June, 2009

Immigration, Press Releases, Social Justice, UFCW Values, United Latinos

NATIONAL COMMISSION CONDEMNS WORKPLACE IMMIGRATION RAIDS

Jun 18, 2009

WASHINGTON – A National Commission investigating immigration enforcement under the Bush Administration released a comprehensive new report today documenting the devastation and destruction that immigration raids had on families, workplaces and communities across the country.

The report, Raids on Workers: Destroying Our Rights, offers a critical analysis of one of the central components of the Bush Administration’s immigration strategy and provides a detailed account of how heavy handed enforcement tactics led to systemic abuse of workers’ rights and a willful disregard for the rule of law.

“This commission was formed to examine allegations of abuse and misconduct by ICE agents during the course of immigration raids,” said Joseph T. Hansen, founding chairman of the commission and president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). “What we have uncovered is that during the Bush Administration ICE agents repeatedly trampled on innocent workers’ constitutional rights. These were not isolated incidents, but systemic problems that occurred in almost every region of the country. No government agency is above the law, and no worker should have to face the mistreatment and misconduct that these hardworking men and women were subjected to under the Bush Administration.”

The Commission, which is made up of former elected officials, labor leaders, academics, civil rights leaders and immigration and legal experts, spent more than a year holding regional hearings, interviewing witnesses and soliciting input from a wide range of workers, elected officials, policy experts, psychologists, and religious and community leaders.

The result is the most expansive analysis of the Bush Administration’s use of workplace raids and its total failure to address the wider problems of our nation’s broken immigration system.

Upon its creation, the commissioners set out to achieve the following objectives:

  • Conduct hearings on allegations of ICE abuse and misconduct in locations across the country;
  • Hear from workers and their families on the impact of ICE raids;
  • Hear testimony from community leaders, academics, constitutional experts and the business community;
  • Inform the public and elected officials;
  • Issue a report on the findings with a plan of action to protect workers’ constitutional rights from any future abuse;

At each hearing, clear patterns began to emerge regarding the tactics used by ICE agents and how the procedures used by these officials were compromising the rights of workers.

The testimony the Commission received revealed several disturbing patterns:

  • U.S. Citizens and Legal Permanent Residents detained for hours unable to leave even after establishing their status
  • A lack of coordination by ICE with state and local labor and child welfare agencies
  • Violations of the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures
  • The use of massive amounts of taxpayer resources and personnel to administer civil warrants
  • Repeated incidents of racial profiling and harassment
  • The human toll of immigration enforcement, including family separation and children left without proper care
  • Lasting economic and psychological devastation of communities and families in the aftermath of workplace and community raids

In addition to examining the impact of the raids, the Commission’s report lays out a clear path to a sensible, legal, and effective immigration enforcement policy that is consistent with the following objectives:

  • Target enforcement at criminal employers who abuse the immigration system and exploit an undocumented workforce;
  • Coordinate enforcement with the Department of Labor to protect workers and preserve their rights before any possible detention or processing;
  • Treat workers and their families with respect so they will be more inclined to assist in the prosecution of criminal employers, and to build trust between law enforcement and the community;
  • Vigorous oversight over ICE’s activities;
  • Stronger enforcement of existing federal labor laws;
  • Coordinated humanitarian efforts in the wake of workplace enforcement actions;
  • Enhancement of legal protections against abuse.

The Commission report also emphasized the need for passage of meaningful comprehensive immigration reform legislation – and concluded that piecemeal immigration proposals would never solve the underlying issues. The report lays out a series of elements that should be included in immigration reform legislation, including a path to earned legalization, family unification and stronger sanctions of employers that break the law.

“This report was written to ensure that there is an historical account of the Bush administration’s actions, so that former government officials cannot whitewash history,” added Hansen. “It also represents an opportunity to start a national discussion about immigration, worker rights and our core values as a nation. We hope to use this report – and its recommendations – to jumpstart a new dialogue with Congress and with the American public—about an immigration system that works for America’s workers.”

>>> Click here to download a copy of the report

>>> Click here to listen to the release

Immigration, Social Justice, UFCW Values

>An End to Bush’s Immigration Raids, and Hope for Meaningful Immigration Reform

Jun 18, 2009

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The Bush administration’s enforcement-only policy was a disaster for workers. Administration officials became masters of misdirection, as Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents conducted terrorizing worksite raids under the guise of meaningful immigration reform.



On December 12, 2006, the Bush administration conducted massive worksite raids at six Swift and Company meatpacking plants, rounding up, detaining and criminalizing thousands of workers at each plant for doing no more than reporting to work, no more than trying to earn a living.



The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the union that today represents the workers in those plants, established a National Commission on ICE Misconduct soon after. The Commission held five hearings on those and other raids, in cities across the nation. Now it has released a report telling the story of the human toll exacted by the Bush administration’s enforcement-only policy, in the hope it will trigger a dialogue on immigration reform with our new administration.



It’s the story of workers’ terrifying ordeal, when ICE agents handcuffed them, denied their right to counsel or to meet with union representation, and didn’t even have the decency to let workers use the bathroom or call their families. It’s the story of workers held against their will, native born and immigrant citizens alike—all because the Bush administration had identified, out of the 12,000 people working at those Swift plants, 133 who were suspected of identity theft. It’s the story of misplaced priorities on national security. As Senator John Kerry, who spoke at Commission hearing in Massachusetts, said of a raid there:


On March 6th of 2007, of all the dangers that were lurking in America…of all the threats being assessed by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, apparently, on that day, none were more insidious or challenging to us, or more menacing, than several hundred people, mostly women, in New Bedford who were making backpacks for the U.S. Army.

The consequences were grave; towns were devastated, families were torn apart. Children and parents suffered lasting mental effects. A high school student, Maria, described her mother’s arrest at a Swift plant and how she broke the news to her younger siblings:


At night, I had to do the hardest thing in the world, explain to a three-year-old and a five-year-old what was happening and why their mother wasn’t coming home. They looked at me with their eyes filled with tears. I felt the same way, so helpless and alone…Many kids are scared of the boogieman, but [my siblings] are afraid of ICE.



And the consequences for workers’ civil liberties were just as horrifying. In the report’s introduction, UFCW International President Joe Hansen describes the Bush administration’s flagrant disregard for the rule of law. “Racial profiling. Due process ignored… the Constitution tossed aside.”



The Commission offers this report as a record of an administration utterly abdicating its responsibility to provide a workable immigration policy. But it’s also offered as an opening for a new dialogue on immigration with the Obama administration, with a president committed to the idea that our ideals and security need not be mutually exclusive.



And central to that discussion, that dialogue, is the idea that at its core immigration is about workers. We need a productive immigration discussion about all workers, native born and immigrant, and their rights, protections, and opportunities to achieve the American Dream.



crossposted at DailyKos

Uncategorized

>GOP scare tactics fail against public option

Jun 18, 2009

>What do you do when your fear appeals are no longer working in your fight to stop Americans from getting the health care reform they want? Most people would think about changing tactics, but not the GOP! In an new NBC/WSJ poll it is clear that the American public supports a public plan.

From the Wall Street Journal.

“There was also support for the Democratic push to let people sign up for a public health-care plan that would compete with private companies, one of the toughest issues in the health-care debate. Three in four people said a public plan is extremely or quite important.”

This is from a paper whose editorial board hates the idea of a public option, who today gave Karl Rove space for an op-ed to say that the plan was a bad idea and use scare-tacticy phrases like “nationalization.”

So what’s going on? How can a paper print poll results on one page which clearly demonstrate that the public is indeed in the mood for a drastic change in current coverage, that 75% Americans believe that a public plan for health insurance is a good idea, and then print GOP scare tactics on their op-ed page?

Goes to show: the same poll finds that only 25% of Americans hold a positive view of the Republican party. That’s an all-time-low for what was once the party of Lincoln.

The scare tactics that the GOP is using against the public health care option are failing and making the party look bad in the process.

The poll also shows that people don’t want their benefits to be taxed, that maybe increasing taxes on the wealthiest among us is a better idea. We couldn’t agree more!