POSTVILLE, IOWA - A WAKE-UP TO TOUGH ADMINISTRATION ENFORCEMENT
OF THE IMMIGRATION LAWS - WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU
By Alan Lee, Esq.†‡
He courted them through two presidential campaign runs with his
chief strategist Karl Rove, and having no further need for votes,
has left his Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
to crack down on their illegal brothers and sisters, mothers and
fathers, cousins and nephews and nieces. Not only is DHS chasing
after illegal immigrants in the traditional method, but it is changing
the rules of the game to criminalize immigration violations which
were previously charged under civil laws. The Bush administration
approach now is tough enforcement using as many weapons at its disposal
as possible to expel illegals and to discourage them from entering
and others from overstaying their visas.
From the President who stood hand-in-hand years ago with Vicente
Fox, the President of Mexico, declaring his support for a legalization
package, Mr. Bush in the waning days of his presidency is desperately
attempting to appease the conservative wing of his Republican Party
with DHS raids, building of fences on the border of dubious efficacy,
raising of fines and criminal prosecutions of employers for hiring
illegals, criminal prosecutions of undocumented workers at the border
and in the workplace, and implementation of the flawed E-Verify
program. At this time, John McCain, his potential successor, has
backtracked on his own plan for legalization saying that it should
only be done after border security is strengthened.
Postville, Iowa, the site of the Agriprocessors Meatpacking Plant
raid of May 12, 2008, that netted 389 undocumented workers arrested,
306 criminally charged, and 270 sentenced to five months in prison,
should be a wake-up call to all persons with a sense of humanity
and fair play. The slew of charges against the hapless workers ranged
from aggravated identity theft to falsely using a Social Security
number, illegally reentering the United States after being deported,
and fraudulently using a green card. These are offenses that would
have been forgiven in any of the past legalization bills, including
the one promoted by Mr. Bush which failed in 2007. As many are aware,
much of the so-called identity theft among immigrant populations
is consensual and sometimes even beneficial to the real cardholder
where Social Security numbers are concerned - yet in Postville,
many were sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to using a false
identity document to obtain employment and admitting that they fraudulently
used the identity of an actual person and others sentenced to probation
after pleading guilty to using a false identity document to obtain
employment but the identity did not belong to an actual person.
A ratcheting up of the enforcement climate is behind the tremendous
pressure of the government to force the use of E-Verify, a small
unproven pilot program, to determine who is authorized to work in
the country. The use of E-Verify at this point in time is highly
problematic and DHS has recently been defending it against attacks
from numerous critics. E-Verify is a cooperative effort between
DHS and the Social Security Administration (SSA). Approximately
69,000 employers currently are using it to verify the status of
new hires and it is becoming mandatory in Georgia, Colorado, Oklahoma
and Arizona. Many critics are troubled by the error rate of 4.1%
in the SSA database. That means that 1 in 25 new hires would erroneously
receive tentative non-confirmation; and since there are approximately
55 million new hires in the U.S. per year, 11,000 workers per day
would be flagged as ineligible for employment incorrectly when E-Verify
becomes mandatory for all employers. However, even with those statistics,
President Bush announced by Executive Order on June 9, 2008, that
federal agencies will no longer do business with companies that
do not agree to use an electronic employment eligibility verification
system designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security. DHS Secretary
Michael Chertoff on the same day designated E-Verify as the electronic
employment eligibility verification system that all federal contractors
must now use.
At this time, the debate over whether illegal immigrants are a
boon or a burden to the economy has been reduced to background chatter.
People no longer seem interested in any legislation allowing more
highly skilled workers entry to boost areas of science, engineering,
and production, or in news reports that illegal immigrants put more
back into their state treasuries than they ever take out, or that
their loss would collapse the Social Security system. The American
public's attention has become focused on the economy with the increasing
prices of food and gasoline, and the decreasing values of their
homes. This is a dark time in America because the stated will of
the people on this issue is being thwarted, and as noted by Mr.
Obama, the Democratic candidate for President, the rightist demagogues
of radio and television's routine railing against illegal immigrants
was partly to blame for the increase in hate crimes against Hispanics.
Recent polls again and again show that the majority of the American
public wants some form of legalization to accommodate the illegal
immigrants in the States. However, it appears that those who are
against any form of legalization are much more passionate and vocal
about the issue than those who are for it. Thus the immigration
debate is being shanghaied by the vocal minority.
Instead there is a railing against immigrants that we have not
seen since the early '90s which resulted then in the highly restrictionist
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
(IIRIRA). The Bush administration has fanned the flames rather than
responsibly putting them out. In doing so, it has encouraged local
law enforcement in many cities and towns across the United States
to follow their own direction as to whether or how to track down
undocumented immigrants. This country is now divided into cities,
counties, and townships which have decided to let their police continue
their traditional policing activities or to act as immigration agents.
Many of these latter police officers are poorly trained in immigration
law enforcement and many of their actions appear to stem more from
racial profiling than correct immigration enforcement. There are
tales of illegal residents being pulled over or stopped for no reason
at all, arrested for dozing off in a parked car, or for minor violations
such as broken taillight, talking on a cell phone while driving,
or having an unleashed dog. There are also tales of U.S. citizens
and lawful permanent residents of non-white skin color being harassed
and arrested in episodes like these and having their rights trampled
by DHS and local law enforcement personnel looking for undocumented
workers.
Does anyone think that he/she is immune from the immigration crackdown
just because he/she has legal status or is even a U.S. citizen?
The recent experience of Kevin Crabtree, Esq, as related in the
Immigration Daily article, "Immigration Attorney Harassed by
ICE at Home" on March 20, 2008, suggests "no". In
his account, two USICE officers rang his doorbell in his apartment
house having bypassed the street security gate and buzzer that most
people would understand to mean that a 12 unit apartment building
is not open to the general public. He inquired whether the officers
possessed a judicial warrant to enter the premises and the officers
did not respond. He then stated to the officers that he declined
to answer any questions and that they needed to leave. One of the
officers stated that they would just wait until he came out, and
after he closed the door, the other said he was going to kick the
door down and threatened to prosecute Mr. Crabtree for alien harboring.
He continued to speak to the officers through the closed door again
inquiring whether the officers had a judicial warrant to enter the
premises and they did not respond. He next told the officers to
leave the common space of the apartment building unless they had
other business at the building and the officers refused to promptly
leave and Mr. Crabtree said that he would call the San Francisco
Police Department. The officers then continued to loiter directly
in front of his apartment door for approximately 15 minutes and
Mr. Crabtree asked why they were there to which they did not respond.
The officers left after he disclosed that he was an immigration
defense attorney and he would therefore decline to answer any questions
related to their enforcement efforts. Mr. Crabtree stated that,
"But for my training as a lawyer, I have little doubt that
my rights would have been completely brushed aside. By making criminal
threats against my home and physical safety, threatening prosecution
without probable cause or even a reasonable suspicion, and then
refusing to respect my property rights, the officers clearly sought
to dissuade the exercise of my constitutional right to be free from
unreasonable searches and seizures." His experience, unfortunately,
does not appear to be uncommon as seen from various newspaper accounts
of raids in which DHS officers have barged into homes of U.S. citizens
and permanent residents without permission and terrorized them when
they have suspected that an illegal immigrant was on the premises.
What does the crackdown, however, mean to America as a whole? The
economy for one is taking a hit. Because of the malaise of the President
and Congress in failing to pass an agricultural worker bill of any
kind and the beefed up enforcement activities, many American farmers
have given up on planting hand-picked crops this year because there
are not enough workers to pick them. The President and Congress
have also failed to help seasonal businesses needing foreign workers
in resorts and vacation spots all across the U.S., and many businesses
must operate at much less than capacity because the
H-2B category cap for foreign workers quickly filled up and not
even normally exempt returning workers were allowed entry without
a new cap number because of congressional squabbling. Those failures
in leadership have meant less food for American tables and less
revenues for small American farms and businesses. The crackdown
has been felt in housing and employment figures. Has anyone tracked
how many homes were previously sold to members of immigrant populations?
It is probably impossible to track home sales to illegal residents,
but a goodly percentage of the immigrant purchases were by illegal
residents. That population segment is no longer interested in buying
into the American dream as they are fearful every day that they
may be picked up and deported. They would now rather rent. Their
leaving the home buying market has exacerbated the housing situation
through less demand for homes. The importance of the immigrant home
purchases was recently highlighted in a new study of the Joint Center
for Housing Studies of Harvard University, "The State of the
Nation's Housing 2008," as reported on CNNMoney.com, on June
23, 2008, wherein Nicolas Retsinas, the center director and one
of the study's authors, credits immigration as one of the main reasons
fueling a projected increase in housing demand over the next decade,
and Karl Case, a Wellesley College economics professor and co-founder
of a real-estate consulting firm, states that "[n]ot all immigrants
buy houses, but many immigrants buy houses ... that has a positive
effect on the prices in a market." And does anyone not think
that part of the reason that employment figures are down is that
employers are more afraid to hire - especially persons who do not
look Anglo-Saxon and speak English well? With fines for illegal
hiring rising at least 25% recently and threats of criminal prosecutions
by federal prosecutors on the rise along with attendant threats
by local municipalities and conservative groups to revoke business
licenses and to use harboring and RICO conspiracy laws against them,
employers are much more wary and less generous in their hiring practices
than in the past. The June 6, 2008, Wall Street Journal article,
"Factories Turn to Refugee Workers," shows that some companies
have recently downsized production by 25% because of labor shortages
and that California could lose more than $667 million in agricultural
economic activity in Mexico this year. The article is also noteworthy
in quoting the co-chairman of the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration
Reform, which represents hundreds of farmers and ranchers, saying
that "There are millions more jobs in the U.S. economy than
there are legal workers to fill them," and in describing the
failed attempts of the giant JBS Swift and Co. meatpacking plant
which heavily recruited within a 60+ mile radius of the plant for
Americans after suffering immigration raids and was met with little
interest despite offering pay which exceeded other low-skilled jobs
in retailing and construction and even some teaching posts. The
ripple effects of downsized production can further be felt in no
or less paychecks to buy non-essentials such as most cars, computers,
televisions, radios, furniture, house renovations, hairdresser appointments,
restaurant meals and tickets for shows and other entertainment venues.
The proprietors of the stores and establishments depending upon
the spending of the former workers must then cut back on their staffs
and purchases, all of which perpetuates a cycle of less.
But even more than the national effects on food, housing, and production,
the Administration's tough stance has other deleterious consequences,
chief among which is making Americans wonder who we are as a people.
The sight of so many confused and helpless illegals in Postville
being herded about, slapped into jail for formerly civil violations,
and their small children crying and looking lost, are images that
most Americans would like to think are from totalitarian countries
or dictatorships. These are images that - like those in Katrina
- should make Americans look deep into their souls.
Will we see a time in the near future when a fix will be done by
Congress and the President for the undocumented immigrants who pick
our crops, clean our floors, mow our lawns, sell us our morning
coffee, cook our food, wash or dryclean our clothes, provide care
for our elderly, or take care of our children? Don't bet on it if
the answer in November is Republican.
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