USW) local 3657, and a member of the Labor Notes policy committee.[...]

Read the full interview:
http://labornotes.org/2014/12/interview-what-do-new-immigration-rules-mean

Viewpoint: Concerns about Obama's Immigration Announcement

By David Bacon, Labor Notes
January 5, 2015

I think your interview left out important concerns that many immigrant rights and labor activists have about Obama’s announcement. I’ll attach the Dignity Campaign statement that outlines some of them, and a statement by Maru Mora Villapando, the organizer of the hunger strikes at the Tacoma detention center, that outlines others.

One factual note. Both your question about I-9 audits and the two answers were inadvertently misleading. The vast majority of people (tens of thousands at least) fired as a result of audits are fired at the demand of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), not as a result of employer retaliation. A large percentage, perhaps even a majority, are union members. Getting unions to defend them against government enforcement has been very difficult, as you know.

There will continue to be at least 7 million undocumented workers in the U.S., even if every one of the people qualified for Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) applies for and receives it, which is very unlikely. To date, less than half of the people qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), for instance, have applied for and received it.[...]

Read the full response:
http://labornotes.org/blogs/2015/01/viewpoint-concerns-about-obamas-immigration-announcement