Immigration Reform Is Still Possible — With a Strong Social Movement

Rally at SCOTUS Photo: Tom Williams/ Cq-Roll/Getty Images

2021 didn’t bring anything like the progress many immigrants and their allies were hoping for. But sustained grassroots organizing could turn the situation around in 2022.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

January 10, 2022

A year ago, it seemed possible that the country might get its first truly positive immigration reform since the 1986 “Reagan amnesty.”

The incoming Biden administration was proposing legislation that would allow most of the country’s 10 to 11 million undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status. The outlines were subsequently included in the Build Back Better bill, but the Democrats had to pare the reform back in order to win approval from the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, under the arcane Senate reconciliation process. The Democrats’ most recent proposal was just a limited parole for some 6.5 million immigrants, and even that concession wasn’t enough for MacDonough. She nixed the plan on December 16.[…]

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/immigration-reform-is-still-possible-with-a-strong-social-movement/

 

Rally at SCOTUS Photo: Tom Williams/ Cq-Roll/Getty Images

Are There “Foreigners” in the U.S. Working Class?

Judis, who has decades of experience on the U.S. left, succeeded in setting forth a clear and concise formulation of a socialist position in favor of immigration restrictions. In doing so, he inadvertently demonstrated how completely detached that position is from reality.

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

January 3, 2022

The libertarian magazine Reason ran an eye-catching headline in its August-September issue: “How Mass Immigration Stopped American Socialism.”

The article itself doesn’t do much more than reveal its authors’ ignorance about socialism and about socialist labor organizing in the early twentieth century, but it highlights a problem that has troubled U.S. socialists for more than a century. Pro-immigrant positions are natural for leftists; they have no trouble recognizing the dehumanization and the appeals to racism and xenophobia that underlie rightwing rhetoric against “open borders” and “illegal aliens.” But does socialist support for immigrants’ rights drive away U.S.-born workers?[…]

Read the full article:

https://mronline.org/2022/01/03/are-there-foreigners-in-the-u-s-working-class/

 

Immigrants and supporters march on May Day. Photo: David Bacon

Anti-Immigrant Policies Are Not Only Cruel, They Also Have an Economic Cost

Legalization and a fair work visa program would raise wages for many U.S.-born workers as well. This wage increase would in itself provide an important stimulus to an economy facing its worst crisis since the 1930s.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

August 19, 2020

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the government agency that processes visas, green cards and citizenship applications, claims it’s going broke. USCIS officials are threatening to furlough some 13,400 employees as early as August 30, after itially planning the measure for August 3. The furloughs would add to what was already a huge backlog in application processing, creating a disaster for tens of thousands of immigrant applicants. As many as 126,000 people already approved for citizenship may not be naturalized in time to register for the November elections.

Trump administration officials blame the agency’s financial problems on the COVID-19 pandemic...

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/anti-immigrant-policies-are-not-only-cruel-they-also-have-an-economic-cost/

U.S.-Mexico border fence in Playas de Tijuana, BC. Photo: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images

Trump’s Guest Worker Ban Sparks New Focus on Immigrant Push for Labor Overhaul

“Most media coverage has treated the issue as a choice between bringing guest workers in and keeping them out. But there are better options.”

By Jane Guskin and David L. Wilson, Truthout

July 15, 2020

President Trump’s decision to suspend the majority of U.S. guest worker programs for at least six months, announced in a June 22 proclamation, has provoked a lot of debate.

For Mark Krikorian, who heads the immigration-restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, the suspension is “a bold move … to protect American jobs,” while South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham warns it will have “a chilling effect on our economic recovery.” [...]

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-guest-worker-ban-sparks-new-focus-on-immigrant-push-for-labor-overhaul/

Construction worker in NYC. Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images

Trump Welcomes More Guest Workers Amid Crisis While Rejecting Asylum Seekers

Seasonal workers in California. Photo: Davis Turner/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

This type of exploitation hurts all U.S. workers, both jobless citizens and underpaid foreign workers, but the situation is rarely discussed in the media or in political debates.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

April 11, 2020

Two recent news items neatly sum up U.S. immigration policy during the COVID-19 crisis.

Asylum seekers are now being turned away at the border without even a chance to make their asylum claims; the excuse for the new policy is a March 20 order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, officials say the administration may expand the recruitment of temporary agricultural workers. The purpose would be “to get enough migrant labor to keep the food supply moving” while the crisis drags on.[...]

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-welcomes-more-guest-workers-amid-crisis-while-rejecting-asylum-seekers/

Bernie Sanders’ Immigration Platform

Bernie Sanders’ campaign released the senator’s immigration platform on November 7. The candidates’ immigration plan is easily the most progressive and most detailed presented by any candidate in this election cycle, and represents a significant advance over Sanders’ stance four years earlier.

Predictably, media coverage focused more on electoral strategy than on the important immigration issues raised in the platform. The immigration issues that the media did discuss were generally the ones the political class considers hot-button questions—abolish ICE? open borders? decriminalize unauthorized entry?—not demands for amnesty and a repeal of  the 1996 laws, the demands that have the greatest impact on immigrant families and communities.

The Sanders platform has the potential to be far more than an electoral ploy. While not perfect, it’s a major step towards getting a wider public to rethink the United States’ entire approach to immigration. 

Below we describe some of the best media coverage.

Vox’s Nicole Narea and Tara Golshan produced a fairly comprehensive summary of the platform in their article, “Bernie Sanders’s immigration plan puts the rights of workers into focus.” As the title indicates, Narea and Golshan note Sanders’ emphasis on undocumented immigrants as workers who are denied their labor rights. The Vox writers also note Sanders’ support for amnesty and his pledge to end Trump’s anti-asylum measures, notably MPP/”Remain in Mexico,” by executive action. But they don’t mention two other major commitments: to repealing the 1996 immigration laws and to addressing the root causes of immigration in US foreign policy.

In The Nation, John Washington’s “Bernie’s Immigration Plan Is Good” makes several important points. While the Vox coverage treats Sanders’ emphasis on labor rights simply as “part of his signature issue of workers’ rights,” Washington also notes that immigration and labor exploitation “cannot be untangled,” just as immigrant rights can’t be treated separately from the struggle against racism. Another important point from Washington: the Sanders platform was largely written by immigrant rights activists rather than by politicians and think tank analysts. Strangely, though, he omits any mention of the platform’s positions on repealing the 1996 laws and on turning back Trump’s attack on asylum.

“Bernie Sanders’s New Immigration Proposal Is Incredibly Strong,” by Daniel Denvir in Jacobin also passes over the asylum issue. However, Denvir stresses the organizing potential of the platform’s platform on workers’ rights: “by emphasizing that immigrants are core to the working class rather than a threat to it, Sanders strengthens the multiracial coalition that is this country’s only hope for transformative change.” Denvir also notes that the Sanders approach addresses the US government’s role in creating the conditions that force people to leave their countries. “[W]e must remake the global economy and deliver economic justice,” Denvir writes, “so that people are free to not migrate and stay put if they choose.”

”Bernie Sanders’s immigration plan: a response from the front-lines of struggle,” by Lupita Romero at Puntorojo also stresses Sanders’ commitment to addressing the US foreign policies that lie at the heart of much immigration here. Romero, who is an undocumented immigrant herself, emphasizes a point that Washington makes: that Sanders' platform “is the only one truly tapping into the demands of the immigrant rights movement and the popular sentiment for defending and strengthening civil rights.”

But Romero also brings up an issue missed by most coverage: that Sanders’ platform can be used as a starting point for grassroots organizing "through and beyond" the 2020 election. “[C]oalitions and organizing committees should be formed now.” Romero writes. “We should be calling for the abolition of ICE and the DHS, for the repeal of the ‘Illegal Immigration Act of 1996,’ and for active opposition to US intervention in Latin America.”

Viewpoint: Vote No on the PSC-CUNY Contract: 7K or Strike

By Jane Guskin, Labor Notes

November 7, 2019

The Professional Staff Congress, American Federation of Teachers Local 2334, reached a tentative agreement in October on a new contract with the City University of New York (CUNY). The agreement covers 30,000 workers at the university, including part- and full-time faculty, professional staff, lab technicians, graduate employees, and more. Below we publish a piece arguing for a no vote on the agreement. See the argument for a yes vote here.

What’s wrong with the PSC tentative agreement?

The proposed contract capitulates to New York state’s austerity budget for public higher education, hurting CUNY students and workers. While the PSC leadership is enthusiastically promoting this proposed agreement as a victory, its salary gains remain far below the original bargaining demands. Concessions like an increase in adjuncts’ workloads and elimination of our seniority salary steps would be difficult to reverse in future contracts.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2019/11/viewpoint-vote-no-psc-cuny-contract-7k-or-strike

Employers increase their profits and put downward pressure on wages and labor standards by exploiting migrant workers

[This article from the Economic Policy Institute makes a crucial point that’s often missing from discussions of immigration: U.S. workers aren’t harmed by the presence of undocumented workers and guest workers; the problem is the super-exploitation of foreign-born workers, and the solution is ending the policies that enable this super-exploitation.—TPOI editor]

By Daniel Costa, Economic Policy Institute

August 27, 2019

In recent decades, far too much of our immigration policy apparatus has ignored the interests of workers—immigrants and U.S.-born workers alike. This apparatus has instead been weaponized to suppress wages for employers’ gain. Immigration is an area of policy where a few simple solutions could result in major improvements to labor standards for all workers—but these solutions are blocked by low-road employers who benefit from today’s anti-worker system.

To be clear, the challenge posed to U.S. workers is not the simple presence of migrant workers in the labor market; instead, it is the legal framework that makes these workers exploitable.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.epi.org/publication/labor-day-2019-immigration-policy/

Ursula Levelt, Presente!

Ursula Levelt, 1959-2019

[Our friend Ursula Levelt died of cancer on July 7. In addition to her work for labor rights, Ursula was a powerful advocate for immigrants—here in the United States and in her native Netherlands. Below is a tribute from Transit Workers Union Local 100, where she was legal director, along with a link to an article Ursula wrote for openDemocracy in 2014.—TPOI editor] 

TWU Mourns Ursula Levelt, Retired Director of the Local 100 Legal Department

TWU Local 100 sadly reports the passing of long-time in-house attorney and labor activist, Ursula Levelt.  She died on July 7, 2019 of cancer in her beloved Amsterdam, the Netherlands.  She had moved back there recently to spend her final days in the place of her birth.  She was 60 years old. Her husband, Bill, informed the union of her death, saying: “Ursula was dedicated to the labor movement and to TWU Local 100.  She remembered the many friends and comrades there that she had worked with and fought for over the many years.”[…]

Read the full obituary:

http://www.twulocal100.org/story/twu-mourns-ursula-levelt-retired-director-local-100-legal-department

Can “the people” truly set the agenda?

By Ursula Levelt, openDemocracy

May 21, 2014

Although the human rights movement has long been a project of elites, many are working to change this story. Earlier on openGlobalRights, James Ron and colleagues argued that to combat the movement’s elitist slant, human rights organizations should foster grassroots movements worldwide, and human rights in general should be more mass-based. In contrast, Felipe Cordero noted that human rights groups need the support of powerful people and should work with elites as much as possible. Amnesty International’s Steve Crawshaw argued we should not falsely polarize elites and the masses; both are needed, and are mutually dependent.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/openglobalrights-openpage/can-people-truly-set-agenda/

ICE Raids Benefit Bosses by Creating Fear in Workers

ICE raid in Los Angeles. Photo: Allen J. Schaben/LAT via Getty Images

In 2000, an immigration official admitted that the authorities rarely detained undocumented workers “unless the employer turns a worker in, and employers usually do that only to break a union or prevent a strike or that kind of stuff.”

David L. Wilson, Truthout

August 23, 2019

On August 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carried out coordinated raids at seven agricultural processing plants in Mississippi, detaining 680 immigrant workers. Officials told The Washington Post that the operation was “the largest single-state workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.”

The massive operation generated terror in immigrant communities already traumatized by a massacre targeting people of Mexican origin in El Paso, Texas, days earlier, and much of the U.S.-born population was outraged by images of detained workers’ sobbing children.

As has happened after workplace raids in the past, news accounts noted that the employers remained free while their workers were led off to migrant jails in handcuffs.[…]

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/ice-raids-benefit-bosses-by-creating-fear-in-workers/

Two New Articles on Open Borders

Scare stories about “open borders” get published a lot; some even claim to be from the left. Here are two recent articles that make actual progressive arguments for open borders.

Brianna Rennix’s “The Case for Opening Our Borders” is generally excellent, but it’s mostly about sensible immigration reform proposals the Democrats might be persuaded to adopt. Actually opening borders requires more: looking at migration’s root causes and their relation to US policies affecting neighboring countries. Suzy Lee’s piece makes the important point that support for immigrant rights is crucial for all working-class organizing, contrary to the restrictionist ideas of labor bureaucrats in the Gompers model. But she seems to miss the fact that a major source of downward pressure on the wages of native-born workers is anti-immigrant measures like raids and employer sanctions—measures that, ironically, are sold to workers as a way to reduce immigration.

Photo: No More Deaths

The Case for Opening Our Borders

Democrats cannot have it both ways. If you oppose jailing and exiling people for crossing an invisible line, you must be in favor of significantly opening our borders. Fortunately, that’s fine.

By Brianna Rennix, In These Times

March 21, 2019

Democrats and Republicans have long forged a de facto policy consensus on immigration. Yes, Democrats condemn Trump’s wall and his family separation policy, but they pivot to talk about security and control in ways indistinguishable from GOP talking points.

On January 3, their first day in power, House Democrats passed a spending bill that included$1.3 billion in new border fencing, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted as “smart, effective border security.” […]

Read the full article:

http://inthesetimes.com/features/immigration-reform-open-borders-ice-border-wall.html

The Case for Open Borders

…[A] call for open borders based on appeals to morality and liberal values will not attract workers motivated by economic concerns. This essay shows the possibility of a strategy calling for open borders and immigrant rights based on workers’ material interests, not just moral pleas.

By Suzy Lee, Catalyst

Winter 2019

The politics of immigration poses one of the most important challenges to the US left today. While the public discourse, with demands for a wall or the panic over a migrant caravan, may be hyperbolic, it only sharpens venerable themes that have structured the debate for a half-century: a nativist movement that sees immigration as a cultural and economic threat, set against an immigrants’ rights movement that argues for a more inclusive and liberal orientation.[...]

Read the full article:

https://catalyst-journal.com/vol2/no4/the-case-for-open-borders

How Central American migrants helped revive the US labor movement

[Immigrant rights supporters should never forget that immigrants aren’t just victims: they are also subjects, actors in their own lives and communities. Here Elizabeth Oglesby, a professor of Latin American studies, describes some of the achievements by immigrant labor activists in the 1980s and 1990s. This phenomenon isn’t new. Immigrants were often leaders of struggles in the past, as with the Uprising of the 20,000 in New York more than a century ago, and immigrant labor organizes continues now in efforts like the Fight for $15. Important coverage of some of these struggles is available from journalist David Bacon at his blog, The Reality Check.—TPOI editor]

By Elizabeth Oglesby, The Conversation

January 18, 2019

In the United States’ heated national debate about immigration, two views predominate about Central American migrants: President Donald Trump portrays them as a national security threat, while others respond that they are refugees from violence.

Little is said about the substantial contributions that Central Americans have made to U.S. society over the past 30 years.[…]

Read the full article:

https://theconversation.com/how-central-american-migrants-helped-revive-the-us-labor-movement-109398

Updates: Border Encuentro, Sanctuary Caravan, “Resistance at Tule Lake,” Farmworker Organizing

SOA Watch Border Encuentro 2018

Time is flying and in less than 2 months we will converge at the US/Mexico border in ambos Nogales for our 3rd SOA Watch Border Encuentro this November 16-18: Dismantle Border Imperialism! Struggle, Create, Power to the People!

As we continue planning for this year's 3rd Encuentro, we want to share important updates with you, including our promotional video created by Olmeca, the weekend schedule of events and ways to support our largest annual gathering. We are excited to share our demands for this year, and invite you to join us in generating the biggest possible impact alongside other coalition groups and allies by endorsing this year's Encuentro.

More information at:

https://www.soaw.org/border-encuentro/

Join the Sanctuary Caravan

The New Sanctuary Coalition is resolved to choose the side of liberty and equality. We are resolved to sacrifice in solidarity with those leaders of liberty and pioneers of equality who are nonviolently asserting their right to migrate by moving their caravan of brave souls across the U.S./Mexican border. We are resolved to form a U.S. Caravan of supporters who will meet the Central American Caravan in Mexico, witness their movement, and accompany them into the U.S. At the border, we will assist those seeking entry with their demands to enter the US without losing their liberty.[…]

More information at:

https://www.sanctuarycaravan.org/

"Resistance at Tule Lake" is Now Available on DVD & iTunes!

The documentary on resistance to the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans has screened in

over 20 cities across the country since its premiere at CAAMFest 2017. The maker are still getting requests for more ways people can see Resistan.ce at Tule Lake.

The film is now available on DVD and iTunes! Demand for the film has been so high on the Netflix queue that they also jumped on board and are now offering the film for disc rental.

More information at:

https://mailchi.mp/b552462e5897/ylir49fjsq-2139145

The Cross-Border Farmworker Rebellion

Workers in the berry fields of the United States and Mexico have the same transnational employers. Now, farmworker unions in those two nations have begun to work together.

The union card. Photo: David Bacon

By David Bacon, The American Prospect

October 31, 2018

Surrounded by blueberry and alfalfa fields near Sumas, Washington, just a few miles from the Canadian border, a group of workers last week stood in a circle behind a trailer, itemizing a long list of complaints about the grower they work for. Lorenzo Sanchez, the oldest, pointed to the trailer his family rents for $800 a month. On one side, the wooden steps and porch have rotted through. “The toilet backs up,” he said. “Water leaks in when it rains. The stove doesn't work.”[…]

Read the full article:
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-cross-border-farmworker-rebellion.html
http://prospect.org/article/cross-border-farmworker-rebellion

Great Reporting on Devin Nunes’s Family Farm, But the Analysis Falls Short

On September 30 Esquire posted a fascinating article by reporter Ryan Lizza about the Iowa farm

operated by the family of California Congress member Devin Nunes, a major Trump supporter. The family quietly moved most of its California dairy operations to this farm, located in the small town of Sibley, more than a decade ago. Lizza wondered why they had been so careful to avoid publicity about the move, so he went to Sibley to investigate.

His investigation quickly turned into something out of the old hardboiled detective genre, with sources suddenly clamming up and mysterious vehicles tailing Lizza as he drove around town. Eventually the mystery was solved: dairy farmers and others in the area seemed to be heavily dependent on undocumented labor to carry out their operations. Lizza was unable to establish anything about the Nunes family’s farm, but the presumption is that they too relied on unauthorized workers.

Rep. Nunes himself appears to be a moderate on immigration issues, but he’s been an important enabler of the Trump regime, which is committed to a ferocious anti-immigrant agenda. Sibley farmers seem to maintain a similar duality: they disagree with Trump and their Congress member, white supremacist Steve King, about immigration policy, yet they vote overwhelmingly for these men. “There is massive political hypocrisy at the center of this: Trump’s and King’s rural-farm supporters embrace anti-immigrant politicians while employing undocumented immigrants,” Lizza writes.

Lizza’s reporting is great, but his analysis isn’t especially deep. He notes that Iowa’s dairy farmers use undocumented labor to save money—“workers start at fourteen or fifteen dollars an hour, the first farmer said. If dairies had to use legal labor, they would likely have to raise that to eighteen or twenty dollars”—but he doesn’t explore how “illegality” forces these workers to accept lower wages. And he fails to ask who ultimately benefits from the exploitation of undocumented farm workers.

Following the Money

It’s actually not the farmers, Lizza notes: “many dairies wouldn’t survive” if they had to pay authorized workers. In other words, the farmers underpay their workforce because they are being squeezed by the large food processing and distribution corporations, which pocket the extra profits. So an obvious question would be whether these corporations or their CEOs make contributions to anti-immigrant politicians like Trump and King. Unfortunately, Lizza doesn’t raise this.

He also seems uninformed about guest worker programs. As Iowa’s farmers see it, the best option is bringing in H-2A workers; farmers can exploit these laborers just as easily as the current undocumented force but without the risk of fines or jail sentences for violating immigration law. However, dairy farming requires year-round employees, while the current H-2A programs only allow seasonal hiring. The farmers want to remove this limitation.

Lizza dismisses the idea as “a fantasy in the current environment; Trump, King, and their allies describe such policies as ‘amnesty.’” Apparently Lizza hasn’t been paying attention. It’s true that King opposes the H-2A expansion, but Trump’s all for it. “Guest workers, don’t we agree?” he ranted at an April rally. “We have to have them.”

Farm Worker Update: Organizing in NY, Protesting in WA

Farm workers in upstate New York constantly face hurdles in their efforts to organize. As reported in an important article from Documented, the workers, who tend to be immigrants, are currently suing to have the state include them in labor protections afforded other workers. But if some industry groups have their way, these farm employees will eventually be replaced by guest workers. Much of the state’s farming is in dairy, and there’s a lot of pressure to have the H-2A program extended so that dairy farmers can take advantage of it. David Bacon’s recent article in The American Prospect describes some of the abuses H-2A guest workers are subjected to, in this case by farm owners in Washington state.

New York’s diary farmers and others are in fact suffering economically, but it’s not because their workers are getting paid too much or have an excess of labor rights. The causes, according to the New York Times, are global warming, Trump’s tariffs, and a shortage of immigrant workers intimidated by the threat of ICE raids.—TPOI editor

Farmworkers Struggle to Unionize in New York. Crispin Hernandez May Change That

Crispin Hernandez and the NYCLU are taking on the New York Farm Bureau

By Clara McMichael, Documented

August 17, 2018

Crispin Hernandez doesn’t want to talk about his personal life. He’s originally from Mexico. He’s 23. Everyone asks him about his favorite food, he says, but he doesn’t want to talk about that either, because you can’t find it here in New York.

What he does want to talk about is the potentially groundbreaking court case that has dominated his life for the past two years. Hernandez is fighting the New York Farm Bureau, which represents agricultural interests, to win the right for farmworkers to organize for collective bargaining without retaliation. State Supreme Court Judge Richard J. McNally, Jr. dismissed his case at the state Supreme Court in Albany in January, but the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represents Hernandez, has appealed the judgment.[…]

Read the full article:

https://documentedny.com/2018/08/17/farmworkers-struggle-to-unionize-in-new-york-crispin-hernandez-may-change-that/

August 5 farm worker protest in Washington state. Photo: David Bacon

What Was the Life of This Guest Worker Worth?

While Washington state agencies reduce farmworker pay and find employers faultless for a death in the fields, Trump and congressional Republicans back proposals to turn farmworking into permanent indentured servitude.

By David Bacon, American Prospect

August 15, 2018

On Sunday, August 5, a group of 200 farmworkers and supporters began walking at sunrise along the shoulder of Benson Road, heading north from Lynden, Washington, toward Canada. When they reached O Road, the marchers turned right to walk along the border. Unlike the frontier with Mexico, with its walls, floodlights, and patrols, the border line here is no line at all—simply a road on each side of a weed-choked median.

The procession, chanting and holding banners, passed a succession of blueberry fields for the next 14 miles, finally reaching the official border crossing at Sumas. Pausing for a protest in front of the local immigrant detention center, it then continued on until it reached its objective one mile further on—the 1,500-acre spread of Sarbanand Farms. There, in front of the ranch’s packing and warehouse facilities, participants staged a tribunal.[…]

Read the full article:

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2018/08/what-was-life-of-this-guest-worker-worth.html
http://prospect.org/article/what-was-life-guest-worker-worth

How to Organize Against ICE Raids, and Why We Need to Do It

May 1, 2018 demo. Photo: Pioneer Valley Workers Center

Building a Rapid-Response Network to Defend Immigrant Workers

By Dan DiMaggio and Pioneer Valley Workers Center Staff, Labor Notes

August 16, 2018

As the Trump administration cracks down on undocumented immigrants, it’s urgent for worker centers and unions to organize to defend immigrant members.

In Western Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley Workers Center has created a rapid-response network it calls “Sanctuary in the Streets” (SiS). The worker center, founded in 2014, organizes restaurant workers and farmworkers in the area. Worker committees set the network's priorities.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.labornotes.org/2018/08/building-rapid-response-network-defend-immigrant-workers

  

Immigration Raid in Nebraska Devastates Local Agriculture Industry and Families

By Melissa Cruz, Immigration Impact

August 13, 2018

A small town in Nebraska was rocked last week when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents raided multiple businesses, arresting 133 undocumented immigrant workers in an operation which has already created upheaval in the community and its local agriculture industry.

This raid is the latest amid a series of enforcement operations conducted by the Trump administration, including raids in Tennessee and Ohio. In addition to the workers, 17 employers were served arrest warrants last week for allegedly exploiting undocumented labor, among other crimes.[...]

Read the full article:

http://immigrationimpact.com/2018/08/13/immigration-raid-nebraska-agriculture-industry/

The Zombie Guest Worker Bill

Republican immigration reform proposals may be dead, but Republican guest worker proposals live on...

By David Bacon, Capital and Main

June 2, 2018

On Wednesday, June 27, the Republican effort to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill went down in flames for the second time in a month, due to divisions within their own party. The Republican effort to create a vast new guest worker program, however, has not ended.

That effort has been headed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and is supported by many growers around the country, particularly on the west coast. Originally Goodlatte introduced a stand-alone bill in 2017, the Agricultural Guestworker Act. Although that bill didn't get a vote in Congress, its main provisions were folded into a much larger, comprehensive bill Goodlatte tried to pass this spring, the Securing America's Future Act.[…]

Read the full article:

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-zombie-guest-worker-bill.html

https://capitalandmain.com/the-zombie-guest-worker-bill-0702

Photo: David Bacon

Roseanne, Immigration, and the Unasked Question

[T]here’s a second way the elite can exploit immigrant workers—as scapegoats. When people like Dan and Roseanne complain about their economic problems, the superrich and their hired propagandists point their fingers at undocumented immigrants.

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

June 18, 2018

On May 8, a few weeks before its cancellation, the popular sitcom Roseanne devoted an episode to immigration.

The main focus was on the title character’s anit-Muslim prejudices, but the plot hinged on a problem for Roseanne’s husband, a construction contractor: his loss of drywall installation work to a rival who employs undocumented immigrants. “I got underbid on Al’s job,” Dan, the husband, explains to Roseanne. “He’s using illegals… It ain’t right, Rosie. These guys are so desperate they’ll work for nothing, and we’re getting screwed in the process.”

This scene got its share of pushback.[…]

Read the full article:

https://mronline.org/2018/06/18/roseanne-immigration-and-the-unasked-question/

Two Pieces from David Bacon

Migrant farm workers protest immigration raids. Photo: David Bacon

We Can Change an Unjust Immigration Policy

Testimony given by David Bacon at the People's Tribunal at the West County Detention Center in Richmond, CA

By David Bacon, 48 Hills

June 4, 2018

We've heard the living experiences of people who have had no alternative to leaving home to escape violence, war and poverty, who now find themselves imprisoned in the detention center in front of us.  And we have to ask, who is responsible?  Where did the violence and poverty come from, that forced people to leave home, to cross our border with Mexico, and then to be picked up and incarcerated here? 

Overwhelmingly, it has come from the actions of the government of this country, and the wealthy elites that it has defended.[…]

Read the full testimony:

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2018/06/we-can-change-unjust-immigration-policy.html

https://48hills.org/2018/06/us-policy-forced-people-to-leave-their-homes-and-immigrate-here/

 .

Growing Pains: Guest farm workers face exploitation, dangerous conditions

By David Bacon

Capital and Main, June 6, 2018

The American Prospect, June 8, 2018

Many migrant workers in California on H-2A temporary agricultural visas are forced to contend with unsafe working conditions, wage theft and other labor law violations. The H-2A temporary agricultural program allows employers to bring workers from other countries, mainly Mexico, for temporary farm labor in the U.S. The workers are given visas that allow them to work in the U.S. but tie them to the employer that recruits them. Part 2 of this story documents migrant workers housed like sardines, and the use of immigration enforcement to expand the H-2A visa program

Tomato grower Harry Singh had an idea for speeding up the harvest in the fields he rents at the Camp Pendleton Marine Base near San Diego. His foreman told Serafín Rincón, 61, to pick beside two imported contract workers in their 20s. In the summer heat, Rincón was told to run. He could hardly keep up.

Rincón had come to work with his friends Santiago Bautista and Rufino Zafra They were all longtime farm workers in the area. Bautista had been working in San Diego since 2003, and Zafra since 1975. All day they had to listen to gritos(shouting) and insults from their boss Celerino when they fell behind. "Stupid donkey, you're old now," he shouted at them. "You can't make it anymore!"[…]

Read the full article:

https://capitalandmain.com/guest-farm-workers-face-exploitation-0605

http://prospect.org/article/growing-pains-0

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2018/06/growing-pains-part-one.html

Following Up: CBP Abuse, “Immigrant Crime,” the Tennessee Raid

Protesters block street after acquittal. Photo: Mamta Popat / Arizona Daily Star

Border Patrol agent found not guilty of murder in Mexican teen's 2012 death

Almost six years after José Antonio Elena Rodríguez died in a cross-border shooting, activists condemn US jury’s ‘inconceivable’ finding

By Rory Carroll, The Guardian

April 24, 2018

José Antonio Elena Rodríguez was on Calle Internacional, four blocks from his home in Nogales, when 16 shots punctured the night. Ten bullets struck him: eight in the back, two in the head. He died where he fell.

The 16-year-old was not a victim of street crime. All the shots came from the United States, from the gun of a Border Patrol agent aiming through the fence which separates Arizona from Mexico.[...]

Read the full article:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/23/border-patrol-shooting-jose-antonio-elena-rodriguez-lonnie-swartz

Also see:

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2012/12/killing-spree-on-border.html

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2015/07/judge-family-of-mexican-teen-killed-by.html

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2015/10/agent-indicted-in-2012-border-killing.html

How the Border Patrol Faked Statistics Showing a 73 Percent Rise in Assaults Against Agents

By Debbie Nathan, The Intercept

April 23, 2018

LAST NOVEMBER, REPORTS that a pair of U.S. Border Patrol agents had been attacked with rocks at a desolate spot in West Texas made news around the country. The agents were found injured and unconscious at the bottom of a culvert off Interstate 10. Agent Rogelio Martinez soon died from his injuries. Early reports in right-wing media outlets such as Breitbart suggested that the perpetrators were undocumented immigrants, and President Donald Trump quickly embraced the narrative to bolster his campaign for a border wall.

To people familiar with the harsh terrain and the habits of undocumented border crossers, however, the news made little sense. Why would immigrants seeking entry to the U.S. hang out in the middle of nowhere, miles from the border, waiting to randomly attack law enforcement officers?[…]

Read the full article:

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/23/border-patrol-agents-assaulted-cbp-fbi/

Criminal Conviction Rates in Texas in 2016

By Alex Nowrasteh, Cato Institute Blog

April 23, 2018

Cato published my recent Immigration Research and Policy Brief that relied on Texas state criminal data to compare the conviction rates of native-born Americans, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants. That Texas state data was of such high quality that I was even able to compare conviction rates by the type of crime. The result was that in 2015 the criminal conviction and arrest rates for illegal immigrants were below that of native-born Americans for virtually all crimes including homicide, sexual assault, and larceny. This is just further evidence that illegal immigrants are less crime-prone than native-born Americans.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.cato.org/blog/criminal-conviction-rates-texas-2016

Deportations Under ICE’s Secure Communities Program

The top 10 offense categories where Secure Communities removals grew the fastest since President Trump assumed office were generally misdemeanors or petty offenses.

By Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC)

April 25, 2018

Immediately upon assuming office, President Trump issued an Executive Order terminating what was known as the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) and "reinstat[ing] the immigration [enforcement] program known as 'Secure Communities.'" This program is widely portrayed as the cornerstone of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts for stepped up deportations.

Recently released ICE removal-by-removal records from Secure Communities—current through October 2017—provide a portrait of deportations of immigrants from each state and county in the nation by the Trump Administration. This report examines first how the level of Secure Communities deportations has changed under the new administration, and then turns to what types of crimes are now being targeted through this program.[…]

Read the full report:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/509/

In Rural Tennessee, a Big ICE Raid Makes Some Conservative Voters Rethink Trump’s Immigration Agenda

By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker

April 19, 2018

April 5th began in the usual way at the Southeastern Provision meat-processing plant, in Bean Station, Tennessee—some workers were breaking down carcasses on the production line, while others cleaned the floors—until, around 9 a.m., a helicopter began circling above the plant. Moments later, a fleet of cars pulled up outside. Agents from the I.R.S., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice), and the Tennessee Highway Patrol emerged, and proceeded to arrest ninety-seven people, most of them originally from Mexico or Guatemala, for working without legal papers. It was the largest workplace roundup of immigrants in a decade.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/in-rural-tennessee-a-big-ice-raid-makes-some-conservative-voters-rethink-trumps-immigration-agenda

An ICE Raid Has Turned The Lives of Hundreds of Tennessee Kids Upside Down

By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker

April 24, 2018

In the spring of 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested three hundred and eighty-nine workers, most of them Guatemalan, at a kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The headines at the time focussed on the fate of those who’d been arrested, but the consequences of the raid went much further. For months afterward, parents and teachers in and around Postville reported that their children had trouble focussing at school. The kids studied less, and acted out more. Their performance in class generally declined. “Young kids are developmentally sensitive to stresses involving family separation, and large-scale raids are an extreme form of that stress,” Nicole Novak, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa, told me. Novak led a study that examined the birth certificates of children born in Iowa in the year after the raid: among the babies born to Hispanic mothers, there had been a spike in the number who were born abnormally small, a mark of maternal duress during pregnancy.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/an-icesmall-raid-has-turned-the-lives-of-hundreds-of-tennessee-kids-upside-down