by David Bacon
second of two pants
Instead of recognizing the reality that immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere will continue to cross into the United States seeking work when their option is abject poverty, sometimes even starvation, the U.S. government has attempted to make holding a job a criminal act.
Responding to a green light from the Department of Homeland Security, some states and local communities have passed measures that go even further. Mississippi passed a bill making it a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job, with jail time of 1-10 years, fines of up to $10,000, and no bail for anyone arrested~ Employers get immunity.
Last summer, in his job then as Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff proposed a rule requiring employers to fire workers who couldn’t correct a mismatch between the Social Security number given to their employer and the SSA database.
The regulation assumed those workers had no valid immigration visa, and therefore no valid Social Security number With 12 million people here without legal immigration status, the regulation would have led to massive firings, bringing many industries and businesses to a halt. Citizens and legal visa holders would have been swept up as well, since the Social Security database is often inaccurate.
While the courts enjoined this particular regulation, the idea of using Social Security numbers to identify and fire millions of workers is still very much alive in Washington, D.C.
Under Chertoff, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted sweeping workplace raids, arresting and deporting thousands of workers. Many were charged with an additional crime, identity theft, because to get a job, they used a Social Security number belonging to someone else. Workers using those numbers actually deposit money into Social Security funds, and will never collect benefits their contributions paid for.
New Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the big raids need to be reexamined, but she continues to support measures that drive undocumented workers from their jobs and keep employers from hiring them.
During her term as Arizona’s governor, the state legislature passed a law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of every worker through a federal database called E-Verify, even more full of errors than Social Security. They must fire workers whose names get flagged. This is now becoming the model for federal enforcement.
Many of these punitive measures surtaced in proposals for “comprehensive immigration reform’, that were debated in Congress in 2006 and 2007. The comprehensive bills combined criminalization of work for the undocumented with huge guest worker programs.
While those proposals failed in Congress, the Bush administration implemented some of their most draconian provisions by administrative action. Many fear that new proposals for immigration reform being formulated by Congress and the administration will continue these efforts to criminalize work.
(Labor writer David Bacon, author of “Illegal People: How Globalization creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, wrote this commentary for New America Media).
In other related news:
79 Candles Top Dolores Huerta’s Birthday Cake
by Jon Higuera
Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers who stood shoulder to shoulder with the late César Chávez to help create better working conditions for migrant farm workers, turned 79 on April 10.
Her birthday was observed in various ways, including a message board from the UFW that allowed persons to send public notes of congratulations via the Internet.
Born in New Mexico, she was raised in Stockton, Calif. Her activism dates back to 1955 when she co-founded the Sacramento chapter of the Community Service Organization. Seven years later she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Chávez. It eventually become the UFW.
Throughout the years, the mother of 11 children never slowed her tireless advocacy efforts, which included coordinating the UFW’s successful East Coast table grape boycott in the 1960s.
Chávez once described her character: “She’s absolutely fearless, physically as well as psychologically, and she just can’t stand to see people pushed around.” Hispanic Link.
