Workers Criminalized, Employers Untouched

From a ImmigrationProf Blog today comes a commentary on the lack of employee convictions in the wake of the flurry of recent immigration raids.

Undocumented workers continue to face horrific consequences (including the new tactic of conviction of criminal offenses), while the employers remain unscathed by the law.

Statistical silence on the issue of employer criminal sanctions is not surprising.  Truth is that ICE does not spend many of its resources prosecuting employers, despite what is reported in the media immediately after a raid. And the reality of how raids are conducted suggests that employer prosecutions are hardly a priority.  Otherwise, why would the government remove and convict practically all the witnesses it needs to build a case against the employer – the workers themselves.

ICE continues to wage war on immigrants without addressing the root issues of workplace standards, living wages and job improvement. Scapegoating hard-working immigrants will not deter these employers from exploiting and abusing anyone in the future.

But the mainstream media remains focused on the spectacle of the raids, shouting that ICE is tracking down “illegal” people and perpetuating the myth that these raids are “working”.

But what does “working” mean? If it simply means a horrid fate for the undocumented workers and their families caught in the raids, then yes.  But if it means actually improving jobs and work conditions for U.S. workers or deterrence of bad practices by U.S. employers, then think again!

Click here for full post.

A Tale of Two Borders

From MigraMatters -

“I’ve said from the beginning that we can’t reform immigration laws until we control immigration, and we can’t control immigration unless we control our borders and our ports.” - Lou Dobbs

We’ve heard that statement in various forms a millions times, repeated ad infinitum by various politicians and talking heads since Frank Luntz first advised anti-immigrant Republicans to stress that ““A country that can’t control its own borders can’t control its own destiny” to sell an anti-immigrant agenda to the American public.

But it has always gone without saying that the border that needed to be controlled has been the one to the south. Rarely, if ever, has the northern border been mentioned in most border security screeds.

Congress has appropriated funds for vast amounts of added security on the southern border, and walls are being constructed as we speak to further limit access across the 1900 mile stretch.

Of course the need to stem the flow of “illegal immigration” is always given as the chief cause for such expenditures. But additionally, the need for general “border security” is often cited.

Anti-immigrant politicians and talking heads are always quick to conflate the flow of economic refugees with the flow of drugs and the threat of international terrorism to pepper their anti-immigrant rants with even higher levels of fear and trepidation.

Click here to read the full post.

posted by Duke1676

 

Color in Your Cheeks

There is a great post on Smart Borders today that reinforces my point from an earlier post - -  Immigration Backlogs Put Lives on Hold.

Writing about his first day working for an Immigration Law firm, Matthew Webster cuts to what is at the core of our debate today - humanity. Here is an excerpt:

Despite the fact it was my first day, I felt I was able to contribute both to the attorney and these clients, these people. I enjoyed speaking Spanish with a Mexican man who has been working here for years and is attempting to get employer-sponsored citizenship. My heart went out to a woman who was calling about her husband’s file, a husband she has not seen for two years since he was forced to leave the country. I thumbed through thousands of files, thousands of lives and stories and situations, thousands of big dreams and tiny legalities.

Click here to read the full post.

 

Immigration 10: Border Walls - True Costs in Dollars and Human Lives

Today, Duke at The Sanctuary bring us a powerful post on migration causes and costs (both in dollars and in lives). The effectiveness of “prevention through deterrence” and the concept of a border wall is also explored.

It is an ABSOLUTE must-read.

In the mid-nineties US policy towards Mexico changed in two significant ways that eventually set the stage for the current “immigration crisis.” In January 1994, NAFTA went into effect and a new era of prosperity and progress was to begin in Mexico. At the same time, a new strategy was enacted along the southern border intended to stem the flow of unauthorized migrants. The policy of “prevention through deterrence” involved quintupling border-enforcement expenditures, building new fortified checkpoints, high-tech surveillance, and deploying thousands of additional Border Patrol Agents. Additionally, border barriers were built along portions of the California and Texas border to prevent migrants from entering through the most highly trafficked urban areas.

More than a decade later it’s become evident that the promises of these two policies, rather than bringing economic change to Mexico and decreasing unauthorized migration to the US, have led to conditions that more than doubled the flow of migration….and brought added death to the border.

NAFTA, while bringing trade and investment to Mexico, has had unintended negative consequences on both sides of the border for working people and the poor. Whole segments of the US manufacturing sector have been relocated to Mexico resulting in job loss for US workers. At the same time, the lifting for trade restrictions in Mexico have allowed cheaper US commodities to enter the country, decimating Mexican agricultural markets and throwing millions of small farmers out of business. Additionally, the availability of even cheaper labor sources in places like China has forced manufacturing wages to go down.

As for the policy of “prevention through deterrence”, all it has really accomplished in the past fourteen years is a movement of the routes of migration from relatively safe urban areas like San Diego and El Paso to the hostile desert and mountainous regions where enforcement is difficult. This “funneling effect” of forcing migrants into least hospitable areas has had devastating effects for those on both sides of the border. A study released by the University Of Arizona examined the consequences of shifting migration patterns from California and Texas to Arizona and found it had increased migrants deaths by 20-fold.

The failures of NAFTA to bring prosperity to Mexico are well documented. It’s moved 19 million more Mexicans into poverty, forced more than a million small farmers off the land due to the lifting of restrictions on cheaper US subsidized agricultural products, lowered real wages, and in the end forced “millions …to abandon their native homelands. Entire indigenous nations — the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs, the Tzotzil Maya — have moved by the tens of thousands, creating the largest migration of Native American peoples in North America since the Trail of Tears in the late 19th century.”

While trade policies have brought suffering to the poor of Mexico, border policies have brought death.

Click here to read the full post.

Nativist Talking Points from the 19th Century: Deja Vu Anyone?

Check out this post from Eristic Ragemail documenting the anti-immigrant arguments from the late 1800’s and their uncanny resemblance to some of our mainstream media’s most vocal anti-immigrant voices.

Truths (and then some more truths)

After reading this post at No to Borders and Binaries I had to include a link for others to read. People tend to forget that this country has a long history of involving itself in the affairs of many of the countries whose people end up crossing our borders. Immigration does not occur in a vacuum. There is cause and effect at play here, and often United States foreign policy can be a (direct or indirect) cause for the migration of people.

I also wanted to quote one excerpt from the post. With the amount of comments that seem to be focused on the word “illegal” I’ve seen recently, I find it incredibly appropriate:

…be it resolved, that no human being can be illegal–it is not a permanent immutable characteristic. Lets stop criminalizing the natural and age-old phenomenon of human migration.

Check out the full post, here. I think its some good food for thought…

Aliens in America

Just the other week I finally got to see an episode of “Aliens in America” - the show on CW where a Wisconsin family has welcomed a foreign, pakistani, student into their home. the premise is simple, the caricatures are major (could the father’s beer belly under his packer’s sweater be any bigger?). Wondering if you’ve seen this show, and what you think….

from an interview with the co-creator:

Let’s talk about the origins of “Aliens in America.” You come up with this great idea about focusing on teenage life in Wisconsin with a dorky high school kid and, oh yeah, a Pakistani Muslim exchange student. How the heck does this happen?

DAVID: [Laughs.] You know it’s always a hard question to answer. My writing partner Moses Port and I were just in the phase of trying to think of a new idea for a TV show. We were talking about our own high school experiences and all the insecurities, anxieties, and nightmare experiences of high school. We were wondering if there was a fresh take on the form of a TV show, a comedy about high school. At the same time, we were talking about the geo political situation of the world at the time, which has gotten worse since then. We first started talking about it in 2005. We also started talking about politics and the giant gap that exists between Americans and really the rest of the world, specifically the Muslim world. In that stew, we sort of came up with the idea for the show.

Check out this interview with the co-creator of the show at immigration prof blog

A journey worth reading about

Louis Mendoza is travelling across the country to explore the latinization of small towns, back country, and big cities. Check out what Latino Pundit has to say about this great adventure.