The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to this country to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they’ve found here, not people who mean it harm. Again this May Day, immigrant workers are filling the streets, making the same point.
Yet today the Federal government is taking actions that make holding a job a criminal act. Some states and local communities, seeing a green light from the Department of Homeland Security, are passing measures that go even further. These actions need a reality check.
Last summer, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff proposed a rule requiring employers to fire any worker who couldn’t correct a mismatch between the Social Security number they’d provided their employer, and the SSA database. The regulation assumes those workers have no valid immigration visa, and therefore no valid Social Security number.
With 12 million people living in the
Under Chertoff the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted sweeping workplace raids, arresting and deporting thousands of workers. Many have been charged with an additional crime – identity theft – because they used a Social Security number belonging to someone else to get a job. Yet workers using another number actually deposit money into that holder’s account, and these immigrants will never collect benefits their contributions paid for.
The
Congress is now debating two bills, the SAVE Act and the New Employee Verification Act that would require similar use of the E-Verify database.
In 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act made it a crime, for the first time in our history, to hire people without papers. Defenders argued that if people could not legally work they would leave. Life was not so simple.
Undocumented people are part of the communities they live in. They will not simply go, nor should they. They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that everyone else in our country believes in.
For most, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they’ve come. Rufino Dominguez, a Oaxacan community leader in
When Congress passed NAFTA, six million displaced people came to the
Trying to push people out of the
After deporting over 1000 workers at Swift meatpacking plants, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff called for linking "effective interior enforcement and a temporary- worker program." The government is really after giving cheap labor to large employers. Deportations, firings and guest worker programs all make labor cheaper and union organizing harder. They contribute to a climate of fear and insecurity for everyone.
Instead of making work a crime and treating immigrants as criminals, we need equality, economic security, jobs and rights for everyone. Coming in September, 2008, from Beacon Press: Illegal People — How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
For more articles and images on immigration, see http://dbacon.igc.org/Imgrants/imgrants.htm
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (
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