Catherine A. Traywick

Media Con­sor­tium | Huff­in­g­ton Post

Arizona’s busi­ness lead­ers, frus­trated by the deep finan­cial fall­out of increas­ingly rad­i­cal immi­gra­tion pro­pos­als, suc­cess­fully swayed state law­mak­ers into defeat­ing five extrem­ist anti-immigrant bills.

New Amer­ica Media’s Vale­ria Fer­nán­dez reportsthat 60 exec­u­tives from the likes of Wells­Fargo bank and U.S. Air­ways penned an open let­ter to state Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Rus­sell Pearce last week, urg­ing him to leave immi­gra­tion pol­icy to fed­eral gov­ern­ment. Julianne Hing at Colorlines.com has posted the let­ter in full, but here’s the gist:

Last year, boy­cotts were called against our state’s busi­ness com­mu­nity, adversely impact­ing our already-struggling econ­omy and cost­ing us jobs. Arizona-based busi­nesses saw con­tracts can­celled or were turned away from bid­ding. Sales out­side of the state declined … It is an unde­ni­able fact that each of our com­pa­nies and our employ­ees were impacted by the boy­cotts and the coin­ci­dent neg­a­tive image […] Ari­zona is look­ing like a nativist, restrictive and intol­er­ant place, and that’s bad for business.

The leg­is­la­ture sub­se­quently voted down five con­tro­ver­sial mea­sures that sought to rede­fine cit­i­zen­ship and ban undoc­u­mented immi­grants from hos­pi­tals and pub­lic schools, among other provisions.

Pearce, whose behind-the-scenes maneu­ver­ing repeat­edly saved the con­tentious bills from dying much sooner, has vowed to con­tinue push­ing his agenda by voter ref­er­en­dum, if nec­es­sary. If he does, he may have more suc­cess. Ari­zo­nans have repeat­edly voted in favor of harsh anti-immigrant pro­pos­als, includ­ing mea­sures that stripped undoc­u­mented col­lege stu­dents of finan­cial assis­tance, banned eth­nic stud­ies, and ended equal oppor­tu­nity programs.

Arizona’s busi­ness lead­ers over­look immi­grant workers

It’s worth not­ing, though, that while the letter’s sig­na­to­ries hand­ily crit­i­cized the legislature’s immi­gra­tion agenda for neg­a­tively impact­ing the state’s econ­omy, they had almost noth­ing to say about its detri­men­tal impact on the state’s workers—a con­sid­er­able pro­por­tion of whom are  immi­grants. Instead, they urge “mar­ket dri­ven immi­gra­tion poli­cies” that will “pre­serve our abil­ity to com­pete in the global econ­omy“ — lan­guage that is more evoca­tive of labor-exploitative cap­i­tal­ism than worker solidarity.

Their calls for “the cre­ation of a mean­ing­ful guest worker pro­gram” are sim­i­larly sus­pect. While the notion of a “mean­ing­ful guest worker pro­gram” that would legal­ize cer­tain undoc­u­mented immi­grants liv­ing in the U.S. may, on the sur­face, seem like a sym­pa­thetic solution—particularly in light of the fed­eral government’s fail­ure to move for­ward with any kind of com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform—it nev­er­the­less poses dire impli­ca­tions for undoc­u­mented workers.

Utah’s guest worker pro­posal evokes Bracero pro­gram abuses

As David Bacon at In These Times posits, “guest work­ers” whose legal sta­tus is con­tin­gent on their employ­ment sit­u­a­tion are uniquely vul­ner­a­ble to work­place abuse and exploita­tion, and could face labor con­di­tions “close to slav­ery.” The Bracero Pro­gram, a guest worker ini­tia­tive which imported Mex­i­can labor­ers pri­mar­ily for work in agri­cul­ture between 1942 and 1964, stands out as stark exam­ple of the dark side of guest worker pro­grams. Bacon explains:

Braceros were treated as dis­pos­able, dirty and cheap. Her­minio Quezada Durán, who came to Utah from Chi­huahua, says ranch­ers often had agree­ments between each other to exchange or trade braceros as nec­es­sary for work. Jose Eze­quiel Acevedo Perez, who came from Jerez, Zacate­cas, remem­bers the humil­i­a­tion of phys­i­cal exams that treated Mex­i­cans as louse-ridden.

“We were stripped naked in front of every­one,” he remem­bers, and sprayed with DDT, now an out­lawed pes­ti­cide. Men in some camps were vic­tims of crim­i­nals and pimps.

Ari­zona isn’t the only state to toy with the idea of estab­lish­ing a guest worker pro­gram. In an effort to dis­tance itself from Arizona’s con­tentious and eco­nom­i­cally dis­as­trous immi­gra­tion agenda, Utah—a fiercely red state and Arizona’s north­ern neighbor—is con­sid­er­ing cre­at­ing its own guest worker pro­gram, accord­ing to the Texas Observer’s Vic­tor Landa. The law would grant legal res­i­dency to work­ing, undoc­u­mented res­i­dents who do not com­mit seri­ous crimes.

While Landa notes that the pur­port­edly pro­gres­sive mea­sure nev­er­the­less runs afoul of fed­eral immi­gra­tion laws (only the fed­eral gov­ern­ment can grant immi­gra­tion sta­tus), the bill presents other issues. One must stay employed or lose residency—a cir­cum­stance that would strip employ­ees of bar­gain­ing power while grant­ing their employ­ers an inor­di­nate amount of license in the work­place. In prac­ti­cal terms, that doesn’t much change the exist­ing work­place dynam­ics of undoc­u­mented immi­grants, who fre­quently endure exploita­tion and abuse with­out recourse.

Labor unions vs. work­site immi­gra­tion enforcement

What’s more: Exploita­tive employ­ers gen­er­ally get off scot free even when tar­geted by employer sanc­tions efforts; it’s the work­ers, not employ­ers, who bear the brunt of the fed­eral government’s work­site immi­gra­tion enforcement. For this rea­son, a Ser­vices Employ­ees Inter­na­tional Union (SEIU) leader, Javier Morillo, has con­demned the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s emha­sis on work­place raids and employer ver­i­fi­ca­tion, accord­ing to Nico­las Men­doza at Cam­pus Progress.

Respond­ing to the ter­mi­na­tion of 250 union­ized jan­i­tors in Min­nesota fol­low­ing an I-9 audit—a ver­i­fi­ca­tion process through which the fed­eral gov­ern­ment can ask busi­nesses to check the immi­gra­tion sta­tuses of their employees—Morillo said:

Under the lead­er­ship of Sec­re­tary Napoli­tano the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has become an employ­ment agency for the country’s worst employ­ers. With each I-9 audit, the gov­ern­ment is sys­tem­at­i­cally push­ing hard­work­ing peo­ple into the under­ground econ­omy where they face exploita­tion… Let’s be clear: I-9 audits, by def­i­n­i­tion, do not go after egre­gious employ­ers who break immi­gra­tion laws because many of them do not use I-9 forms. Human traf­fick­ers do not ask their vic­tims for their social secu­rity cards.[empha­sis added]

Men­doza notes that the fed­eral government’s employer ver­i­fi­ca­tion pro­grams rely on the hon­esty of employ­ers and rewards them for fir­ing undoc­u­mented work­ers, rather than sanc­tion­ing busi­nesses for hir­ing them. Work­ers pay the price, while employ­ers get off.

This post fea­tures links to the best inde­pen­dent, pro­gres­sive report­ing about immi­gra­tion by mem­bersof The Media Con­sor­tium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Dias­pora for a com­plete list of arti­cles on immi­gra­tion issues, or fol­low us on Twit­ter. And for the best pro­gres­sive report­ing on crit­i­cal econ­omy, envi­ron­ment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Con­sor­tium, a net­work of lead­ing inde­pen­dent media outlets.

Media Con­sor­tium | Huff­in­g­ton Post

The Ari­zona state Sen­ate moved for­ward with two con­tro­ver­sial mea­sures this week that threaten to mar­gin­al­ize undoc­u­mented youth to an unprece­dented degree.

An anti-birthright cit­i­zen­ship bill, which ini­tially failed to muster the votes nec­es­sary to pro­ceed, was finally approved Tues­day after Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Rus­sell Pearce ® shrewdly reas­signed it to a “friend­lier” com­mit­tee. SB 1309 is now headed to the Rules Com­mit­tee, where it is, again, expected to pass. The bill seeks to deny auto­matic cit­i­zen­ship to the U.S.-born chil­dren of undoc­u­mented persons—an effort that, if suc­cess­ful, would effec­tively cre­ate a self-perpetuating under­class of state­less children.

Pro­po­nents argue that the bill would dis­cour­age unau­tho­rized immi­gra­tion by tak­ing away a chief incen­tive, but the mea­sure has more omi­nous impli­ca­tions. It would ren­der gen­er­a­tions of U.S.-born undoc­u­mented chil­dren vul­ner­a­ble to a vari­ety of discriminations—their rights to edu­ca­tion, employ­ment and a breadth of social ser­vices repeat­edly con­tested, if not alto­gether denied.

Ari­zona Sen­ate to vote on sweep­ing omnibus immi­gra­tion bill

And, as if the prospect of that future isn’t bleak enough, the Ari­zona state Sen­ate is con­sid­er­ing another bill that would, essen­tially, force sim­i­lar out­comes on undoc­u­mented youth liv­ing in Ari­zona today. Vale­ria Fer­nán­dez at New Amer­i­can Media reports that the mea­sure would, among other pro­vi­sions, “ban undoc­u­mented stu­dents from access­ing higher edu­ca­tion; require proof of legal sta­tus to attend K-12 schools; and require hos­pi­tals to inquire about the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of their patients.”

Like SB 1309, the suc­cess of Pearce’s omnibus bill is the prod­uct of some art­ful maneu­ver­ing on the part of the sen­ate pres­i­dent. After watch­ing sev­eral of his party’s anti-immigration mea­sures floun­der in recent weeks, Pearce devised the omnibus bill—hobbling it together over the week­end from the tat­tered remains of sev­eral failed immi­gra­tion mea­sures. He intro­duced it Mon­day, tardily and to the sur­prise of his fel­low sen­a­tors, accord­ing to Colorlines.com’s Julianne Hing. The Sen­ate Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee passed the bill on Wednesday—though not with­out con­sid­er­able debate and dissent—and it is already headed to the floor for a vote.

Notwith­stand­ing the measure’s swift progress, many oppo­nents believe Pearce’s leg­isla­tive chi­canery is a sign of weak­ness. Hing writes:

Immi­grant rights activists say the maneu­ver is proof of Pearce’s des­per­a­tion. “It is clear he does not have the votes to do what he wanted the way he wanted,” said Alfredo Gutier­rez, a for­mer state sen­a­tor who heads the immi­grant rights group Somos Amer­ica. “Pearce has clearly staked his rep­u­ta­tion on the 14th amend­ment bills, but now he’s found him­self on the defen­sive. […] It’s proof that we’re being effec­tive,” Gutier­rez said.

Both SB 1309, the cit­i­zen­ship bill, and SB 1622, the omnibus mea­sure, tread dan­ger­ously close to uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ity. While the for­mer attempts to rein­ter­pret the 14^th Amendment’s Cit­i­zen­ship Clause—which has, for 130 years, guar­an­teed the right to cit­i­zen­ship at birth—the lat­ter threat­ens to vio­late its Equal Pro­tec­tion Clause—which, as upheld by the Supreme Court in Plyler v. Doe, grants all chil­dren the right to a pub­lic edu­ca­tion. As such, the bills would likely face myr­iad legal chal­lenges if passed, much the same as SB 1070.

While the bills are shock­ing in their breadth and per­ni­cious in their poten­tial for mar­gin­al­iz­ing scores of unau­tho­rized immi­grants, even under cur­rent law undoc­u­mented youth must con­tend with a num­ber of bar­ri­ers to edu­ca­tion, employ­ment and stability.

Undoc­u­mented col­lege grad­u­ates mired in immi­gra­tion limbo

As Liane Mem­bis notes at Cam­pus Progress, count­less undoc­u­mented stu­dents grad­u­ate from col­lege strad­dled with debt, bur­dened by the con­stant threat of depor­ta­tion, and unable to obtain gainful—or even legal employment—due to their immi­gra­tion sta­tus. Mem­bis relates the story of Teresa Ser­rano, an accom­plished, civi­cally minded, 2010 Yale Uni­ver­sity grad­u­ate whose undoc­u­mented sta­tus now inhibits her from pur­su­ing her cho­sen career:

“What I felt on grad­u­a­tion day was different—something more severe,” she said. “I had spent the past four years at this elite insti­tu­tion, com­part­men­tal­iz­ing a painful truth, and I knew that when I grad­u­ated I would be con­fronted with my harsh real­ity yet again.” […] She left New Haven and returned to her home in Texas. Now her daily rou­tine con­sists of nine-to-five job shifts at fast food restau­rants and laun­dro­mats, the advan­tages of her Yale degree negated by her undoc­u­mented status.

The DREAM Act, a fed­eral bill that would have cre­ated a path to legal­iza­tion for cer­tain undoc­u­mented col­lege stu­dents, could have changed Serrano’s life. But after its defeat last Novem­ber, and given the high improb­a­bil­ity that any sort of com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform will progress this year, her career ambi­tions are nec­es­sar­ily eclipsed by the sim­ple goal of remain­ing in the United States.

Undoc­u­mented LGBT youth bear dou­ble burden

Still other undoc­u­mented youth fare worse—among them, a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of home­less LGBT immi­grants. At Feet in 2 Worlds, Von Diaz reports that roughly half of New York City’s home­less youth iden­ti­fies as les­bian, gay, bisex­ual or trans­gen­der while 15 per­cent were born out­side of the United States. More­over, between 10 and 20 per­cent of res­i­dents at two home­less shel­ters in 2010 were LGBT immi­grants. Many of them were turned out onto the streets by intol­er­ant fam­i­lies and must now rou­tinely con­tend with threats and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties owing to their youth, sex­ual iden­ti­ties, and undoc­u­mented status.

Juan Valdez, a 21-year-old gay immi­grant from the Domini­can Repub­lic, tells his story below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bejJqEK_wiY[/youtube]

Note that the future imag­ined by Pearce and his anti-immigrant cohorts is one in which the daily injus­tices endured by Teresa Ser­rano and Juan Valdez are not only the norm, but evi­dence of a job well done.

This post fea­tures links to the best inde­pen­dent, pro­gres­sive report­ing about immi­gra­tion by mem­bers of The Media Con­sor­tium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Dias­pora for a com­plete list of arti­cles on immi­gra­tion issues, or fol­low us on Twit­ter. And for the best pro­gres­sive report­ing on crit­i­cal econ­omy, envi­ron­ment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Con­sor­tium, a net­work of lead­ing inde­pen­dent media outlets.