por David Bacon Truthout
http://www.truthout.org/immigrant-steel-workers-march-against-unjust-firings/1329922142.
Pacific Steel workers march through Berkeley. (PHOTO BY DAVID BACON)
BERKELEY, CA (2/18/12) — Two hundred immigrant workers, their wives, husbands, children, and hundreds of supporters marched through downtown Berkeley February 17, protesting their firing from Pacific Steel Castings. The company is one of the city’s biggest employers, and the largest steel foundry west of the Mississippi River. Starting at City Hall, they walked for an hour past stores and homes, as bystanders often applauded. Teachers and students at a Montessori school along the route even came out to the sidewalk to urge them on. At a rally before the march started, fired worker Jesus Prado told the assembled crowd, “I worked for Pacific Steel for seven years. We’ve organized this March for Dignity because we want to stop the way they’re stepping on us, and treating us like criminals. We came here to work, not to break any laws.”
“Many of us are buying homes, or have lived in our homes for years,” added another fired worker, Ana Castaño. “We have children in the schools. We pay taxes and contribute to our community. What is happening to us is not just, and hurts our families. All we did was work. That shouldn’t be treated like it’s a crime.”
Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin agreed. “We’re here today to send a message to the Obama administration that the I-9 raids have to stop,” he told the crowd.
Two hundred fourteen workers were fired in December and January, as a result of a so-called silent raid, in which the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm of the Department of Homeland Security inspected the company’s records to find workers who don’t have legal immigration status. ICE then demanded that the company fire them.
For the past year these workers have held meetings in union halls and churches, distributed food to families hungry because they can no longer work, and spoken to elected officials. The march was the culmination of months of debate in which to us is not just, and hurts our families. All we did was work. That shouldn’t be treated like it’s a crime.” Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin agreed. “We’re here today to send a message to the Obama administration that the I-9 raids have to stop,” he told the crowd.
Two hundred fourteen workers were fired in December and January, as a result of a so-called silent raid, in which the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm of the Department of Homeland Security inspected the company’s records to find workers who don’t have legal immigration status. ICE then demanded that the company fire them.
For the past year these workers have held meetings in union halls and churches, distributed food to families hungry because they can no longer work, and spoken to elected officials. The march was the culmination of months of debate in which rights organizations, and local elected officials.
Bill Ong Hing, law professor at the University of San Francisco, says the lack of jobs in Mexico is a consequence of free trade and structural adjustment policies designed to benefit large corporations. He calls the administration’s justification divorced from reality. “Employer sanctions [the section of immigration law that prohibits undocumented people from working] have not reduced undocumented migration at all. They’ve failed because NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] and globalization create great migration pressure. Trying to discourage workers from coming by arresting them for working without authorization, or trying to prevent them from finding work, is doomed to fail in the face of such economic pressure. To reduce it, we need to change our trade and economic policies so that they don’t produce poverty in countries like Mexico.”
Reverend Deborah Lee of the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights called this kind of enforcement a violation of the workers’ basic human rights, “These families have done nothing wrong,” she said. “They’re being punished for working, which is what people in our community are supposed to do. We will not let this happen in silence, nor allow these workers to be treated as though they are invisible.”
As hundreds of people filled Second Street, a block away from the foundry where they’d put in their years of labor, the fired workers were certainly not invisible any longer.
