Sinister Security

The Latest Nonsense About Immigration—a Quick Guide

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https://mronline.org/2018/02/07/the-latest-nonsense-about-immigration-a-quick-guide/

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

February 7, 2018

We’ve seen and heard a lot about immigration in the past few weeks, and a good deal of it has been out-and-out nonsense. Many journalists and politicians simply don’t understand U.S. immigration policy, some consciously lie about it, and a few, like Donald Trump, manage not to understand and at the same time consciously lie.

Here’s a list of some of the immigration absurdities now circulating in the media and in the political class.

1. We have a big problem called “chain immigration.” People who say this are actually talking about the family-based visa system established by the 1965 immigration reform. The term “chain migration” refers to an age-old process of people settling in a new country and then sending for friends and relatives. Many or most European Americans got here through this kind of migration. So why do conservatives call family-based immigration “chain migration”? Simple: they claim to support family values, so they don’t want us to notice that they’re opposing a program that favors family reunification.

2. Family-based immigration means “a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.” Most people don’t live long enough to create anything like the migration “chain” we find in President Trump’s rants and rightwing TV ads. It’s true that a naturalized U.S. citizen can sponsor green cards for a spouse, for parents, and for minor children, but the process involves many bureaucratic hurdles and delays. To sponsor other close relatives, such as siblings and adult children, the citizen confronts a labyrinth of quotas and restrictions, with delays stretching into decades for people of certain nationalities. Green card holders face even stricter limitations and greater hurdles.

In January Trump claimed that terrorism suspect Sayfullo Saipov brought in “22 people through the chain.” PolitiFact calculates that the 29-year-old Saipov, a green card holder since 2010, could only have done this by somehow “fathering more than 20 kids before he left Uzbekistan.”

3. We also have a good visa program called “merit-based immigration.” Currently the U.S. government makes immigration visas available for some people with special skills or employment opportunities; these visas are capped at 140,000 a year, including the applicants’ spouses and minor children. Conservatives generally like this program, but after years of charging that immigrants are “taking our jobs,” they’re naturally uncomfortable with the program’s usual name, “employment-based immigration.” So in the past decade they’ve been trying to rebrand it as “merit-based immigration.”

4. This program brings us people who “will contribute to our society and who will love and respect our country.” Republicans are trying to reorientthe employment-based visa program towards admitting immigrants with advanced degrees in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. This probably does contribute to our society, but the Republicans’ real interest is the new workers’ ability to benefit U.S. corporations. Recruiting these immigrants gives U.S. companies a technological edge; creates a “brain drain” for the immigrants’ home countries, often U.S. economic rivals like China and South Korea; and compensates for the shortage of qualified U.S.-born workers caused by the failures of our own underfunded education system.

5. Current immigration laws have “deadly loopholes” which allow “criminals to break into our country.” This is a reference to the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which George W. Bush signed into law in 2008. The act was intended to protect unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S. border; instead of turning the children back, Border Patrol agents are required to hand them over to Health and Human Services while their asylum claims are considered. Most of these minors are Central Americans fleeing violence in their own countries—violence largely created by the U.S. demand for drugs and U.S. support for rightwing regimes.

There really is a loophole, though—for the Border Patrol. The law excludes “contiguous countries,” giving the agents freedom to ship Mexican kids back across the border to face whatever the drug cartels may have in store for them.

6. The only important immigration issue now is the legal status of immigrants known as “Dreamers.” The main media and political focus has been on the nearly 700,000 younger immigrants currently losing work authorizations and the protection from deportation they had under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), but more than 300,000 other immigrants, including Salvadorans and Haitians, are losing protections they had under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. And of course there are another 10 million out-of-status immigrants who never had any protections to lose; at least two-thirds of them have lived here for a decade or more.

7. But of course we can’t give all these people legal status. For much of the twentieth century—through 1986—Congress periodically provided an avenue to legalization for unauthorized immigrants with long-term residence. A 1938 report for the Roosevelt administration explained the reasoning: “It is not in the best interests of the United States that there should be a considerable number of aliens here who have resided in this country for many years and who are otherwise eligible for naturalization and anxious to become citizens, but who are prevented from doing so” because of a lack of status.

Why can’t we apply that logic now? Or was amnesty all right in 1938 because back then the undocumented immigrants were mostly white?

8. Still, we need to be realistic and compromiseon immigration. The White House talking points from January 25 laid out a hardline restrictionist agenda as the government’s bargaining position. Why shouldn’t immigrants and their supporters negotiate from an equally firm position? For example, polls show as much as 86 percent of the U.S. population supporting legal status for the Dreamers. Why in the world should we have to compromise on that? (The rest of Trump’s immigration agenda is also generally unpopular.)

9. At least we could compromise on Trump’s wall. There’s a widespread sense that it will do no harm to humor Trump by giving him $25 billion for increased border security. But even the existing border security is far from harmless. It disrupts border communities and causes environmental damage, and its main result has been driving migrants into inhospitable and dangerous terrain. More than 7,209 people have died trying to cross the Mexico-U.S. border in the last twenty years; for comparison, official estimates for deaths at the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1989 are in the low hundreds.

What we actually need is a rollback of the border security regime, along with an investigation of corruption in the awarding of border security contracts. For example, how did we end up paying Boeing $1 billionfor a barely functional 53-mile “virtual fence”?

10. We can count on Democrats to do the right thing for the Dreamers. The first version of the DREAM Actwas introduced in 2001, before some of the current Dreamers were born. In 2009 and 2010 the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House. For two years the party leadership refused to put the bill up for a vote; when they finally allowed a roll call, in December 2010, the votes of five Democratic senators killed the legislation. Some Democratic politicians sincerely support immigrant rights; others are just trying to get reelected. We can only count on them when we’ve instilled a fear in their hearts that they may be looking for a new job after November.

11. Still, it’s up to the people in Washington; all we can do is make phone calls. Any progress that’s ever been made in this country has been driven by popular movements. Advances in immigrant rights will only come about when millions of people are backing immigrant activists in their struggles. We need to accompany them to immigration hearings; turn out for protests to defend their rights; reportand—if we can do it without endangering others—recordabuses by immigration agents; and consider risking arrest to prevent these abuses. We also need to do something seemingly less radical but no less difficult: educate ourselves on the realities of immigration policy and get this knowledge out to others, in personal conversations, through social media, at community meetings, at forums, screenings, and teach-ins—in any milieu where we can be heard.

“Knowledge is power,” according to an old adage. Rightwingers understand this; sometimes they even use the phrase as a motto. That’s why they’re working so hard to keep us in ignorance.

Update 2/5/18: Immigration News You May Have Missed

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/us/politics/daca-teachers-trump.html

Recent Polls, DACA/TPS Fallout, MS-13 Solution, Border Deaths

Polls show Americans are closer to Democrats than Donald Trump on immigration

Americans want to help DREAMers, don’t want a wall, and don’t want to cut immigration levels.

By Dylan Matthews, Vox

February 5, 2018

…[O]n the big questions, the prevailing public sentiment is reasonably clear: People want relief for DREAMers. They don’t want a border wall. And they want immigration levels kept constant or increased, not lowered. It’s totally in line with public sentiment for Democrats and pro-immigration Republicans in Congress to insist on a deal that helps DREAMers without building a wall or cracking down on immigration.[…]

Read the full article:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/3/16959458/immigration-trump-compromise-public-opinion-poll-dreamers-wall

With DACA in Limbo, Teachers Protected by the Program Gird for the Worst

By Erica L. Green, New York Times

February 1, 2018

Karen Reyes spends her days teaching a group of deaf toddlers at Lucy Read Pre-Kindergarten School in Austin, Tex., how to understand a world they cannot hear.[…]

Read the full article:

If Immigrants Are Pushed Out, Who Will Care for the Elderly?

By Paula Span, New York Times

February 2, 2018

[…]But because her helper is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, both women increasingly fear that she’ll be detained and deported. (I’m withholding their names for that reason.)[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/health/illegal-immigrants-caregivers.html

Former Gang Members Offer Advice on How to Combat MS-13

By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker

January 30, 2018

U.S. authorities often portray MS-13, which started in this country in the nineteen-eighties, as a massive criminal enterprise reminiscent of the Mexican drug cartels. That vastly overstates the gang’s power, but, in some ways, undersells it, too.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/former-gang-members-offer-advice-on-how-to-combat-ms-13

Death on the Border: Trump Border Patrol Crackdown Shines Light On Rising Number Of Migrant Deaths

By Immigration Prof

February 2, 2018

NPR reports that the recent arrest of an activist from the group No More Deaths is highlighting the rising number of people who die crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and the challenges that humanitarian workers confront when they try to help. At least 7,209 people have died while illegally crossing the southwestern border over the past 20 years, according to U.S. Border Patrol data, but an investigation by USA Today finds official statistics underestimate the number of deaths. The number is much higher because, for the most part, federal authorities' casualty count does not include people whose remains are recovered by local authorities.[…]

Read the full post:

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2018/02/death-on-teh-border-trump-border-patrol-crackdown-shines-light-on-rising-number-of-migrant-deaths.html

‘Dreamers’ could give US economy – and even American workers – a boost

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Not Passing a Clean Dream Act Would Hurt Taxpayers

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DACA and TPS: Trump Plans to Push 1 Million More Into the Shadows

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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/8/16862898/trump-tps-salvador-ms13-immigrants

Trump rants about Salvadoran gangs. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

On January 9 the administration announced that it was terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some quarter million Salvadorans. Along with the termination of DACA and most other TPS programs, this will end protection from deportation for a total of about 1 million immigrants. Few of them will be able or willing to return to their countries of origin. The undocumented population in the U.S. has remained stable at around 11 million for a decade; now the White House, which regularly denounces “illegals,” actually seems to be working to increase the number. Maybe we should ask why.—TPOI editor

Trump’s attacks on humanitarian immigration just became a full-blown war

He’s trying to force 260,000 immigrants to return to El Salvador after decades in the United States.

By Dara Lind, Vox

January 9, 2018

On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it was stripping approximately 260,500 Salvadoran immigrants — who’ve been in the US for at least 17 years, since a 2001 earthquake — of temporary legal status as of July 2019.

It’s the latest, and most significant, blow in the administration’s fight against Temporary Protected Status, an immigration program that lets the government allow immigrants to stay in the US and work legally after their home countries are struck by natural disasters or war.[…]

Read the full article:

Ending Salvadorans' protected immigration status will exacerbate problems Trump aimed to fix

[T]he termination of TPS for Salvadorans likely will cause a significant humanitarian and economic impact for cities such as Washington, D.C., Miami and Los Angeles.

By Geoff Thale and Elyssa Pachico, The Hill

January 8, 2018

It is no secret that protection offered by the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program to Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans lasted beyond “temporary,” extending over many years. Under TPS, migrants unable to return to their home countries because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions can live and work in the United States. The U.S. government granted TPS to Salvadorans in 2001, following two devastating earthquakes in the Central American country, and because of violence and instability in subsequent years, continued to approve extensions to the program.[…]

Read the full article:

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/367982-ending-protected-immigration-status-for-salvadorans-will-exacerbate

Save the Salvadorans

So long as our immigration system is built on contortions of logic like these, it will be vulnerable to Trump-style cruelty that’s then justified on the basis of common-sense law enforcement.

David Leonhardt, New York Times

January 9, 2018

The roughly 200,000 Salvadorans whom the Trump administration is subjecting to deportation are deeply ensconced in American society.

They have lived here for at least 17 years. Together, they have about 190,000 children who were born in the United States. The immigrants “work in a wide array of jobs, from defense contractors to school cafeteria workers, commercial office cleaners and restaurant owners,” Maria Sacchetti of The Washington Post writes.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/opinion/salvadorans-tps.html

The Movement and the Money

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Protect the Dreamers, but Don't Fall for an E-Verify "Compromise"

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Miscellaneous News: Detention Center Lawsuit, Suppressed Refugee Report, World Citizenship Poll

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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42028-victory-for-immigrant-hunger-strikers-lawsuit-challenges-slave-wages-at-private-jail

Victory for Immigrant Hunger Strikers: Lawsuit Challenges Slave Wages at Private Jail

By Mike Ludwig, Truthout
NWDC protest. Photo: Thomas Soerenes/The News Tribune/AP

September 22, 2017

For three years now, incarcerated immigrants have staged hunger strikes and work stoppages to protest conditions at the Northwest Detention Center, an immigration jail in Tacoma, Washington, run by a private prison company that pays detainees as little as $1 a day to work in the jail.

"This week folks were offered chips or a soup for several nights of waxing the floors, so not even $1 [per] day," one person incarcerated in the jail recently reported to NWDC Resistance, an immigrant-led group fighting to end the deportation and detention of immigrants.

Five hunger strikes have been held so far this year, with participants and whistleblowers facing solitary confinement, threats of forced feeding and other forms of retaliation from prison authorities, according to NWDC Resistance.

Their efforts paid off on Wednesday when Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced a lawsuit against GEO Group, a massive private prison firm that runs the Northwest Detention Center under a federal contract.[…]

Read the full article:

For earlier coverage of the Northwest Detention Center, go to:

http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2017/08/new-trouble-at-geo-groups-northwest.html

Trump Administration Rejects Study Showing Positive Impact of Refugees

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Somini Sengupta, New York Times

September 18, 2017

WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials, under pressure from the White House to provide a rationale for reducing the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year, rejected a study by the Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.

Photo: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

The draft report, which was obtained by The New York Times, contradicts a central argument made by advocates of deep cuts in refugee totals as President Trump faces an Oct. 1 deadline to decide on an allowable number. The issue has sparked intense debate within his administration as opponents of the program, led by Mr. Trump’s chief policy adviser, Stephen Miller, assert that continuing to welcome refugees is too costly and raises concerns about terrorism.[…]

Read the full article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/refugees-revenue-cost-report-trump.html

World Citizenship Is More Popular Than You Might Think

A poll of more than 20,000 people in 18 countries, conducted by GlobeScan for the BBC World Service from December 2015 through April 2016, found that 51 percent of respondents saw themselves more as global citizens than as citizens of their own countries.

By Lawrence Wittner, History News Network

September 17, 2017

Has nationalism captured the hearts and minds of the world’s people?

It certainly seems to have emerged as a powerful force in recent years. Trumpeting their alleged national superiority and hatred of foreigners, political parties on the far right have made their biggest political advances since the 1930s. After the far right’s startling success, in June 2016, in getting a majority of British voters to endorse Brexit―British withdrawal from the European Union (EU)―even mainstream conservative parties began to adopt a chauvinist approach. Using her Conservative Party conference to rally support for leaving the EU, British Prime Minister Theresa May declared contemptuously: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.”[…]

Read the full article:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/166809

Why do we still have employer sanctions?

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Immigrant Workers: Important “Dirty Laundry” Piece, Update on Tom Cat Bakery Campaign

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https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/dirty-laundry-investigation

Dirty Laundry: An Investigation

By Annie Hylton, Dissent

Summer 2017

Drying and ironing press at an industrial laundry facility (xtrekx / Shutterstock)

It was before 6 a.m. on January 5, 2011 when Marlyn Gonzalez drove through darkness and freezing cold into the parking lot of the commercial laundry where she worked in Southampton, New York. After she dropped off her mother, who also worked at Suffolk Laundry, and parked her car, Gonzalez was surprised to find her manager, Rajindra Singh, waiting for her in the lot. When she tried to get out of her car, Singh blocked her. He put his hand on Gonzalez’s knee, running it all the way up to what she called her “intimate parts” and told her that he wanted “to touch [her] pussy.”

Gonzalez got away from Singh by telling him she had a boyfriend. She got to her workstation at the laundry and began feeding sheets into a machine. “I was shaking. I was very nervous. I felt my blood boiling,” she described in a later testimony.

This incident, which Marlyn Gonzalez recounted to me in an interview, was part of a lawsuit brought in 2012 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), suing Suffolk Laundry Services for a sexually hostile work environment and for retaliation by management against all eight plaintiffs when they complained. Suffolk denied both charges.[…]

Read the full article:

Tom Cat Workers Rally to Launch Next Phase of Campaign

By Brandworkers

August 29, 2017

Tom Cat workers. Photo: Erik McGregor/Sipa via AP Images

Tom Cat workers resisting the company's collaboration with a Trump administration ICE audit are ready to launch the next phase of their campaign and they need you to stand with them. Workers are demanding that Tom Cat a) pay dignified severance so they can rebuild their lives and b) adopt an immigrant worker protection policy for those who remain, which will serve as a model to other employers in the Trump-era.

The rally, hosted by Brandworkers, Immigrant Worker Justice, and the Food Chain Workers Alliance, will be held Thursday, September 7, 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm. Meet up at 51st Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.

More information:

https://www.facebook.com/events/127572651212771/

DACA Update #2: What Sessions Said, What It Means, Prospects for Resistance, and Sessions’ Problem With Mere Facts

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As expected, the Trump Administration announced on September 5 that it was rescinding the five-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, with a six-month delay before the cancellation takes full effect. President Trump dodged making the announcement himself; he stuck Attorney General Jeff Sessions with the job. And later in the day Trump seemed to contradict the announcement with a tweet threatening to “revisit” the issue in six months if Congress fails to put together some sort of DACA replacement. What that meant was anybody’s guess.

What does it mean for DACA Recipients?

Sessions’ official announcement was vague, but the administration clarified some pointsduring the day. No new DACA applications will be accepted, but people who have already applied can expect their applications to be processed in the usual way. Current recipients whose two-year deferrals and work authorizations are set to expire before March 6, 2018, can apply to renew their deferrals and work authorizations, but they must do so before October 5. Current recipients whose deferrals expire on or after March 6 are simply out of luck.

In public pronouncements the White House tried to make its approach sound humane, but a talking points memo the administration circulated in Congress on September 5 had this chilling remark: “The Department of Homeland Security urges DACA recipients to use the time remaining on their work authorizations to prepare for and arrange their departure from the United States—including proactively seeking travel documentation—or to apply for other immigration benefits for which they may be eligible.”

According to the memo, the total number of DACA recipients as of September 4 was 689,821, somewhat lower than estimates in the media of about 800,000.

What Can We Expect from Congress?

“Congress, get ready to do your job - DACA!” Trump tweeted, implying that Congress now had six months to find some legislative solution for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came here as children. In other words, he was calling for some version of the DREAM Act, a legislative proposal that has been kicking around on Capitol Hill since 2001. It’s true that the DREAM Act has bipartisan support, and the latest version might well pass Congress if there was a straight up-and-down vote. But various observersnote that this hasn’t happened in the past 16 years—and the current session of Congress has had a lot of trouble passing anything.

Some Republicans will be pushing for a divide-and-conquer strategy: they’ll back the DREAM Act in exchange for an agreement to fund Trump’s border wall. But the Dreamers themselves seem to have no patience for this sort of horse trading. “I’m not going to step on top of my community to get ahead,” a DACA recipient protesting outside the White House told The Daily Beast on September 5.

DACA protest at White House, September 5

What Is the Resistance Doing?

Sessions’ September 5 announcement sparked protests that day, including civil disobedience and arrests, throughout the country. But what will the long-term response be?

Several legal organizations have already started to challenge the DACA cancellation in court, and at least three state government seem ready to mount their own challenges. These would be unlikely to overturn the White House’s decision, but they could delay implementation, just as the right wing’s challenges to President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) tied the program up in court until Obama’s successor could repeal it. Meanwhile, a number of organizations are gearing up to pressure Congress with online petitions calling for passage of the DREAM Act.

Some of the organizations we can expect to lead efforts to protect DACA recipients include Mijente, Moviemiento Cosecha, Presente and United We Dream,

What Are the Prospects for Resistance?

DACA recipients and their friends and families add up to a substantial part of the population, and young Dreamers have been especially forceful in the past as activists. Add to this their potential appeal to native-born citizens. A Morning Consult/Politico national tracking poll from August 31 to September 3 showed 58 percent of respondents supporting a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, while another 18 percent felt the immigrant youths should be allowed to become legal residents but not citizens. Only 15 percent wanted them deported. In other words, like the ObamaCare “repeal and replace” effort, the DACA cancellation is only popular with Trump’s hardcore base—and is extremely unpopular with the great majority of the population.

One way to build on this potential support among the native born would be to confront economic issues—especially the one often misrepresented as “they take our jobs.” Although much anti-immigrant feeling is simply racist and xenophobic, a good deal comes from native-born workers who find their own wages held down because of lower pay for undocumented immigrants. As a recent Economic Policy Institute (EPI) blog post puts it, “The reasonable fear unauthorized workers feel keeps them docile and quiet, which in turn diminishes the bargaining power of Americans who work alongside unauthorized workers.” The corollary, rarely mentioned in the media, is that providing authorization for undocumented workers raises their pay and puts upward pressure on the pay of other workers in the same fields.

A 2016 survey found that after receiving DACA protection, including work authorization, recipients found their wages increasing by 42 percent on average. Other factors probably contributed to the wage increase, but the main factor was certainly the DACA work authorization. So what happens when DACA recipients are forced back into low-paying jobs in the informal economy? “Ending DACA and forcing these young workers out of the formal, regulated labor market, thus making them easily exploitable will not help American workers,” the EPI blog concludes. “[I]t will do the opposite.”

Did Sessions Lie, or Is He Just Clueless?

A little more than two hours after Sessions’ September 5 briefing, Voxposted an article entitled “4 lies Jeff Sessions told to justify ending DACA.” One of these was his claim that DACA “among other things contributed to a surge of minors at the southern border with humanitarian consequences,” a reference to an uptick in asylum seekers from three Central American countries in the spring of 2014.

It is well known that the principal cause for the uptick was a sharp increase in crime in the three countries, but did DACA have anything to do with it? The Voxarticle said there was “a lot of disagreement” on this but indicated that the increase in asylum seekers was mostly due to “increasing violence and worsening economic conditions in Central American countries.” PolitiFact found Sessions’ claim “mostly false.” Actually, it’s completely false.

Sessions was repeating disinformation perpetrated by the right wing—including an office of the Border Patrol—in the summer of 2014, disinformation that was never sufficiently debunked by the corporate media. A leaked Border Patrol report about interviews agents conducted with asylum seekers one day in May 2014 attributed the uptick to “misrepresentations” about DACA. But someone also leaked the original report about the interviews. This report showed clearly that any “pull” factor from the United States for the uptick was the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), not DACA.

Sessions probably wasn’t aware of any of this. He—or whoever wrote his statement—simply didn’t know the facts and couldn’t be bothered to find out what they were.

Renegotiating NAFTA Will Only Serve the Rich -- Just Like It Always Has

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When Deportation Is a Death Sentence: One Domestic Worker's Fight for Survival

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Immigrants, Wage Theft, and Trump

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http://prospect.org/article/how-trump-made-wage-theft-routine

Undocumented immigrants are easy targets for employers who want to rip their workers off. The situation seems to be getting worse under Trump—which doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad before.—TPOI editor

Dairy workers protest. Photo: New York Upstate

How Trump Made Wage Theft Routine

…[W]ith Donald Trump as president, more employers think wage theft is even easier to get away with.

Eric Cortellessa, American Prospect

June 5, 2017

Enrique is a farmworker in California. He has a wife and two sons living in Mexico who depend on the money he sends them. For parts of the year—from May to November—he goes north to Washington to pick apples and cherries. Sometimes, he says, he isn’t paid for all the work he does. On one such occasion, he and his coworkers wanted to complain. Stiffing employees, after all, is a federal crime.

But it’s not so simple. Enrique is worried that reporting the crime could backfire against him by exposing his immigration status.

“When we get paid—sometimes we get paid and sometimes we don’t—we notice that there are hours missing, and we just fear saying anything, because we’ve been told repeatedly that if we say anything, they are going to call immigration on us,” he says.[...]

Read the full article:

Upstate immigrant dairy farm workers report injuries and intimidation

By Patrick Lohmann, New York Upstate

June 1, 2017

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Immigrant dairy farm workers who spoke to researchers in Upstate New York reported hazardous working conditions, wage theft and intimidation, according to findings published in a report by workers' rights groups and Syracuse University professors.

Researchers interviewed 88 immigrant workers at 53 Upstate dairy farms in 2014 and 2015. They did so without the farm owners' knowledge and granted the workers, most of whom came to the country illegally, anonymity for fear of being deported, the authors said.

Nearly half of the workers said they were bullied or intimidated by their bosses, and two-thirds said they'd suffered at least one injury. […]

Read the full article:

http://www.newyorkupstate.com/news/2017/06/upstate_immigrant_dairy_farmers_report_workplace_injuries_and_isolation_study_fi.html

Download the report:

https://milkedny.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/milked_053017.pdf

Book Excerpt: How Does Trump Budget Attack Immigrants’ Citizen Children?

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On May 23 the Trump administration unveiled a more detailed version of its budget proposal. The New York Times noted that in addition to increasing funding for the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants,

[t]he proposal also calls for new steps to bar undocumented immigrants from receiving tax credits, including adding a new requirement that those claiming the child tax credit provide a verifiable Social Security Number valid for employment, and tightening current rules that mandate that a Social Security number be furnished to claim the earned-income tax credit….

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney claims that it's wrong “to give the earned-income tax credit, which is designed to help folks who work, to give it to somebody who is in the country and working illegally. That’s just not fair.” Whether it's fair or not, under current law undocumented immigrants aren't eligible for the earned-income credit. But what about the child tax credit? This is only for citizen children or children with legal residence, not for the parents. In other words, the administration is planning to punish citizen children for having parents who are undocumented.

We explain the child tax credit in Chapter 6, “Do immigrants pay taxes” and “Do immigrants collect welfare?”

The Social Security Administration estimated in 2013 that about 44 percent of this country’s 8.1 million out-of-status workers were employed in the formal economy, working “on the books,” generally using false Social Security numbers (SSN) or an individual tax identification number (ITIN). These workers paid federal, state, and local taxes the same way citizens and immigrants with legal status did, and Social Security and Medicare payments were deducted from their paychecks…..

Some out-of-status immigrants do seek benefits for their U.S.-born children, who are entitled to the same services as other U.S. citizens. For example, undocumented immigrants who file their federal income taxes are eligible, under the same rules as other taxpayers, for credits for their dependent children who are U.S. citizens or legal residents. These child tax credits are capped at $1,000 per child, and if the total amount of the credits is greater than what the taxpayer owes, the government may refund the difference.

This is a benefit for the children, not the immigrant parent, and it’s lower than benefits in many European child allowance programs, which often pay more than $100 a month per child. Some politicians attacked the program after a 2011 Treasury Department investigation found that $4.2 billion had been paid out to accounts of unauthorized immigrants, but tax experts noted that the only real problem was with some fraud by a small number of taxpayers and tax preparers, not with the credit itself.

[We’re occasionally posting excerpts from the new edition of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers. You can order here or from your favorite bookseller.]

Book Excerpt: How Much Would Trump’s Wall Really Cost?

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As of April 25 President Trump seems to have backed off from his threat to demand that the April government spending bill include funding for his border wall. But there’s still plenty of controversy over the cost of the proposed wall. Trump himself has given all sorts of estimates for the construction, ranging from $4 billion to $12 billion. A leaked Department of Homeland Security put the number at $21.6 billion, while a group of Democratic staffers in the Senate have come up with a $66.9 billion price tag. All these estimates seem to overlook the factor Robert Frost pointed out 98 years ago: walls require maintenance. So how much would it cost to maintain the Great Wall of Trump?

Here’s what we say in The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, Chapter 9, “Enforcement: Is It a Solution?”

In November 2005 DHS launched the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), claiming it would “secure America’s borders and reduce illegal migration” by extending the existing fences to a total of 661 miles, about one-third of the southwestern border’s 1,951 miles. The work was basically completed in February 2012.

The 651 miles of new fencing cost an average of $3.7 million a mile to build, suggesting that the expense of erecting similar fencing along the entire border would be about $7.4 billion. But this leaves out the money required for maintenance. An outside contractor estimated that the total cost of building and maintaining the current 651 miles of fence would be $6.5 billion over twenty years — so the bill to taxpayers for a fence along the entire border for twenty years would be $19.5 billion.

Even this may be too low. The costs are expected to be much higher in rugged terrain or in areas where the government needs to buy more of the land; much of the current fencing is on land the government already owns. Moreover, the current fence isn’t the sort of expensive double-wall barrier many politicians call for. Back in 1999 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated that maintaining a double-wall fence would cost from $16.4 million to $70 million per mile over a 25-year period, with $32.8 billion to $140 billion in maintenance alone for this type of fence along the entire border.

[We’re occasionally posting excerpts from the new edition of our book which seem relevant to the current situation. The updated and expanded edition is due out on May 22. You can pre-order here or from your favorite bookseller.]

Pew Research: Unauthorized Population Still Declining as of 2015

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http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/25/as-mexican-share-declined-u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-fell-in-2015-below-recession-level/

The Pew Research Center provides lots of useful information in two recent reports. One of these, released on April 25, shows that the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. remains around the level it hit during the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s—in fact, it was actually declining in 2015. So much for the repeated warnings from anti-immigrant forces that Obama administration policies like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) would set off a new wave of unauthorized immigration.

Another report, one issued in March, analyzes the share of immigrants in various industries and jobs. There’s no industry where immigrants make up the majority of the workforce, although it’s true that in some jobs (manicurist, for example) more than 50 percent of the workers are immigrants. But we should note that even in these jobs, undocumented immigrants are still a minority. Some advocates feel they’re helping immigrant rights by claiming that “immigrants just take the jobs we don’t want,” but this is untrue and isn’t going to convince the many citizens who work alongside immigrants. A far better argument is that immigrants are our coworkers and we should support their rights.—TPOI editor.

As Mexican share declined, U.S. unauthorized immigrant population fell in 2015 below recession level

By Jeffrey S. Passel and D’vera Cohn, Pew Research Center

April 25, 2017

The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in 2015 fell below the total at the end of the Great Recession for the first time, with Mexicans continuing to represent a declining share of this population, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on government data.

There were 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2015, a small but statistically significant decline from the Center’s estimate of 11.3 million for 2009, the last year of the Great Recession.[…]

Read the full article:

Immigrants don’t make up a majority of workers in any U.S. industry

By Drew Desilver, Pew Research Center

March 16, 2017

Immigrants are more likely than U.S.-born workers to be employed in a number of specific jobs, including sewing machine operators, plasterers, stucco masons and manicurists. But there are no major U.S. industries in which immigrants outnumber the U.S. born, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

All told, immigrants made up 17.1% of the total U.S. workforce in 2014, or about 27.6 million workers out of 161.4 million. About 19.6 million workers, or 12.1% of the total workforce, were in the U.S. legally; about 8 million, or 5%, entered the country without legal permission or overstayed their visas. (Roughly 10% of unauthorized immigrants have been granted temporary protection from deportation and eligibility to work under two federal programs, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status.)[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/16/immigrants-dont-make-up-a-majority-of-workers-in-any-u-s-industry/

Trump’s Attacks on Immigrants Are a Gift for Bad Bosses

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Will Trump’s Wall Hit a Wall?

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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/border-wall-trump-congress-funding-236561

Photo: David Bacon

The Trump administration’s proposed budget includes $999 million for 62 miles of the president’s promised border wall. But Republicans legislators, facing opposition from Democrats, may leave the wall request out of the budget Congress passes next month, creating another big loss for the real estate magnate right after his team’s failure to push Trumpcare through the House of Representatives.

There’s another embarrassment for Trump’s promised wall: the 62 miles of fencing and wall in the budget request—48 miles of new construction and 14 miles of work on existing barriers—would come with a price tag of $16 million per mile. At that rate, a wall for the whole 2,000-mile border, including upgrades to the existing 651 miles of fencing and other barriers, would cost far more than the $12 billion Trump has claimed at various times, and more even than the $21 billion a government report projected earlier this year. And none of this counts the maintenance costs for the giant structure, which could pass $70 billion over the next quarter century.

So where does the administration propose finding the funds for the Great Wall of Trump? From cutbacks in areas like medical research and bridge construction. No wonder the pledge to “build the wall”—a big crowd-pleaser during Trump’s campaign last year—isn’t so popular anymore. A CNN/ORC poll found that just 39 percent of 1,025 adults surveyed earlier this month approved the wall; 61 percent were opposed.—TPOI editor

Congress may stiff Trump on wall funding

“The Trump administration can't have another disaster on its hands. I think right now they have to show some level of competence and that they can govern.”

By Burgess Everett and Rachael Bade, Politico

March 28, 2017

Congressional Republicans might deliver some more bad news for President Donald Trump, fresh off their embarrassing failure to scrap Obamacare: No new money is coming to build his wall.

Trump hoped to jump-start construction of a massive wall on the U.S.-Mexico border with money in a must-pass government funding bill. But Democratic leaders are vowing to block any legislation that includes a single penny for the wall.

With the GOP consumed by its own divisions, the White House and Hill Republicans will have to rely on Democratic votes to avoid a government shutdown next month in what would be another disaster for Trump’s fledgling presidency.[…]

Read the full article:

First on CNN: Border wall ask: $1 billion for 62 miles

By Tal Kopan, Curt Devine, Scott Bronstein and Drew Griffin, CNN

March 28, 2017

Washington (CNN)The Trump administration wants the first $1 billion of border wall funding to cover 62 miles -- including replacing some existing fencing along the southern border.

The $999 million requested by the White House in its budget supplement for just defense and border security spending would cover just 48 miles of new wall, according to justification documents from the Department of Homeland Security obtained by CNN.

The documents describe exactly where the administration hopes to put its first installment of the border wall, as it described its modest 2017 funding ask.

The money will fund 14 miles of new border wall in San Diego, 28 miles of new levee wall barriers and six miles of new border wall in the Rio Grande Valley region and 14 miles of replacement fencing in San Diego. The fencing would likely include concrete elements, a source familiar with the plans told CNN.[...]

Read the full article:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/27/politics/trump-border-wall-cost-distance/

Here’s what the Trump White House wants to cut to fund his border wall, military spending spree

The suggested cuts are not official White House proposals, but they suggest the thrust of administration thinking

By Matthew Rozsa, Salon

March 28, 2017

On the same day that Department of Homeland Security justification documents were reported that indicate President Donald Trump wants nearly $1 billion to pay for his proposed border wall, the White House has sent a list of $18 billion worth of suggested spending cuts to Capitol Hill.

The cuts are wide-ranging but include programs like medical research, community development grants, and building new roads and bridges, according to a report by The New York Times. Because the list of suggested cuts are not being presented as official administration proposals but rather as “options” for congressional Republicans, they tell us more about where Trump would like to cut spending in order to pay for his border wall and Pentagon spending increases — as well as the fact that the administration is flexible in its approach to what it cuts.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/28/heres-what-the-trump-white-house-wants-to-cut-to-fund-his-border-wall-military-spending-spree/

CNN/ORC poll: Most back boost in infrastructure spending, oppose growing military budget

By Jennifer Agiesta, CNN Polling Director

March 8, 2017

Washington (CNN)—President Donald Trump last week floated the first kernels of his budget proposal for the coming year, and a new CNN/ORC poll finds the public sides with the President on tax cuts for the middle class and increased spending on infrastructure.

They disapprove, however, of his plans to increase military spending and fund the construction of a border wall with Mexico.

The poll results come about a week after Trump outlined some of his budget proposals in an address to a joint session of Congress. A budget request for 2018 is expected to reach Congress on March 16.[…]

Read the full article:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/08/politics/donald-trump-poll-spending-defense-infrastructure/