“We are workers, not criminals”

By David Bacon, special to Fog City Journal

May 2, 2008

In the big immigrant marches that swept the country on May Day in 2006 and 2007, one sign said it all: “We are Workers, not Criminals!” The sign was held by the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they’d just come from work in a factory, cleaning an office building, or picking grapes.

The sign states an obvious truth: Millions of people have come to this country to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they’ve found here, not people who mean to cause harm.

This year’s May Day, immigrant workers filled the streets of San Francisco to make the same point.

Calling for fair immigration reform, immigrant rights advocates
marched in San Francisco yesterday to celebrate May Day.
Photo by John Han

Yet 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 fire any worker who couldn’t correct a mismatch between the social security number provided to their employer and the Social Security Administration 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 U.S. without legal immigration status, Chertoff’s regulation would lead to massive firings and bring many industries and businesses to a screeching halt. Citizens and legal visa holders would be swept up as well, since the Social Security database is often inaccurate.

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 Arizona legislature passed a law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of every worker through a federal database called E-Verify, which is even more incomplete and full of errors than the Social Security Administration’s database. They must fire workers whose names get flagged. The State of Mississippi also 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 previously arrested. Employers get immunity.

Congress is now debating two bills – the SAVE Act, and the New Employee Verification Act – that would require similar uses of the E-Verify database.

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act made it a crime, for the first time in our history, to hire people without papers. Arguments in support of the act argued that if people could not legally work, they would leave.

Life is 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 Fresno, said, “The North American Free Trade Agreement made the price of corn so low that it’s not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the U.S. to work because there’s no alternative.”

When Congress passed NAFTA, six million economically displaced people came to the U.S. If Congress stops passing new free trade agreements and, instead, faces the damage done by NAFTA and other pro-corporate measures, the poverty and desperation that fuel migration could be reversed.

Trying to push people out of the U.S. who’ve come here for survival, simply won’t work. The price of trying is that the vulnerability of undocumented workers will increase. Unscrupulous employers use that vulnerability to deny overtime, minimum wages, or fire workers when they protest or organize. Increased vulnerability ultimately results in cheaper labor and fewer rights for everyone. Children live in fear that their parents will be picked up in raids.

After deporting over 1000 workers at Swift meatpacking plants, Chertoff called for linking “effective interior enforcement” with “a temporary-worker program.” The government is 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 equal rights for everyone.

David Bacon is an independent journalist and photographer focusing on immigration and workers rights issues.

FCJ Editor

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