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Broken Immigration System

Foreign Policy in Focus, 2008, p.N_A

Copyright Inter-Hemispheric Resource Center Press Sep 25, 2008 ;ISSN: 1524-1939

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  • Title:
    Broken Immigration System
  • Author: Wucker, Michele
  • Subjects: Bacon, David ; Citizenship ; Immigration ; Immigration policy ; Noncitizens ; Nonfiction
  • Is Part Of: Foreign Policy in Focus, 2008, p.N_A
  • Description: [David Bacon]'s cut-and-dried labor-good, corporate-bad message doesn't leave room for such subtleties. This is too bad, because a legalization program with a path to citizenship depends on wide support from labor and "good" businesses with common interests to counter the small but loud nativist minority that believes in delivering death threats to members of Congress. For Bacon the game is simply employer versus worker, as evidenced in his conviction that the guest-worker plan was not merely a compromise but the employers' intended outcome all along. Still, it's easy to see where Bacon's distrust of all employers is coming from, with bad-apple examples as heinous as the many that he gives. Tales of cheating and abuse-gaming scales so that workers paid by piece rate would get less money, deductions for "equipment rental," 11-hour days with no lunch break or overtime, and wages that didn't cover living expenses charged by the company are on a par with the kinds of practices I've seen in impoverished countries that are regularly accused of slavery. There's a delicious irony when the American Civil Liberties Union and Yale Law School use the labor side accord in the North American Free Trade Agreement to file charges against the Department of Labor and U.S. immigration authorities. Speaking of apples, it's the agricultural employers who come off looking the worst. Bacon does the movement a great service in showing the financial interests of Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) the heinous HR 4437's lead sponsor. That bill would have penalized churches for aiding undocumented workers, in promoting restrictive immigration policies. With Sensenbrenner's family ties to the company going back a century, the Kimberly-Clark paper conglomerate uses thousands of immigrant workers each year to convert forests into wood pulp and directly benefits when rights remain out of the reach of migrant workers. (Let's hope that Bacon sets sight on the money trail between U.S. lawmakers and the rapidly growing immigrant detention-center industry.)
  • Publisher: Washington: Inter-Hemispheric Resource Center Press
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 1524-1939
  • Source: ProQuest Central
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