Thread: Stop the workplace raids

Stop the workplace raids
By Justin Akers Chacon, McClatchy-Tribune Columnist
In print: Monday, September 8, 2008

The federal government should stop rounding up hardworking immigrants.

In the largest single workplace raid to date, 595 of the 800 workers who showed up for work on Aug. 25 at the Howard Industries electronics plant in Laurel, Miss., never made it back home.

The vast majority of these undocumented workers have been separated from their families and now languish in the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, La., a for-profit immigrant prison maintained by the GEO Group, the multinational company formerly known as the Wackenhut Corrections Corp. Its fortunes have risen in tandem with immigrant detentions.

The rest of the detainees, mostly female workers with children left stranded at home and at school, were released only after having their ankles affixed with monitoring devices to ensure that they remain prisoners in their own homes pending eventual deportation hearings.

These raids are wrong for several reasons.

First, they tear apart families. As a result of the Howard Industries bust, nearly 500 children face the prospect of being motherless and fatherless if the deportations proceed.

Second, they terrorize the Latino community. In the wake of the Laurel raid, many workers skipped their shifts at the local poultry plants out of fear, Mexican restaurants shuttered their doors, and the superintendent of the county school district reported that about half of all Latino students stayed away from school the next day.

Third, they rock the local economy. Labor markets shrink, productivity declines and consumption levels plummet when immigrant workers are incarcerated or flee as a result of repression. This is because undocumented Latino workers — like it or not — are an integral and essential component of the national work force and increasingly provide the necessary labor for small towns along the factory belts of the Midwest and South.

According to a recent study by the National Council of La Raza, Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the labor force.

Today, nearly 21.6-million Latinos are at work in the United States, representing 14.1 percent of the labor force. Of this, more than 55 percent are foreign-born, including an estimated 10- to 12-million undocumented workers.

Finally, raids don't work. While they have dramatically increased in frequency in recent years, they fail to significantly stem migration. Workplace raids and arrests in 2007 were 10 times what they were in 2002. Last year, the agency charged 863 people with criminal violations, such as identity theft, and 4,077 for allegedly being in the country illegally (an 800 percent increase since 2002).

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff says illegal immigration has gone down as a result. But it has not fallen in direct proportion to the increase in the raids. And large numbers of migrant workers continue to cross without papers.

They do so because they are desperate to find a job to feed themselves and their families — and because their labor is needed. As one worker from economically depressed El Salvador planning to come to the United States told the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. economic slump and crackdowns on undocumented immigrants don't scare him. "Things may be bad there, but they're worse here," he said.

Farsighted Latino politicians like Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Joe Baca, D-Calif., have properly called for a moratorium on raids while new efforts at immigration reform are pursued.

Sen. Barack Obama, for his part, has rightfully stated that raids are "terrorizing immigrant communities," and during his convention speech remarked that no one benefits "from an immigrant mother separated from a child." But more will need to be done to bring an end to this harmful policy.

The Republicans, meanwhile, passed a platform that endorses workplace raids and urges a greater crackdown on illegal immigration.

That's no solution. It will only cause more hardship, all the way around.

Justin Akers Chacon is a professor of U.S. history and Chicano studies in San Diego.

© Justin Akers Chacon; distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns ... e#comments

First, they tear apart families. As a result of the Howard Industries bust, nearly 500 children face the prospect of being motherless and fatherless if the deportations proceed.

Whose fault is that? The kids can follow mom and dad home.

I hope the author gets his identity stolen by one of these people he feels so sorry for.

Don't stop the raids.

Just stop the incessant whining.

Dixie

The McClatchy Co.: headquartered in Sacramento, CA. They have established their "California Values" throughout the country, a value system supported by most California state bureaucrats and politicians that has driven the state into a $16 billion deficit, $11 billion of which is tied to the cost of illegal immigration and the massive presence of illegal aliens there. McClatchy Co. owns 30 daily newspapers in 15 states, with the highest concentration of ownership in the far west (5 in California and 4 in Washington state) and the southeast (with 5 in SC, 2 in NC, 2 in GA and 3 in FL). To round out their reach, they also own 50 non-daily newspapers nationally. It seems that to be hired on as a columnist or editor at a McClatchy Co. newspaper, a condition of employment is to be a ‘progressive’ liberal socialist, globalist, supporter of open borders and amnesty to illegal aliens!

So. let's see...a radical professor of Chicano studies and the McClatchy Co. have teamed up on an article about illegal immigration. Yep...no bias on article content there!!!

Chicano Studies

The Chicano Studies program provides an interdisciplinary curriculum of courses that explore the roots of a cultural tradition beginning with pre-Columbian Mexico and extending into the many areas of contemporary American society, including politics, education, literature, the arts, and religion. Chicano Studies majors gain insight into cultural issues and knowledge of the historical significance of Chicanos as a group. Chicano Studies courses are taught in English.

CLICK ON DEPARTMENT LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION
viva la raza, CLHC Mesa College 2005

"Viva La Raza" (2005) by Favianna Rodriguez & Jesus Barraza www.favianna.com

Today, nearly 21.6-million Latinos are at work in the United States, representing 14.1 percent of the labor force. Of this, more than 55 percent are foreign-born, including an estimated 10- to 12-million undocumented workers.

Continue the raids. There are an estimated (low) 10-12 million who take away jobs from 10-12 million Americans. RAID, PROCESS, AND DEPORT!

Even if ICE deported a million illegals per year...it still would take over a decade to have them all gone. Something is better than nothing and there are a lot more collateral self-repatriations as a result of a just a bit more enforcement. That is a good thing.

Raids DO work and there must be more of them! The labor of illegal aliens is NOT needed. For every illegal alien male worker, there is probably a "stay-at-home" baby-machine mom and multiple kids who suck on the public teet! If YOU cannot afford to support a family, YOU should NOT be having kids!

I have lost any sympathy for these people, I want them rounded up and deported. I don't care how long it takes, just DO IT!

Leeches they are. Leeches.