During his Presidential Campaign, Barack Obama promised immigration reform. He touted a plan to bring immigrants “out of the shadows” through legalization. In reality, the new administration has embraced the same goals as the Bush administration, albeit under the guise of “gentler” and “more civil” techniques. Because of these policies, approximately 1,800 Los Angeles garment workers, nearly all Latino immigrants, are losing their jobs in the largest immigration raid in U.S. history. On October 2, in response to a 17-month ICE investigation, American Apparel began firing more than a quarter of its workforce.
The immigration investigation into American Apparel’s workforce began in 2007, under the Bush administration. The Obama administration continued the investigation and simply changed the tactics of the raid. Instead of sending ICE agents onto the job site to arrest workers, ICE pushed American Apparel to fire them. First, the company was threatened with fines, but even after the threats of sanctions were officially withdrawn, American Apparel agreed to the firings. ICE is still considering whether to place the workers in deportation proceedings.
This new technique of “desktop raids” continues the basic practice of penalizing workers for working and supporting their families in the United States. Since July 2009, the Obama administration has opened investigations into at least 654 companies around the country. While the American Apparel raid was the largest to date, a May 2009 raid of Overhill Farms, a large Los Angeles food processing plant, led to similarly devastating consequences. In the Overhill raid, more than 250 workers were fired after an IRS audit found discrepancies in Social Security records.
Democrats in Congress have encouraged these aggressive immigration enforcement measures by passing a bloated budget for the Department of Homeland Security. ICE’s budget for workplace immigration enforcement in 2009 is $127 million , and the overall budget for ICE is almost $6 billion dollars.
Workers, not employers, are punished
Despite the administration’s claims that its new tactics target unscrupulous and exploitative employers, even a quick review reveals that the workers are the ones who suffer. The workers fired from American Apparel were not given hearings or any way to keep their jobs after years or even decades of work for the company. Fired workers who are undocumented cannot use any public benefits such as food stamps or medical cards to care for themselves or their families.
Workers fired in the American Apparel raid have been left without income or support in a time when unemployment in the United States is at a record high for the last quarter-century. Including those workers whose hours have been reduced during the economic crisis and workers who are not currently seeking a job for “job-market related reasons,” the national rate of unemployment and underemployment is 17 percent, over 24 million people. Within the oppressed communities of Los Angeles, nearly one in four people is unemployed.
Msgr. Jarlath Cunnane, a pastor at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, explained the effect that the American Apparel raid is having on the workers: “As far as the families involved are concerned, it’s just your old immigration raid without the photo-op.” Cunnane’s church is located in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles, where many of the American Apparel workers live. The church struggles to serve the many immigrant workers in need of services and, in light of the American Apparel raid, expects to see its clientele surge.
Raids are part of a larger strategy
Desktop raids are only one technique that the Obama administration has employed to continue the assault on immigrants. Immigrant workers still face the constant threat of racist raids and deportation. The Obama administration has withdrawn the harsh No-Match regulations proposed by the Bush administration, but it used No-Match letters to execute the American Apparel raid. No-Match letters are issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration when there are discrepancies in a worker’s documentation. These letters have been used by ICE to carry out immigration raids.
The Obama administration has also denied meager requests for respite for immigrant families that earlier administrations were willing to concede. During the 2000 census, the Immigration and Naturalization Service agreed to suspend immigration raids during the census, so that immigrant families could open their doors to Census Bureau officials without fear of a home raid. The current administration, however, has refused to ask ICE to suspend raids for the upcoming census.
The Department of Homeland Security also continues to detain immigrants. The Corrections Corporation of America, a private subcontractor of immigration detention, has continued to construct new detention centers financed by the federal government. CCA recently opened a new 500-bed detention facility in Georgia. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has also proposed converting hotels and nursing homes into immigration detention centers.
Immigrants are super-exploited workers
Forcing the unemployment and disenfranchisement of thousands of workers in a time of economic crisis is hardly “genteel” or “civil.” Immigrants did not cause the economic collapse—they are its victims, as are all workers. The banks toppled the economy by extracting as much wealth as possible from workers in the form of high-interest loans without any regard for the risk involved. Yet when the economic crisis hit, Washington bailed out the banks and blamed workers and immigrants.
Both Republicans and Democrats, spokespeople for the wealthy, try to conceal their complicity by continuing to attack workers. While the Obama administration claims to penalize exploitative employers, in reality, it reinforces exploitative relations by creating an underclass of immigrant labor willing to accept low wages and no benefits. Especially in this time of economic crisis, all workers must stand together to demand true justice: amnesty for all, and jobs, education, and health care as human rights.
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