Peter Rousmaniere, Author at Working Immigrants

Mass convictions after the Postville raid – railroading the defendants

Shortly after the May 12 raid of Agricproecessors, close to 400 arrested illegal workers are tried and pled guilty to criminal charges. One of the professional trnaslaters, Erik Camayd-Freixas, found the judicial process so unnervingly abusive of defendant rights that he wrote an 8,000 word account of it. The NY Times published an article on July 11th about his account. The Sanctuary posted a copy of the entire account, which I have coped below.
INTERPRETING AFTER THE LARGEST ICE RAID IN US HISTORY:
A PERSONAL ACCOUNT
Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D.
Florida International University
June 13, 2008
On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in an operation involving some 900 agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a raid of Agriprocessors Inc, the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant located in the town of Postville, Iowa. The raid …officials boasted… was “the largest single-site operation of its kind in American history.” At that same hour, 26 federally certified interpreters from all over the country were en route to the small neighboring city of Waterloo, Iowa, having no idea what their mission was about. The investigation had started more than a year earlier. Raid preparations had begun in December. The Clerk’s Office of the U.S. District Court had contracted the interpreters a month ahead, but was not at liberty to tell us the whole truth, lest the impending raid be compromised. The operation was led by ICE, which belongs to the executive branch, whereas the U.S. District Court, belonging to the judicial branch, had to formulate its own official reason for participating. Accordingly, the Court had to move for two weeks to a remote location as part of a “Continuity of Operation Exercise” in case they were ever disrupted by an emergency, which in Iowa is likely to be a tornado or flood. That is what we were told, but, frankly, I was not prepared for a disaster of such a different kind, one which was entirely man-made.
I arrived late that Monday night and missed the 8pm interpreters briefing.

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NY state illegal worker denied work rehab benefits

Thanks to Workerscompinsider for reporting on the workers comp case of Ronnie Ramroop, an illegal immigrant who lost two fingers in an accident in New York in 1995. The State Cort of Appeals denied in late June his access to further rehabilitation, saying that his illegal work status makes him ineligible. Previously, New York courts have been fairly friendly to illegal workers. This line of reasoning has be adapted by courts in some other states” that immediate care is OK, but not ongoing rehab.
Below is an article published in the New York Times:
Undocumented Worker Ineligible for Additional Benefits: Courts [06/27/08]
New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, issued a 5-2 decision Thursday holding that an undocumented worker is not eligible for additional vocational rehabilitation benefits after his permanent disability award was paid in full because his illegal status makes him ineligible to work in the state.

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Profile of a pro-immigrant advocacy coalition

The Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) is one of the largest (staff of 13) and oldest (21 years) advocacy coalitions working to improve the lives of immigrants.
MIRA worked last year with Senator Ted Kennedy’s office over the New Bedford ICE raid. It is supporting in-state tuition for undocumented students. It supported Governor Duvall Patrick’s decision to rescind prior Governor Mitt Romney’s order to employ state troopers to enforce federal immigration laws.
It has connections with over120 labor and community organizations. It is also loosely affiliated with coalitions in other states,, citing Illinois, California, New York and other coalitions emerging in Florida and elsewhere.
It describes itself as the only organization in Massachusetts that “brings together groups serving immigrants and refugees from many parts of the world, of various nationalities, races, and ethnicities. MIRA is a dynamic, multi-ethnic, multi-racial coalition that actively involves hundreds of grassroots immigrant organizations, human services agencies, legal service providers, religious groups, and human rights groups in cooperative efforts to improve the lives of immigrants and refugees.”

The link to the complete New Bedford Standard-Times series

Following up on my posting earlier today, I found the link to all the articles in the series on immigrant labor in New Bedford and surrounding Southeastern Massachusetts. Here it is.
This is possibly the best depiction of the lives of recent low income immigrants published by an American newspaper.

High quality profile of immigrant labor in one city

The New Bedford, MA, Standard-Times should get an award for its series on immigrant labor (legal and illegal) starting this week. Go here for the series (the website is called “South Coast today”). New Bedford was the site of one of the early ICE raids on March 6, 2007. Thanks to Shuya Ohno of the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition for alerting me to the series.
Following are what the reporters learned in preparing the series:
THE NEW IMMIGRANTS
What we learned in our investigation
A nearly two-year-long Standard-Times investigation of legal and illegal immigration from Central America found that:
— Violent crime, low wages and a lack of jobs have driven as many as 8,000 Central Americans to migrate to New Bedford.
— U.S. wages sent home to Guatemala are lifting families out of poverty, but also contributing to drug use and gang activity on the island.
— Many Central American immigrants, documented or not, obtain jobs through temporary agencies on the New Bedford waterfront and the conditions they work under don’t match what most American workers enjoy.
— The everyday lives of New Bedford’s illegal immigrants are dominated by a constant fear of being caught by immigration officials.
— Illegal immigrants who are deported back home to Guatemala are at high risk for depression and alcoholism.
— Temporary agencies have taken over much of the hiring for New Bedford fish houses and light manufacturing, often employing illegal immigrants in an off-the-books, cash economy in the recent past.
— A Taunton employment agency defrauded the federal and state governments, as well as worker’s compensation insurance companies, of millions of dollars in taxes, unemployment insurance contributions and worker’s compensation insurance compensation related to business in New Bedford, particularly on the waterfront.
— Some immigrant workers say they are forced to work overtime without being paid time-and-half. In two cases, a well-respected seafood processing plant agreed as part of a court settlement to pay Central American immigrants thousands in overtime claims.
— Guatemalan Mayans and some Latino immigrants claim they have been singled out for discrimination by employers. They claim they have been given the worst jobs within their seafood houses and factories, the least benefits and working conditions, and laid off before they can accrue better wages or vacations.
— Contrary to popular belief, most immigrants who came to New Bedford in the early 20th century faced no restrictions on legal immigration. Many Portuguese immigrants came to the U.S. on tourist visas and simply stayed to work afterwards.
— Religion — both Catholic and evangelical — plays a strong role in the lives of many of today’s immigrants, just as it did for past immigrant groups.
— A backlash among Americans — many of them immigrants or their children or grandchildren believe that new immigrants are undermining American wages and working conditions, and new immigrants are not obeying the law.
— The challenge of educating immigrant children, always a factor in the cities of the SouthCoast, becomes even greater in an age of mandatory testing and the ever-increasing expectations of No Child Left Behind.
— New Bedford’s new immigrants remain vulnerable to crime, raising concerns that Central American gangs will gain a toehold in the city.
— Some Central American immigrants are living out the American Dream in New Bedford.
— Central American entrepreneurs could revitalize local neighborhoods by opening restaurants, markets and other businesses that cater to new immigrants.

A great pro-immigrant blog

Go to Citizen Orange and subscribe today. I just heard about it. The several people involved in it come from diverse backgrounds and put together an inspiring and informative blog.
Here is how they describe themselves:
Citizen Orange is a U.S.-based, Guatemala inspired, weblog founded for the explicit purpose of organizing around global justice. It is the successor to Immigration Orange and operates on the principle that the pro-migrant movement in the United States has the greatest potential for eradicating a host of global injustices and generating respect for peoples born on a different piece of the earth.
In order to be successful the pro-migrant movement has to move the debate from questions of nationality to questions of global inequity. It has to move the debate from questions of legality to questions of justice. Migrants are first shackled to the arbitrary piece of land that they are born onto and then chained to the forces that compel them to leave. We need to remove those shackles and chains. Citizen Orange works for migrant emancipation.
Citizen Orange is an ally space. This means Citizen Orange does not seek to represent the migrant voice, but exists, instead, as a space to support migrants in their struggle for liberty. Humility compels us to make this extremely important distinction. Even though we are all migrants, the extremity of global migrant oppression forces us to recognize that even privileges we take for granted, like access to the internet, separate us from the vast majority of migrants.
This does not mean that we cannot relate to the migrant experience through our common humanity. We constantly strive towards understanding and empathy through Citizen Orange and our daily lives. It just means that we will not profess to speak on behalf of migrants. Citizen Orange is not the place to look for a space representative of the migrant voice. If you are searching, look through our blogroll for answers, or in a community near you. Citizen Orange is not the migrant voice, but we do seek to support it and amplify it through our efforts.

4 in 10 green card holders had a prior illegal period of stay

In an astonishing report by the Public Policy Institute of California, we learn that 20% of legal permanent residents (green card holders) crossed the border illegally and 22% overstayed their visa terms!
The PPIC says, “Fewer than four in 10 (38%) legal permanent residents were new to the United States when they got their green cards and many had lived here illegally for at least some time. In California, more than half (52%) had lived in the country illegally. They either crossed the border illegally (35%) or violated the terms of their visas by overstaying a tourist visa or by working when they were not authorized (18%). In the United States, about four in 10 (42%) first lived in the country illegally. This group was more evenly divided between those who crossed the border illegally (20%) or violated their visa terms (22%).”
The study also looked into what the effect would be if the U.S. began to use a merit point system for rationing green cards, much like Canada does. The authors prepared a model to estimate how people, from PhDs to manual laborers, would fare. “An engineer with a PhD and English proficiency would not necessarily have enough points to become a legal permanent resident without some prior work experience in the United States.”
The press release in full:

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EU toughens stance on illegal immigrants

The New York Times reported on 6/19/08 that “ European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to allow undocumented migrants to be held in detention centers for up to 18 months and banned from European Union territory for five years.
Criticized by groups like Amnesty International as “severely flawed” and an erosion of human rights standards, the so-called return directive was passed in the European Parliament here by a 369-to-197 vote, with 106 legislators abstaining.
Amnesty International said it was “deeply disappointed” by the outcome of the vote, and appealed to member states currently applying higher standards not to use the directive as a pretext for lowering them.
The Europe Union has freedom of movement among 25 of its 27 member states but no overarching policy on immigration. Supporters see the new measure as a means to unify a patchwork of systems governing treatment of migrants who overstay their visas or who, in far lesser numbers, slip clandestinely across borders.”
Previously, the EU did not have a uniform set of laws to govern how illegal immigrants are to be treated.
The article in full:

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Two cases of immigrant labor abuses

The Washington Post has been reporting on the plight of 200 Indian workers who paid recruiters a load of money to be sent to the United States to work – and, per what they were told, be in line for green cards. That proved not to be the case: they were given H-2B 10- month visas to rebuild oil rigs for Signal International. The second case involves a building collapse in New York City causing the death of a worker, Lauro Ortega – who happened to be an illegal immigrant. Workers Comp Insider, one of the best sources of information about work injury issues, has been reporting on the Ortega case, which involves negligence and a heinous attitude by the contractor.

Working Immigrants

Author: Peter Rousmaniere