From the Dispatch

Wage Theft by Employers Surging in Wake of Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law, Even as Judge Blocks Implementation of Key Provisions

Suman Raghunathan — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:44:07 +0000

The Arizona Interfaith Alliance for Worker Justice, a worker center in Phoenix, has seen a “huge spike” in wage theft -- violations of minimum wage laws -- since the passage of SB 1070, Arizona’s anti-immigrant law. "Employers are even more brazen in their mistreatment of workers," said Executive Director Trina Zelle in an interview with In These Times. "Increasingly, 'Go ahead, try and make me pay you' is the response workers hear when they confront their employers over unpaid wages."

Workers' rights organizers report that the law's passage in April has already begun to drive immigrant workers even further underground, effectively silencing them in the face of rampant workplace rights violations. The irony is that this makes undocumented immigrants an even more attractive workforce for unscrupulous employers, who know they can illegally underpay them without fear of those employees reporting them or taking them to court. “If we ever hope to bring immigrant workers out of the shadows in which they’ve been laboring,” says Kim Bobo, Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, “we need to forcefully oppose anti-immigrant legislation and stand up for both comprehensive immigration reform and vigorous enforcement of the nation’s labor laws.”

Progressive States Network's model legislation for wage law enforcement outlines how wage enforcement campaigns can counter anti-immigrant rhetoric by raising wage standards for all workers and uniting native and immigrant communities to oppose unscrupulous employers.

Judge Strikes Down Worst Provisions of SB 1070: Yesterday, a federal judge struck down key provisions of SB 1070 as likely violating federal law or being unconstitutional, reinvigorating hope among immigrant communities that state anti-immigrant laws will fail to gain traction. Key provisions that were blocked include:

Requiring police officers to investigate the immigration status of individuals they stop who they suspect are undocumented;
Mandatory detention of individuals who are arrested if they cannot verify they are authorized to be in the U.S.;
Imposing state criminal penalties on non-citizens who fail to register with the Department of Homeland Security or failing to carry registration documents;
Warrantless arrests of individuals who are deemed by state or local police officers to be "removable" from the U.S.; and,
State statutes that make it a crime for alleged undocumented immigrants to work.

The initial court injunction will be followed by a full hearing to determine whether these provisions, as well as the law's other troubling components, will be permanently struck down. The ruling echoes numerous other legal decisions that struck down broad state anti-immigrant laws - and should serve as a warning to other states that enacting copycat legislation similar to Arizona's will lead to costly legal proceedings and, as discussed above, only serve to empower unscrupulous employers to violate wage laws.

Resources:
Working In These Times - ‘Go Ahead, Try and Make Me Pay You’: Wage Theft and SB 1070
Progressive States Network - Promoting Wage Law Enforcement Policies in 2010
Interfaith Worker Justice - Thou Shalt Not Steal - A Toolkit on Wage Theft
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) - Court Blocks Implementation of Key Sections of Arizona's Racial Profiling Law
National Employment Law Project (NELP) - Enforcement of Workplace Standards

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Anti-immigrant Proposals Continue to Fail in Wake of Arizona’s Law

Suman Raghunathan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:05:36 +0000

In the wake of the April 2010 passage of Arizona’s draconian and misguided anti-immigrant state law, SB 1070, which would give local governments responsibility to enforce federal immigration law, media coverage has focused on the many states, elected officials, and candidates who have voiced their support for similar anti-immigrant legislation. Despite the disturbing situation in Arizona, however, what is increasingly becoming clear is that anti-immigrant policies and initiatives are failing across the country in the wake of SB 1070’s passage, underlining Arizona’s anti-immigrant approach as an outlier.

As this Dispatch will detail, after considerable media hype about Arizona-style bills sweeping across the nation, the reality is that from from Nevada to Arkansas to Massachusetts to Kansas and Rhode Island, anti-immigrant bills and ballot initiatives largely didn't move or failed to make this fall's ballot. A key reason: most state leaders and police chiefs recognize that requiring local governments to assume immigration enforcement responsibilities from the federal government will distract them from fighting violent crime and undermine trust with local residents that are essential to successful community policing.

Table of Contents:

- A Trend of Failed Anti-Immigrant Proposals

- Anti-Immigrant Laws Increase Crime and Hamper Community Policing Efforts

- Lawsuits Against AZ SB 1070 Seek to Maintain Clear Federal Responsibility for Immigration Law

A Trend of Failed Anti-Immigrant Proposals

In the wake of AZ SB 1070’s passage in late April, a far right network of groups and legislators announced plans to move bills in state around the country. But the list of states rejecting those bills continues to grow and efforts to get anti-immigrant proposals on the ballot continue to fail.

Ballot Initiatives Fail in Nevada and Arkansas: The latest state to join this list is Nevada, where Assemblyman Chad Christensen’s effort to gather signatures for an anti-immigrant ballot initiative similar to Arizona’s recently faltered in the face of a lawsuit. Christensen’s effort was challenged by the Nevada Open For Business Coalition, a group that includes State Assemblymen Mo Denis and Ruben Kihuen as well as the Nevada Resort Association, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the Las Vegas Latin Chamber of Commerce, and the NAACP. The coalition is also working with the Las Vegas Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The delay caused by the Coalition's multiple legal challenges caused Christensen, who recently lost a June 8 US Senate Primary, to drop his petition rather than attempt to get his broad anti-immigrant proposal on the ballot.

In Arkansas, the anti-immigrant group Secure Arkansas also failed to get its anti-immigrant proposal (which simply re-iterated existing federal law by seeking to bar undocumented immigrants over the age of 14 from receiving public assistance) on the November 2010 ballot. Secretary of State Charlie Daniels rejected the group’s petition after finding they were nearly 10,000 signatures below the minimum required to appear on the ballot.

Anti-Immigrant Legislation Defeated or Blocked in Multiple States: In both Massachusetts and Rhode Island, state leadership refused to allow anti-immigrant legislation to gain traction. In Massachusetts, twenty-seven pages of anti-immigrant budget amendments that resembled Arizona's SB1070 was shot down and ultimately approved as a final bill which simply restated existing federal bars on undocumented immigrants accessing public benefits, and included no new anti-immigrant provisions.

Rhode Island’s anti-immigrant bill, introduced by conservative Democrat State Representative Peter Palumbo, did not even receive a public hearing earlier this summer: the bill was ‘killed’ by House Speaker Gordon Fox, who voiced his opposition to the bill and reiterated that enforcing immigration laws remains the responsibility of the federal government.

And in Kansas, when a conservative legislator sought to attach an Arizona-style anti-immigrant amendment to the state budget, Kansas Representative Delia Garcia challenged its late introduction on procedural grounds and the Republican chair of the chamber's Rules Committee ruled the amendment out of order.

Most High-Immigration States Have Taken a Positive Approach to Integrate New Immigrants: As PSN detailed in a 2008 report, only 11% of undocumented immigrants live in states that have enacted comprehensive punitive anti-immigrant policies. Far more states promote positive integration policies and believe leaving immigration enforcement policy to the federal government is the best approach.

Resources
Colorlines - The Far-Right Movement Behind Arizona Copycat Bill
Progressive States Network - The Anti-Immigrant Movement that Failed: Positive Integration Policies by States Still Far Outweigh Punitive Policies
Progressive States Network - State Immigration Policy to Promote National Change

Anti-Immigrant Laws Increase Crime and Hamper Community Policing Efforts

One reason many leaders are rejecting Arizona-style anti-immigrant policies is the clear evidence that they undermine public safety. Police chiefs nationwide, including the chiefs of Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, New York, Phoenix, and Tucson, have consistently underlined their opposition to local enforcement of federal immigration law, citing the dramatic and negative impact these approaches have on community members’ willingness to cooperate with the police -- and predicted they will increase crime. Law enforcement leaders such as Salt Lake City Chief of Police Chris Burbank have voiced concerns that burdening them with enforcing federal immigration law will actually make communities less safe: witnesses will be less likely to assist police investigations for fear of disclosing their immigration status; women will fear reporting instances of domestic violence, and crimes will go unreported, affecting all residents' safety.

Recent evidence highlights this problem with anti-immigrant legislation.

More Immigrants Means Less Crime, Not More: Overall, states with high immigration levels have actually seen their crime levels decrease; updated FBI and law enforcement data debunk any connection between higher levels of immigration resulting in more crime. The Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that violent crime declined by 35% from 1994 to 2001 -- a period when the nation saw its undocumented population double. This precipitous drop in crime is part of a national trend, one echoed along the U.S.-Mexico border and in immigrant-heavy cities such as San Diego, El Paso, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami. In fact, even conservative groups found states with the steepest growth among their immigrant residents also report the lowest crime rates. In these 19 states, the total crime rate declined nearly 14% from 1999 to 2006.

Arizona Itself Shows Failure of Anti-Immigrant Approach: Evidence from Arizona highlights why local immigration enforcement is counterproductive to fighting crime. The FBI reports that violent crime has been falling in Arizona for years -- even as the state’s number of undocumented residents rose.

The glaring exception to this trend in Arizona is Maricopa County, which falls under the jurisdiction of its notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio has devoted considerable (and often-scarce) law enforcement resources to apprehending undocumented residents county-wide. Arpaio’s insistence on apprehending otherwise law-abiding undocumented residents in high-profile (often televised) raids and routine stops of Latino drivers for immigration checks means the Sheriff’s Department has less time to focus on violent criminals and pursue felony warrants. The East Valley Tribune, an Arizona newspaper, won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for their multi-part series on the evolution and impact of Arpaio’s anti-immigrant pursuits.

Despite his ‘law and order’ rhetoric, Arpaio’s approach is a failed law enforcement strategy, and one that has apparently served to increase crime in his jurisdiction-contrary to state crime trends. Recent data from the Arizona Department of Public Safety and compiled by America’s Voice found the Maricopa County crime rate increased by 58% from 2002 to 2009, while the state as a whole saw an average 12% decrease in crime rates. Other Arizona localities that did not engage in broad raids and traffic stops saw their crime rates plunge during the same period: Phoenix enjoyed a 14% decrease in crime; Tempe saw a 26% decrease; and Mesa (Senator Pearce’s district) experienced a 31% decrease.

Misinformation from the Anti-Immigrant Right: Many anti-immigrant legislators and candidates have issued a steady drumbeat of misinformation that attempts to draw a connection between immigrants and crime. AZ Governor Jan Brewer, State Sen Russell Pearce, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and national anti-immigrant groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) have attempted to justify and explain their efforts toward draconian state immigration legislation by claiming their proposals will make communities safer.

Yet even as Pearce and Brewer have, in fact, predicted that their state’s anti-immigrant measures will result in lower levels of crime throughout Arizona, evidence from Maricopa County shows that exporting Sheriff Joe Arpaio's brand of anti-immigrant policing will likely reverse the progress made in other parts of the state, imposing Maricopa's failed model on the the whole state.

Resources:
Immigration Policy Center - Arizona's Punishment Doesn't Fit the Crime: Studies Show Decrease in Arizona Crime Rates Over Time
Immigration Policy Center - New FBI data Confirms Falling Crime Rates in Arizona: Violent Crimes Are Down in the State's Three Largest Cities
America's Voice - Arizona Immigration Law Could Lead to Surge in Violent Crime
America's Voice - Fact Sheet: Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Notorious Record
East Valley Tribune - Reasonable Doubt Series
Washington Post - US Police Chiefs Say Arizona Immigration Law Will Increase Crime
Americas Majority Foundation - Immigration and Wealth of States

Lawsuits Against AZ SB 1070 Seek to Maintain Clear Federal Responsibility for Immigration Law

As the evidence increasingly points to how local police and sheriffs enforcing immigration law undermines community policing and increases crime rates, it becomes even clearer why the nation has traditionally kept responsibility for enforcing immigration law in the hands of federal officials. But as PSN has detailed before, Arizona’s law, unprecedented in its scope if it is implemented, would land immigration enforcement (a federal responsibility) squarely in the hands of state government.

This blurring of immigration enforcement roles between federal and state officials has already been legally challenged by the U.S. Department of Justice and at least seven prominent national civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Both the U.S. Department of Justice and these civil rights groups have filed lawsuits against Arizona’s law which is scheduled to take effect on July 29 if a federal court does not impose an injunction.

Arizona's Law Undermines Federalism and Threatens Racial Profiling: SB 1070’s scope is unprecedented, misguided, and likely unconstitutional: the law not only makes it a crime to lack immigration status, but also allows state and local law enforcement to demand proof of citizenship or immigration status from anyone they believe has ‘reasonable suspicion’ of being undocumented. Apart from greenlighting racial profiling, Arizona’s approach is widely perceived by legal experts as unconstitutional because it requires the state to take on enforcing federal immigration law.

A federal judge heard arguments outlining seven civil rights groups’ opposition to Arizona’s anti-immigrant law on July 22. These groups are asking for a preliminary injunction to freeze implementation of the law, which is scheduled to go into effect on July 29^th.

The lawsuit’s central legal argument (one echoed by the US Department of Justice’s own lawsuit challenging SB 1070) is the law seeks to pre-empt the federal government’s jurisdiction over enforcing federal immigration law, and that it allows the state too much power to enforce immigration law. Finally, the groups’ lawsuit states that implementing the law would cause considerable harm to Arizona residents as a whole. State legislators, immigrant rights advocates, and responsible law enforcement professionals will be hoping the federal courts agree.

Resources:
Progressive States Network - Arizona and the Nation: A Failed State Versus Positive Approaches to Immigrant Integration
Progressive States Network - Arizona Jeopardizes its Economic Future As it Contemplates Passing Anti-Immigrant Law
National Immigration Law Center - NILC and Civil Rights Groups Ask Court to Block Implementation of Arizona Law
American Civil Liberties Union Immigrant Rights Project - Friendly House et.al vs. Halliday et. al: Arizona's Racial Profiling Law
Immigration Policy Center - The Impact of SB 1070: Usurping the Federal Government's Ability to Set Clear Enforcement Priorities
Immigration Policy Center - The Legal Challenges and Economic Realities of Arizona's SB 1070
Progressive States Network - Polling, The Arizona Law, and Majority Support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Progressive States Network - Press Call: State Legislators for Progressive Immigration Policy

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Anti-Immigrant Amendments Fail in Massachusetts State Legislature

PSN — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:35:03 +0000

Yet another set of anti-immigrant proposals, this time offered as last-minute amendments to a Massachusetts state budget bill, failed to gain traction last week. Twenty-seven pages of draconian anti-immigrant amendments were reduced to text that simply re-states existing bars on undocumented residents applying for public benefits.

When originally approved on May 28^th, the amendment included a slew of anti-immigrant measures that sought to scapegoat undocumented immigrants and prohibit their access to work, shelter, education, and safety in the state. In response, the Student Immigrant Movement and other immigrant advocates organized the MassHope 2010 vigil outside of the State House to highlight the knee-jerk, anti-immigrant nature of the amendments. After 19 days of rallying, protesters celebrated victory.

Failed Anti-Immigrant Legislation Trend : This triumph of reason over politics means Massachusetts joins several other states where anti-immigrant policies have amounted to nothing more than flawed political opportunism and hot air.

Much of this noise emanates from states whose legislatures have already closed their 2010 sessions, making these promises to introduce legislation mirroring Arizona’s controversial recent immigration law, SB 1070, premature at best. Bills for the 2011 state legislative session will not be considered or voted upon for months, leaving their ultimate success or failure still unknown.
Several Governors, including Texas’ Rick Perry, have already declared their intention to veto broad anti-immigrant legislation based on Arizona’s heavily criticized SB 1070.
In other states such as Rhode Island, whose anti-immigrant bill was killed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives even before it received a hearing, support for anti-immigrant politics and rhetoric is simply not as broad as legislators may think.

As the White House attempts to revive efforts to overhaul federal immigration laws, public and voter support for comprehensive immigration reform remains strong. According to polls commissioned by the group America’s Voice, voters on either side of the partisan aisle want common-sense, federal immigration reform that reflects American values, welcomes immigrants and provides them a pathway to citizenship.

Resources:
Immigration Policy Center - The Legal Challenges and Economic Realities of Arizona's SB 1070
Progressive States Network - Arizona and the Nation: A Failing State Versus Positive Approaches to Immigrant Integration
Progressive States Network - Arizona “Copycat” Anti-Immigrant Bill Killed in Rhode Island Without Hearing
America’s Voice - Public Opinion on Immigration Reform

Rahul is a summer immigration policy intern at Progressive States Network and a Drum Major Institute Scholar.

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Workplace Standards for Domestic Workers: Breakthrough NY Legislation Approved

Tim Judson — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:59:00 +0000

On June 1, the New York Senate put the state in position to be first in the nation to enact a Domestic Workers' Rights law (S2311) by a vote of 33-28. The New York Assembly led the way in June 2009 when it passed its own version of the bill (A1470). This groundbreaking legislation will extend core labor rights, from fair labor standards to paid sick days, to creating a framework for collective bargaining, to domestic workers. This will include those employed to work in a private home to perform housekeeping and/or to care for children, the infirm, or the elderly.

The two versions of the law must be reconciled, as the Senate bill goes much farther in extending basic labor standards, but Gov. David Paterson pledged last year that he would sign the bill. A campaign to pass similar domestic workers legislation is also active in California.

Justice Seventy Years Delayed: Seventy years after passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), domestic workers like agricultural workers are still denied many basic labor protections under federal law such as overtime pay and the ability to join a union. That omission was an extension of the country's entrenched history of discrimination, particularly in the pre-Civil Rights Act era: both farm and domestic workforces had long been dominated by African Americans.

In the 21^st Century, domestic workers remain one of the most exploited segments of the workforce, being comprised almost entirely of immigrant women: according to Domestic Workers' United, 99% are foreign born, 95% are people of color, and 93% are women. Until 1974, when the FLSA was amended to extend minimum wage coverage to them, domestic workers were not protected by any major federal labor law.

As California showed by passing the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, states can play a leading role in providing basic labor standards for workers abandoned by federal labor law. Just as the United Farm Workers elevated the plight of farmworkers to national attention beginning in the 1960s - and which resulted in passage of the California law - groups such as Domestic Workers United and the National Domestic Workers Alliance have just begun in the last decade to bring similar attention to promoting state and federal reforms on behalf of domestic workers.

Precedent-Setting Standards: Because of the challenging employer-employee relationship involved in domestic employment, the Senate law seeks to create a standard contract for all domestic workers specifying benefits that they are owed. The New York Assembly version has more limited but important benefits - guaranteeing a minimum wage law, prohibiting mandatory overtime, overtime pay, guaranteeing one day of rest per week, and directing the state's Labor Department to investigate a framework for providing employer-provided healthcare and collective bargaining - while the Senate version also provides for:

Paid time off, including six paid holidays, five vacation days, and seven paid sick days (with provision for holiday pay and increased overtime rate on holidays)
Two-weeks, written notice of termination, with violations subject to back-pay
Criminal penalties for violations, including misdemeanor penalties of up to $20,000 and one year in prison for first violations, and similar felony penalties for subsequent offenses
Enforcement either through civil action or prosecution by the Labor Department or Attorney General, with willful violations subject to fines equal to 25% of unpaid wages

A National Breakthrough on Paid Sick Days: Should the paid time off provisions of the Senate bill be included in the final version of the law, New York will be the first state in the country to establish paid time off as a basic labor standard, not just for domestic workers, but for any private-sector employees -- advancing basic labor standards that are common throughout the rest of the world but sorely lacking in the United States. The new law is especially significant for the movement to enact paid sick leave legislation, since it would also be the first time an entire industrial sector has acquired the right to take paid sick time off from work. The Domestic Workers' Rights bill has not met with organized opposition thus far, primarily because of the informal nature of domestic employment.

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Arizona "Copycat" Anti-Immigrant Bill Killed in Rhode Island Without a Hearing

Suman Raghunathan — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:26:44 +0000

Immigrant and workers' rights advocates celebrated a victory in Rhode Island this week with the announcement that State Rep. Peter Palumbo's anti-immigrant bill, closely based on Arizona's widely criticized SB 1070, would not get a hearing. Palumbo, a conservative Democrat from Cranston, a community with many immigrant residents, was planning on holding a hearing on his bill this week. Rhode Island was the fourth state to introduce legislation based upon Arizona's anti-immigrant SB 1070 , the nation's most sweeping anti-immigrant law to date, which Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed at the end of April. Legislators in 18 states have announced they will introduce anti-immigrant legislation similar to the recently-passed law in Arizona, but introduction does not guarantee passage or committee consideration. Few states are likely to pass such a bill this year as most legislatures have already adjourned, and will reconvene in early 2011.

Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox came out in opposition to Palumbo's bill, and decided to table it -- the proposal was drafted roughly ten days ago, just before the end of the state's legislative session. Fox noted enforcing immigration laws is a federal matter, and his announcement late Monday night came on the heels of large community mobilizations on the House of Representative floor against Palumbo and his bill. Though Fox denied his decision was informed by immigrant advocates mobilizing against the bill, his decision does seem linked to widespread protests against the bill.

As we explained in greater detail in previous Dispatches, Arizona's recent and misguided anti-immigrant law actively encourages racial profiling by requiring all state and local police officers to demand proof of immigration status from anyone they feel exhibits 'reasonable suspicion' of being undocumented. SB 1070 also makes it state crime to not have proof of legal immigration status at hand at all times.

Resources:
Immigration Policy Center: The Legal Challenges and Economic Realities of Arizona's SB 1070
Progressive States Network - Arizona and the Nation: A Failing State Versus Positive Approaches to Immigrant Integration
Progressive States Network - Arizona Risks Jeopardizing its Economic Future As it Contemplates Passing Anti-Immigrant Law

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Private Prison Firm Exploiting Broken Immigration System

Suman Raghunathan — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:20:36 +0000

Who benefits from hyping criminal enforcement as the solution to the immigration issue?

As a Service and Employees International Union (SEIU) campaign highlights, one key player profiting off the nation's broken immigration system is the private prison firm, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). CCA operates and profits significantly from private prisons across the country, many of which house immigrants in detention, a kind of legal limbo in which immigrants are imprisoned while their cases are being considered, or who are in the process of being deported. Roughly 40 percent of CCA's profits stem from operating jails that house immigrants. In fact, the corporation earned over $1.7 billion in revenue in 2009 alone -- much of it from contracts with the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US Marshals Office, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to cope with the influx of nonviolent immigrants in the nation's prison system. CCA has also been a long-time funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and member of its Private Sector Executive Committee, which advocates on behalf of CCA to push prison privatization as a model for states.

While most believe prisons are operated by state or federal governments, they are increasingly privatized. As the number of immigration prosecutions continue to skyrocket and comprehensive immigration reform languishes in Washington, DC, this makes the business of operating prisons all the more lucrative for private firms. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), immigration prosecutions reached record levels in federal fiscal year 2009. The Department of Homeland Security initiated 67,994 immigration prosecutions that year alone, a 459 percent increase from 2000 and a 973 percent increase from 1990.

Filling Up Prisons with Non-Violent Immigrants: In addition, federal immigration authorities are increasingly targeting nonviolent immigrants, whose only offense is attempting to unlawfully cross the border, via efforts such as Operation Streamline, which focuses on apprehending nonviolent border-crossers. According to a May 2010 study by the Warren Institute at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, projects such as Operation Streamline that focus on immigrants who haven't committed any crime in the US divert precious federal resources from apprehending drug cartels and human traffickers that frequently operate with impunity along stretches of the US-Mexico border and are responsible for much of the violence in the region. These record numbers of nonviolent immigrants are, in turn, filling jails and immigration detention centers to capacity: contributing to growing costs to states and higher profits for private prison companies like CCA.

The Failures of Prison Privatization: Both federal and state governments have utilized private firms to operate prisons, despite evidence of systematic failures. Privatization only exacerbates the challenges faced by states, communities, and families dealing with the broken immigration system. For example, the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy finds that there is no compelling evidence that prison privatization has led to savings, while the Private Corrections Institute analyzes several issues with privatization, which include “major riots, sex abuse scandals”¦ improper billing by private prison companies”¦ employment law violations, higher employer turnover rates, increased levels of prisoner-on-prisoner and prisoner-on-staff violence, lack of transparency and public accountability, and higher recidivism rates for inmates released from privately-operated prisons.”

When privatization involves prisons and detention centers, the profiteering comes at the expense of constitutional safeguards, democratic oversight, and public trust. In this case, it also undermines legislative efforts to promote progressive immigration reform. Lawmakers should take action to prevent such debacles from occurring by either halting failed privatization schemes. For example, Indiana Rep. Gail Riecken's introduced a bill to end privatization of social services in her state. Legislators can also consider requiring augmented transparency of state contracting, much like initiatives in Alabama, Hawaii, and Vermont.

Resources:
Immigration Policy Center - US Border Enforcement Prioritizes Non-Violent Migrants Over Dangerous Criminals
Immigration Policy Center - New Data on Federal Court Prosecutions Reveal Non-Violent Immigration Prosecutions Up
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse - Immigration Prosecutions at Record Levels in FY 2009
Immigration Policy Center - Throwing Good Money After Bad: Immigration Enforcement Without Immigration Reform Doesn't Work
University of California, Berkeley Law School Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity - Assembly-Line Justice: A Review of Operation Streamline
Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy — Are Florida’s Private Prisons Keeping Their Promise
Private Corrections Institute — Quick Facts About Prison Privatization
Private Corrections Institute — Report on Prison Privatization Plagued with Conflicts of Interest, Faulty Data, Political Connections
Progressive States Network - Privatization During an Economic Downturn: Still Inefficient and Problematic
OneAmerica - Voices from Detention: A Report on Human Rights Violations at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma Washington
AFSCME - Prison Privatization Resources

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Wage Law Enforcement State Trend: Illinois Becomes Most Recent State to Crack Down on Wage Theft

Tim Judson — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:48:32 +0000

A crime wave has been sweeping Illinois, with surveys of low-wage workers in the Chicago area showing an average of 146,300 cases of wage theft each week -- resulting in about $7.3 million each week in unpaid wages, or $380 million stolen from workers each year. In order to crack down on this criminal wage theft, the Illinois General Assembly on May 3 nearly unanimously (56-0 in the Senate and 112-1 in the House) passed SB 3568, which will strengthen the state’s ability to enforce violations of the Wage Payment and Collection Act, including these new or enhanced provisions:

Criminal Penalties: Both first offenses and repeat offenses will now be considered more serious crimes, with repeat offenders facing up to three years in prison.
Private Right of Action: Employees are permitted to press their case in court and to recover attorney fees and other court costs. The law specifies that workers do not need to wait for a complaint filed with the Department of Labor is processed, but they can take their case directly to the state circuit court. This will relieve the state of some of the enforcement burden and allow workers to obtain relief more quickly.
Class Action Suits: SB 3568 for the first time expressly permits employees to file class action lawsuits.
Anti-Retaliation: Employees are protected from retaliation for reporting alleged violations in public forums, such as to a community organization or at a public hearing. It also gives employees who have been subject to retaliation the right to file claims against their employers, either through the Department of Labor or in civil actions; and
Speedier Resolution of Claims: Enables the Illinois Department of Labor to establish a process for adjudicating smaller violation claims more expeditiously.

The Legislature's action came in response to University of Illinois research highlighting that low-wage workers were losing an average of 16% of their earnings each year to employer malfeasance.

Wave of Wage Law Enforcement Around the Country: Illinois' legislative action follows a growing number of states and counties enacting wage enforcement laws to address the crime of wage theft by employers. In 2009, New Mexico, Delaware, Maryland and Iowa enacted wage enforcement laws, as did Washington in March of this year. A wage law enforcement bill, S 07050, is now before the New York State Senate this session. Municipalities are also taking up the issue, with Miami-Dade County passing a county-level wage enforcement law in February. The City of San Francisco also passed a strong enforcement statute as part of its minimum wage law a few years ago, and bills are expected to be introduced in the cities of Los Angeles and New Orleans.

Some states have begun to address the issue through adapting their existing enforcement programs. In the past few years, for instance, New York and California formed multi-agency task forces to compile information and target industries where violations are known to be rampant. However, leaders in those states have usually found it necessary to strengthen the existing laws through creating stiffer penalties, expanding enforcement measures, and making the system more responsive to victims of wage theft.

The Cost to Communities from Wage Theft: Legislators are responding to research highlighting the severe toll wage theft is taking not just on workers, but on local economies and state and municipal tax rolls. Because low-wage earners spend a greater percentage of their income on local goods and services, wage theft on such a large scale does not merely affect workers and their families -- it has a major community-wide impact. Research in Chicago mirrors results from other cities studied by the University of Illinois and the National Employment Law Project. Even a business-community think tank, the Economic Policy Foundation, admits that wage theft is widespread: it estimated $19 billion per year in unpaid overtime alone, not to mention other wage and hour violations.

The rise in wage and hour violations is particularly prevalent among businesses with a high percentage of low-wage employees and/or immigrant workers. Lack of enforcement contributes both to downward pressure on wages and income levels and creates an incentive for employers to recruit undocumented workers, who are even less likely to know their rights and to press charges against their employers. For this reason, forward-thinking legislators are also promoting wage enforcement as a positive measure states can take in support of comprehensive immigration reform and as an alternative to regressive, anti-immigrant measures such as Arizona’s SB 1070. See Progressive States Network's Promoting Wage Law Enforcement Policies in 2010 for more on key provisions, model legislation and resources to support state wage enforcement campaigns.

Resources:
Progressive States Network - Promoting Wage Law Enforcement Policies in 2010
Center for Urban Economic Development, University of Illinois at Chicago - Unregulated Work in Chicago: The Breakdown of Workplace Protections in the Low-Wage Labor Market
National Employment Law Project - Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America's Cities
Interfaith Worker Justice - Thou Shalt Not Steal: A Toolkit on Wage Theft
Talking Points Memo - Sunlight and Enforcement Are the Best Disinfectants (Against Wage Theft)
Kim Bobo, Interfaith Worker Justice - Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid - And What We Can Do About It (The New Press, 2009)

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Arizona and the Nation: A Failing State Versus Positive Approaches to Immigrant Integration

Suman Raghunathan — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:33:14 +0000

As we highlighted two weeks ago, the Arizona legislature and Governor's decisions to pass a punitive, anti-immigrant bill - SB1070 - have unleashed a torrent of condemnations inside and outside of Arizona. Voices speaking up against the bill have come not only from civil rights organizations, but have also included public safety officials, constitutional legal scholars, and, significantly, Republican leaders and candidates from other states with significant immigrant populations.

While Arizona's extreme, draconian law is grabbing headlines, what's gotten less attention is how Arizona is an isolated case with increasingly anti-immigrant laws and policies advanced over the last few years. A handful of states have joined Arizona in its punitive approach to immigration, yet the often-ignored reality is that the vast majority of immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, live in states that have promoted far more humane and successful approaches emphasizing immigrant integration into local economies and communities.

As this Dispatch will detail, Arizona has blazed its own (misguided) path on immigration, which reflects dysfunctional right-wing politics that have driven the state into an economic disaster of low wages, mass-foreclosures and a punishing fiscal crisis. Grandstanding on race may be Arizona's substitute for grappling with its deep, systematic economic problems, but few other states have followed its lead in recent years, and even fewer seem likely to follow it on SB1070.

SB1070 highlights the need for more systematic campaigns to deepen immigrant integration policies in the states and for passage of federal comprehensive immigration reform to address the border and the need for legalization. The economic gains from positive reforms on immigration are too large to ignore at both the state and federal level.

We invite state legislators to join State Legislators for Progressive Immigration Policy (SLPIP) and other allies to sign up with PSN's State Immigration Project for updates on promoting progressive state immigration policy by emailing immigration@progressivestates.org.

Table of Contents:

- SB1070: Legalizing Racial Profiling, Violating Federalism

- Police, Civil Rights Groups and Republican Leaders Condemn SB1070

- SB1070: Symbol of Arizona's Failed Economy and Right-Wing Politics

- Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Politics Not the Norm for States with Immigrant Populations

- SB1070 Deepens the Need for Federal Comprehensive Immigration Reform

- The Economic Benefits of Legalization and Positive Immigration Integration Strategies

- Progressive Strategy to Address Immigration Policy

SB1070: Legalizing Racial Profiling, Violating Federalism

As we described two weeks ago, SB1070 is a radical anti-immigrant piece of legislation that will open the floodgates to racial profiling and abuses of civil liberties. The law will be challenged in court for both violating individual rights and being an illegal assertion of state authority given the federal government's primary responsibility for border and immigration matters. But in the meantime, the effects of its implementation will be sweeping, since the law:

Legalizes Racial Profiling: State and local government law enforcement officers are required to determine if a person is illegally in the United States based on a “reasonable suspicion,” an open ended approach that will encourage suspicions based on race. The law does little, if anything, to prohibit police officers from relying on race or ethnicity in deciding who to investigate.
Criminalizes immigration, which isn't a crime under federal law: Makes it a state crime to be in the country without legal status.
Undercuts Federalism: The law grants local police arrest authority for administrative violations of federal immigration law, even though the state police do not even have that authority under federal law.
Criminalizes Speech: The law criminalizes the solicitation of work even though courts have previously ruled that the solicitation of work is protected speech under the First Amendment.
Potentially Deters Enforcement of Other Laws: Since the law requires police officers responding to any city ordinance violation to automatically determine the immigration status of an individual they have reasonable suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant, many local violations won't be reported, consequently diverting law enforcement attention from violent crimes.

SB1070 Is a Product of a Racist, Anti-Immigrant National Network: The sweep of the law is hardly accidental, since it is the product of a national network of anti-immigrant groups tied to racist hate groups. As the Center for New Community noted in a recent email update:

[SB1070] was drafted by a lawyer for the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), whose founder has warned of a “Latin onslaught” and complained about Latinos’ alleged low “educability.” FAIR has accepted $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation that was set up by Nazi sympathizers to fund studies of eugenics, the science of selective breeding to produce a “better” race. The legislation was sponsored by state Senator Russell Pearce, who once e-mailed an anti-Semitic article from the neo-Nazi National Alliance website to supporters.

Kris Kobach, a Kansas law professor now running for Kansas Secretary of State, is the chief author of the bill, as emails recently revealed. Kobach was a top immigration advisor to John Ashcroft at the Justice Department who promoted national racial profiling of legal U.S. residents post-September 11th. He also drafted the local anti-immigrant ordinance for Hazelton, PA, which was struck down as unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2007.

With an eye on empowering allied groups like FAIR and related anti-immigrant groups, SB1070 is designed to allow them to sue local law enforcement agencies if they believe that are not adequately enforcing the new law, giving the right-wing new tools to control local police departments under threat of litigation.

Resources:
Progressive States Network - Arizona Risks Jeopardizing its Economic Future as it Contemplates Passing Anti-Immigrant Law
Center for American Progress - Fast Facts on Arizona’s Immigration Crack Down
Center for New Community - Fair Exposed, an online bi-weekly publication produced by the Center for New Community, a national civil rights organization. To subscribe email, fairexposed@newcomm.org.
Southern Poverty Law Center - Arizona Immigration Law Violates Constitution, Guarantees Racial Profiling
Wonk Room - The Group Behind The Harshest Immigration Bill In America
TalkingPointsMemo - AZ Immigration Bill Writer's Resume: GOP Activist, Ashcroft Aide, Arpaio Ally
The Rachel Maddow Show - Against Racial Profiling, Except When They're For It, Immigration Group President Addresses Racism Accusations, To Be FAIR: Following Dan Stein, Correcting the Record

Police, Civil Rights Groups and Republican Leaders Condemn SB1070

Unsurprisingly, a wide range of civil rights, labor, community and immigrant rights organizations within Arizona and the nation have condemned the law. The opposition to the bill has extended to law enforcement officers, legal experts and even Republican leaders in other states with large immigrant populations.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush noted, "I think it creates unintended consequences. It's difficult for me to imagine how you're going to enforce this law. It places a significant burden on local law enforcement and you have civil liberties issues that are significant as well." Even Republican strategist Karl Rove echoed, "I think there is going to be some constitutional problems with the bill. I wished they hadn't passed it, in a way."

Within Arizona, it is notable that the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police has opposed the law on both fiscal and public safety grounds, since they worry that fear of government officials by immigrant populations will diminish the public’s willingness to cooperate with police in criminal investigations and will “negatively affect the ability of law enforcement agencies across the state to fulfill their many responsibilities in a timely manner.”

The President of the American Bar Association in a statement said, "It is, quite simply put, a law based on prejudice and fear, one whose purpose is to be divisive. This law encourages second-class treatment of individuals based on the color of their skin, and that is unacceptable."

Most telling for how out of step Arizona leaders have been are statements by Republican state leaders from states with large immigrant populations:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger believes Arizona's approach is "as unconscionable as it is unconstitutional," and vowed to pull California's state pension funds invested in Arizona.
Florida Senatorial candidate, former Florida Speaker of the House and Tea Party darling Marco Rubio warned SB1070 will create a police state: "From what I have read in news reports, I do have concerns about this legislation... I think aspects of the law, especially that dealing with 'reasonable suspicion,' are going to put our law enforcement officers in an incredibly difficult position." He later told reporters, "That's not really something that Americans are comfortable with, the notion of a police state."
Texas Governor Rick Perry said in a statement that "some aspects of the law turn law enforcement officers into immigration officials by requiring them to determine immigration status during any lawful contact with a suspected alien, taking them away from their existing law enforcement duties, which are critical to keeping citizens safe." Perry's views parallel those of his corporate supporters, like the president of the right-wing Texas Association of Business, who recently called Arizona's law "blatantly unconstitutional," saying there was "little likelihood the Texas Legislature would pass anything so misguided as what they've done in Arizona."

When conservative stars like Marco Rubio and Rick Perry think a law is too extreme, it's clear Arizona's leaders have moved into their own corner of anti-immigrant extremism.

SB1070: Symbol of Arizona's Failed Economy and Right-Wing Politics

Click for larger image online.

If other state leaders, even conservative ones from border states like Texas, are not rushing to copy SB1070, it's because whatever their partisan politics, they don't share the peculiar brand of pathological right-wing politics and the hollow economy that has left Arizona such a political and economic basket case.

Other states have grappled with a range of programs to reform their economies and budgets during the current economic crisis. That Arizona's claim to fame in this crisis is immigrant bashing in the form of SB1070 is symbolic of years, even decades of failed political and economic policies. That Arizona politics has promoted low-wage jobs that have left state residents with falling individual incomes relative to the rest of the nation and conditions for the state's children that rank at the bottom of the nation. Since the current economic recession began in December 2007, Arizona has lost 265,000 jobs, or 9.9 percent of the state's employment. And with little else to offer the unemployed, scapegoating immigrants has become a substitute in Arizona for having a real solution to solving the economic needs of its residents.

Individual Incomes Fall Behind the Nation: For decades, Arizona's average wages and income have been falling behind other states. A University of Arizona business school study from 2005 noted that "over the long term, the real income of the average Arizonan has lagged behind the rest of the nation... Arizona slipped from 94 percent of the U.S. level in 1970 to 86 percent in 2003." While the bubble economy in the state of the mid-decade gave a slight bump to individual incomes in the state, per capita income fell 4 percent from 2008 to 2009 after having been stagnant for the previous two years, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis recently reported. Arizona was tied for fourth place with Idaho in having the highest drop in personal incomes per capita. Nationally, the decline last year was 2.6 percent.

An Economy Built on a Construction Bubble: The Urban Land Institute has referred to Phoenix as the "poster child" for the housing downturn and bad mortgages. The average price paid for office space in the Phoenix metro area tumbled more than 50 percent one year in 2009. Back in 2006, when growth peaked, about 30 percent of the Phoenix area’s economic output was tied to real estate and construction; subtract that bubble economic engine and even the nominal job growth in the state during the last decade collapsed into unemployment and foreclosures.

Part of the problem is that state leaders encouraged a low-wage, bubble-based economic strategy that added a mirage of job and population growth during the last decade, but left the state with poor fundamentals for long-term growth when the financial bubble collapsed nationally. Highlighting the weak economic underpinnings of the state economy, the Arizona Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metropolitan area ranked near the bottom, 192nd of 200 metro areas, for growth in high-tech gross domestic product from 2003 through 2008, according to the Milken Institute.

Fiscal Solutions More Irresponsible Than Any in Nation: Arizona's fiscal crisis is considered one of the worst in the country by the Pew Center on the States. Since 1992, the state has approved 42 tax cuts to its three major revenue sources -- personal and corporate income, and sales -- and eliminated statewide property taxes that accrued to the general fund-- and despite promises of right-wing economic nirvana, the results have been low personal income growth and a generally low-level of resources for human needs.

Arizona has some of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, 18.9 percent of the state lacks health insurance and 276,500 Arizona children do not have coverage. In the most recent Annie E. Casey Foundation's annual "Kids Count" report, Arizona ranked 40th in the nation in child well-being, one of the worst in the nation for its teen birth rate (46th), high-school dropout rate (46th) and percentage of children not attending school and not working (44th).

But what truly distinguishes Arizona is its right-wing, inhumane and short-sighted approaches to addressing its current fiscal problems:

State leaders passed a law to abolish the state's KidCare program providing children's health care to 40,000 kids, the only state in the country to take such a step, and only reversed themselves when they discovered they would forfeit billions in federal dollars if they did so.
Wide-ranging cuts in programs across the state, from eliminating full-day kindergarten to cutting state employee salaries to removing 10,000 families from TANF cash assistance.
Two-thirds of Arizona state parks will be closed.

And this has been combined with a whole range of other right-wing and just plain kooky laws promoted by the Arizona's legislature.

SB1070 Will Make Arizona's Economic Problems Worse: Passing SB1070 will simply deepen the state's economic crisis. As the National Employment Law Project points out, smaller-scale anti-immigrant ordinances have cost individual localities millions of dollars. And other studies estimate SB1070 will further decimate Arizona's economy by driving immigrant families, undocumented and legal residents alike, from the state, further depressing demands for goods and already vacant housing tracts.

The Arizona Republic detailed, "More than 100,000 undocumented immigrants have left Arizona in the past two years because of the bad economy and earlier enforcement crackdowns. Now, a new wave of Latinos is preparing to leave."

"So, rather than massive deportations, we are basically going to encourage them to leave on their own," said State Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who is also a criminal-justice professor at Scottsdale Community College. But even he admits that the law will likely drive legal residents and their families out of the state.

The Texas-based Perryman Group found if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and other local leaders anticipate a drop in new business creation in the state because of the new hostile environment. Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Nowakowski observed: “We’re the laughing stock of the country because of these crazy laws.”

Resources:
Think Progress - Arizona Expands Its Discrimination: Teachers With Heavy Accents Can’t Teach English, Ethnic Studies Are Banned
Rogue Columnist - Arizona's Continuing Crisis and Kookocracy Watch
Arizona State University W.B. Carey School of Business - Jobs, Income, And Growth In Arizona: Individual Versus Aggregate Measures Of Economic Performance
Progressive States Network - Eye on the Right: Arizona's Failed Experiment with Tax Cuts

Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Politics Not the Norm for States with Immigrant Populations

Despite much media hype, most states with high concentrations of undocumented and legal immigrants have rejected the punitive approach of Arizona and a handful of like-minded states. Most states have quietly been moving forward with positive, integrative approaches to new immigrants in their communities.

As PSN detailed in a report in 2008 -- and the basic numbers have changed little since then -- only 11% of undocumented immigrants live in states that have enacted comprehensive punitive policies or sanctions in private workplaces against undocumented workers.

Most Undocumented Residents Live in States with Integration Policies: Instead, a significant majority of undocumented immigrants live in states with positive integrative or somewhat integrative policies. As detailed in a section below, with the right state policies, new immigrants bring new skills, business startups and economic growth-- and most states with experience with new immigrants have promoted policies to tap that economic growth potential.

Many states, including many of those where most undocumented immigrants live such as Texas and California, now provide in-state tuition (so-called DREAM Acts) for undocumented immigrants going to public universities. Others are promoting policies to integrate immigrants through English language instruction and assistance in navigating the citizenship process. A number of states such as Illinois and New York are providing health insurance to undocumented children. And instead of trying to punish immigrant workers, states are increasingly working with native and immigrant workers to crack down on bad employers who are violating minimum wage, safety and workers compensation laws.

In fact, over 50% of undocumented immigrants live in states that provide in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant children and nearly the same majority of undocumented immigrants live in states that are promoting "New Americans" policies to better educate new immigrants and nearly a majority also live in states that have recently enacted new penalties for wage law violations in order to raise wages for all workers, native and immigrant alike. See the chart for a comparison of the more pervasive positive approaches to immigration compared to the minority punitive approach.

The media largely rewards the tactics of political opportunists who to use the issue of immigration as a "wedge" issue, but ignore the political and economic success of other states in integrating new immigrants into their state economies and communities.

A State Agenda for Progressive Immigration Policy: As we highlighted in our Dispatch, State Immigration Policy to Promote National Change, there are a range of positive state policies that can improve the lives of immigrants and raise living standards and public safety for everyone, native and immigrant alike. These include:

Wage Law Enforcement as Immigration Policy - Redirect anger at lawlessness in the workplace toward employers who violate wage and other worker rights laws -- an approach that unites all workers, immigrant and native alike.
Immigrant Integration and Naturalization - Highlight policies that help all immigrants to better integrate into society, a broadly popular policy and one that also unites the interests of legal and undocumented immigrants.
Address Debate on Immigrants and Public Benefits - Emphasize the benefits to the public from providing education and preventive care to immigrants. Support resolutions that demand that the federal government, which receives billions in taxes paid by undocumented workers, share those revenues with states to expand services for communities with heavy immigrant populations.
Voting Reform versus "Voter ID" Attacks - Challenge the voter ID requirements that are disenfranchising many legal voters and support anti-voter intimidation policies. Support reforms like same day registration and vote-by-mail to assist citizens forced to overcome any new barriers to voting.
Community Policing and Immigrant Outreach for Public Safety - Support community policing policies that encourage immigrants to work closely with the police when they either see a crime or are victims themselves. Encourage community policing efforts involving undocumented immigrant communities.

Smart state policy proposals that emphasize the areas where the public is supportive of immigrant integration into our communities are both smart policy and smart politics. By better controlling the debate at the local and state level, progressives can help build support for federal reforms to regularize the legal status of undocumented immigrants and build a path to citizenship. Such strategies can isolate those who promote the scapegoating of immigrants and instead emphasize the issues that will benefit everyone, from wage law enforcement to integrating new immigrants into our local economies.

Resources:
Progressive States Network - State Immigration Policy to Promote National Change
Progressive States Network - The Anti-Immigrant Movement that Failed: Positive Integration Policies by States Still Far Outweigh Punitive Policies

SB1070 Deepens the Need for Federal Comprehensive Immigration Reform

If SB1070 accomplishes anything, it will be to focus national attention on why it is critical to revamp and improve federal immigration laws. Those on both sides of the partisan aisle overwhelmingly agree the nation's immigration system is broken, and long overdue for an update.

While federal law essentially decides who can legally enter the US and determines immigrants' eligibility for most services and benefits (according to federal immigration law, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most public benefits apart from emergency room medical care), states have considerable jurisdiction over immigrants' access to some basic services and programs - such as, for example, New York state's decision to provide basic prenatal health care for women -- regardless of their immigration status -- as well as how state and local government (including law enforcement officers) interact with immigrant residents.

As noted above, most states have engaged immigration in a more positive manner: for example, several states (including Utah and Texas) extend in-state tuition rates to undocumented students who attend state universities and colleges. But given the given the federal vacuum on immigration, some states like Arizona will inevitably take matters into their own hands in a punitive direction.

The last comprehensive immigration reform, enacted in 1986 by Republican President Ronald Reagan, included a large-scale legalization program that allowed roughly 3 million undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status. Despite attempts at immigration reform in 2001, 2006, and 2007, there has been no significant change in the status quo of immigration policy since 1986. The longer the nation is forced to wait for federal immigration reform, the more states will make patchwork attempts to address immigration at the state level and the more opportunities there are for states to take misguided and economically disastrous approaches to immigration policy such as Arizona's.

Proposed Federal Reforms Promote Compromise Solution: The most recent proposal, unveiled by Senators Menendez, Reid, and Schumer, outlines a number of provisions to address the crisis:

On the negative side, it introduces a national identity card and takes a 'zero tolerance' approach with plans to continue to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants who are suspected of committing crimes; it also significantly ramps up militarization of the US-Mexico border.
However, the proposal also dramatically expands the channels for legal immigration into the US and provides an (albeit lengthy) path to legalization, and ultimately citizenship, for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the US. The proposal grants provisional legal status (which includes work authorization) to undocumented residents who come forward, register with the federal government, pay a fine, and commit to learning English. After eight years, if border enforcement and surveillance programs are successfully implemented, these individuals are then eligible for permanent resident status, and five years later are eligible to apply for US citizenship.
The Menendez-Reid-Schumer proposal also would grant permanent resident status (known as a 'green card') to every immigrant who earns an advanced degree from an American university, and would end country-based quotas on the number of H1B visas extended to highly-skilled workers who seek to enter the US.
Finally, the proposal would streamline the process for spouses and immediate relatives of those with green cards to enter the US themselves, addressing a backlog of family-based immigration that often requires family members to wait a decade before they can legally join their relatives in the US.

Resource: American Immigration Lawyers Association - Analysis of Senate Democrats Immigration Reform Proposal

The Economic Benefits of Legalization and Positive Immigration Integration Strategies

Several recent academic studies have underscored the economic benefits that a large-scale legalization program would bring to the US economy and households, despite the current flawed conventional wisdom that legalization would cause already-high unemployment rates to rise.

A study by Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Oveda of the University of California - Los Angeles uses the economic impact of the 1986 legalization program (one that also occurred during an economic recession with high unemployment) to forecast how a legalization program would affect the current economy. His analysis found a legalization program would yield at least $1.5 trillion in gross domestic product over a ten-year period. Legalization would allow undocumented workers to emerge from the underground economy, and would, as a result, raise not only their wages but those of their native-born counterparts, raising the wage floor for many workers. Increased wages would, in turn, fuel increased purchasing power and homeownership among newly-legalized immigrants, injecting billions, if not trillions, of dollars into the US economy as a whole.

Libertarians also echo the belief that immigrants, even those working in low-wage sectors, expand the American economy. According to this commentary analysis from the libertarian CATO Institute, "the addition of low-skilled immigrants expands the size of the overall economy, creating higher-wage openings for managers, craftsmen, accountants, and the like." Undocumented immigrants are typically low-income, but they are almost all employed. According to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center, male undocumented immigrants, ages 18 to 64, had a labor-force participation rate in 2004 of an amazing 92 percent.

Other studies have found wage levels of low-wage immigrant workers increase by as much as 30 percent when they improve their English fluency by just one level, because they are able to advocate for themselves more effectively in the workplace - a powerful testimony to increasing state and federal funding for English as a Second Language classes.

Finally, federal, state, and local tax bases would benefit significantly from the increased earnings and purchasing power of newly-legalized immigrants. The Social Security Administration estimates that roughly 75% of undocumented immigrants pay payroll taxes. In fact, the Drum Major Institute notes that undocumented workers already are largely responsible for the future viability of the Social Security system with their $7 billion in annual tax contributions - most which they will never be able to access. And the President's Council of Economic Advisors found that US natives gain an estimated $37 billion annually from immigrants' economic contributions as a whole.

Resources:
Immigration Policy Center - The Fiscal Bottom Line on Immigration Reform
Immigration Policy Center - Assessing the Economic Impact of Immigration and the State and Local Level
Immigration Policy Center & UCLA: Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Immigration Policy Center - Immigration Reform as Economic Stimulus
Commentary Magazine - Higher Immigration, Lower Crime
Drum Major Institute - Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class
America's Voice - Immigrants to Tea Party Protesters: We'll Pay!
America's Voice - Facts at a Glance on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Progressive Strategy to Address Immigration Policy

To defeat anti-immigrant attacks, the key for progressives is to proactively use smart policy campaigns to change the public debate on immigration both at the state and national level. Globalization is driving economic changes, including immigration, that cause fear and uncertainty for many voters, but if progressives promote economic and social policies that address the broader needs of working families and propose a vision of how to effectively integrate new immigrants into our communities, there is no sustained majority for punitive measures against undocumented immigrants.

Beyond individual policy options, advocates and elected leaders need to emphasize that the coalition in support of humane policies involving new immigrants is diverse and cuts into even many seemingly conservative communities. Elected leaders can build on traditional support from many African-American leaders to labor unions to forge alliances with forward-looking business leaders and religious leaders, including many evangelicals, who recognize that smart, humane immigration policies for our communities is a source of both moral and social strength.

Anti-Immigrant Conservatives Playing a Losing Game: And the dangerous reality for anti-immigrant conservatives is that they are playing a losing demographic game, with new legal immigrants voting in increasing numbers that will punish any party or ideological group that promotes racist approaches to the immigration issue -- one reason many Republican leaders are denouncing SB1070 so quickly.

There were 10 million Latino voters in 2008, an increase of 4 million since 2000. And a May 2009 poll of Latino voters found that 82% of Latino voters felt immigration was important to them and their families. Punitive approaches like SB1070 will inevitably impel a negative reaction, with nearly six-in-ten (57%) Latinos in a 2008 Pew Hispanic Center survey, saying they worried that they themselves or a friend or family member would be deported as a result of similar policies.

Conclusion: Humane immigration politics are also smart politics in the long-term, since the present coalition for progressive immigration policy is rapidly being joined by new citizens who are unlikely to forgive politicians who vote for racial profiling or other attacks on their communities. Ultimately, in an increasingly diverse nation, there is no long-term political future for politicians pushing these anti-immigrant laws. Elected officials who step up with intelligent, humane policies on immigration will both build a stronger economy and society in their states and win politically in the long-term.

Resources:
Progressive States Network -State Policymakers Need to Respond to Growing Clout of Latino Voters Nationwide
Pew Hispanic Center - Hispanics and Arizona’s New Immigration Law
America's Voice - The Power of the Latino Vote in the 2010 Elections: They Tipped Elections in 2008; Where Will They Be in 2010?

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Arizona Risks Jeopardizing its Economic Future as it Contemplates Passing Anti-Immigrant Law

Suman Raghunathan — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:37:04 +0000

This week, the Arizona Senate passed the nation's most draconian immigration law - which criminalizes the undocumented and those accused of assisting them - that many critics say will drive racial profiling and further undermine Arizona's devastated economy. The bill now awaits now awaits Governor Jan Brewer's veto or approval. Advanced by anti-immigrant leader State Sen. Russell Pearce, SB 1070 would:

make it a state crime to be undocumented and to seek work, including on street corners, in Arizona;
allow state police and other law enforcement officers to arrest anyone without a warrant based upon "reasonable suspicion" that they are undocumented and notify federal immigration agents;
make it a crime to impede traffic while attempting to hire a day laborer in the street;
bar state, city, and county officials from limiting enforcement of federal immigration laws, and allow anyone in the state to sue an official or law enforcement agency they believe is not enforcing the state's anti-immigrant law (with a provision to deter some frivolous lawsuits); and
impose a financial penalty on anyone who harbors or transports an undocumented immigrant - including family members.

Arizona is the first state in the nation to seek to criminalize all of its undocumented residents who have not committed any crime other than lacking immigration status.

Arizona Leaders Denounce Bill: Leaders from Arizona's faith-based communities and organizations, business leaders and law enforcement officers have also spoken out against the bill, noting it will: hurt both employers and their employees statewide; erode community-policing practices by generating widespread fear in immigrant communities of all law enforcement officers; and discourage immigrant residents from reporting crimes or serving as witnesses for fear of being deported. Immigrant and civil rights activists warn that the bill provides a free pass for state and local police officers to engage in racial profiling by stopping anyone who appears Latino or to be an immigrant; members of a national organization of police officers just announced their opposition to the bill and urged other states not to follow Arizona's lead.

The public response to the bill has been overwhelming: according to Governor Brewer's office, as of Monday they received 11,931 calls, faxes, and e-mails in opposition to the bill and only 1,356 calls, faxes and e-mails expressing support. Immigrant rights activists, led by Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, delivered another 50,000 petitions to Brewer's office Tuesday expressing opposition to the bill. Brewer has yet to signal her decision, giving hope to some activists. She has until Saturday, April 25 to sign the bill, or can ultimately allow the bill to become law without her signature - if she does not veto it. Brewer faces a tough election race this year, and many believe her indecision on the bill hinges on political calculations related to state voters' attitudes toward immigrants and immigration.

The Economic Costs of Anti-Immigrant Policies: Arizona has been pursuing an increasingly anti-immigrant approach over the last few years, yet it faces the highest loss of employment in the nation and some of the highest foreclosure rates. Many estimate the bill will just make matters worse with immigrant families and businesses fleeing Arizona in response, further devastating the state's economy by costing the state up to $26.4 billion in economic activity. This is likely to further weaken the state's troubled housing market; and business leaders warn that losing those residents will decrease much-needed sales and property tax revenues.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the ACLU are expected to challenge the bill in court, noting it will encourage racial profiling against the state's Latino and immigrant residents. Business leaders warn that costly legal challenges to the bill will not help reduce the state's current $3 billion budget deficit and will result in billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Confronting Anti-Immigrant Demagoguery: Senator Pearce, a former state trooper who has introduced enforcement-only immigration legislation for nearly a decade in Arizona, has made anti-immigrant politics a personal crusade, has also been linked to neo-Nazi groups. Pearce was previously vilified by some Republican and Democratic colleagues for his extreme and often-vitriolic stances on immigration, and he introduced a bill similar to SB 1070 during former Governor Janet Napolitano's tenure, which she vetoed. Napolitano is now Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and is responsible for developing national immigration policy.

Leaders across the country are stepping up to confront these anti-immigrant attacks. State legislators from over twenty states have worked with Progressive States Network to form State Legislators for Progressive Immigration Policy (SLPIP) to directly challenge these attacks in the states. Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, a PSN Board Member and State Legislators for Progressive Immigration Policy (SLPIP) leader, confronted bill supporter Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on CNN yesterday over the issue. Watch the debate online by clicking on the image below.

Arizona has a unique political dynamic and demographics that may be leading it down this destructive road, one reminiscent of California's anti-immigrant legislation of the 1990s. Arizona, ground zero for unauthorized border crossings from Mexico into the US, has seen its undocumented population surge by over 40% in the past decade, largely fueled by the state's housing boom and a growing number of service sector jobs assisting its aging baby boomer residents. Yet the state's demographics do not mirror its electorate: Latinos account for 30% of the state's population, yet are only 11.7% of the electorate, according to Census data.

A More Effective Alternative: Despite Arizona's punitive approach toward immigration, many other states are pursuing far more sensible policies to integrate immigrants into local communities and economies. We detailed many of these effective approaches being pursued around the country in our Dispatch piece, State Immigration Policy to Promote National Change in January. Most states won't want to follow the misguided and potentially economically disastrous example set by SB 1070.

More on the Economic Effects of the Bill: Immigrants and Latinos are critical to Arizona's economy. According to a University of Arizona study, the state's immigrant workers generated $44 billion in economic output in 2004 and sustained roughly 400,000 full-time jobs. The state's more than 35,000 Latino-owned businesses generated $4.3 billion in economic activity and were responsible for over 39,000 state jobs in 2002, the last year for which such data is available.

Business leaders warn enacting SB 1070 will result in immigrants (including those with legal status or US citizenship who have undocumented family members) leaving the state - thereby decreasing sales and property tax revenues statewide.The Perryman Group estimates that if all undocumented residents were removed from Arizona, the state would lose:

$26.4 billion in economic activity;
$11.7 billion in gross state product; and
approximately 140,324 jobs.

Arizona's Politics: Many of the state's non-citizen Latinos are immigrants who arrived in the state over the past decade and have yet to make their way through the citizenship process and become voters. Political scientists and academics note many of the state's white voters have a "libertarian, Old West mentality" and tend to vote conservatively, supporting Phoenix's anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- who is currently being investigated by the US Department of Justice for his decision to use sheriff's deputies to enforce immigration laws.

Several analyses of the federal 287(g) program, which advocates note also encourages racial profiling, have found the program is often costly and ineffective. Most undocumented residents apprehended through the program in North Carolina, for example, were only guilty of misdemeanors such as traffic violations - at a cost of $5.5 million annually to the state's Mecklenburg County. County Supervisors in Virginia's Prince William County decided to not implement the portion of their local immigration legislation that deputized local police officers to enforce immigration laws after they realized the price tag for the initiative would amount to at least $14 million over five years.

Meanwhile, demographers note the number of undocumented residents in the nation as a whole has decreased by roughly 1 million in the past two years due to the economic downturn, which has hit the construction, restaurant, and service industries particularly hard - all employment sources for many undocumented immigrants. Other states that have seen a significant increase among their undocumented residents include Georgia, Texas, Nevada, Illinois, and North Carolina.

Resources:
Immigration Policy Center - How Much Will Arizona's Immigration Bill (SB 1070) Cost?
Border Action Network - Russell Pearce's SB 1070: Why It's Bad for Arizona and How YOU Can Fight It
Immigration Policy Center - New Americans in the Grand Canyon State
Progressive States Network - The Anti-Immigrant Movement that Failed: Positive Integration Policies by States Still Far Outweigh Punitive Policies
Progressive States Network - Secret Deportation Quotas, Program Failures, and High Budget Costs from Local Immigration Enforcement Revealed in Recent Reports
Progressive States Network - State Immigration Policy to Promote National Change

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Secret Deportation Quotas, Program Failures and High Budget Costs from Local Immigration Enforcement Revealed in Recent Reports

Suman Raghunathan — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:52:54 +0000

Recent reports have raised serious concerns about program failures, secret deportation quotas and the high costs of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s controversial 287(g) program, which trains and authorizes state and local police departments to enforce federal immigration law.

Reports Detail 287(g) Failures: Just this past week, the Department of Homeland Security's own Office of the Inspector General published a report detailing how the 287(g) program lacks federal oversight, is poorly managed by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), lacks consistent implementation guidelines in different jurisdictions, and has failed to take any action against law enforcement agencies that are clearly violating the terms of their agreements with ICE. This parallels a January 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that highlighted failures to meet the program's stated goals, leading to state and local police officers frequently detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants for traffic violations and other minor crimes.

Secret Memo Reveals Deportation Quotas: Even worse, the program appears to have been abused as part of a costly mass-deportation dragnet by federal officials to meet deportation quotas, according to an internal government memo leaked to The Washington Post on March 27th. In the memo, James Chaparro, head of ICE detention and removal operations, outlined annual deportation quotas of 400,000, bemoaned the low level of deportations in the current year, and directed ICE regional offices to redirect their attention toward rounding up undocumented immigrants who have not committed any crimes.

This memo directly contradicts pledges from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the head of ICE, John Morton, to focus immigration enforcement on undocumented immigrants with violent records. In the face of an outcry from immigrant rights advocates and calls for Morton's resignation, ICE almost immediately backpedaled and sought to distance itself from Chaparro's remarks by retracting the memo. Yet the next day, Chaparro issued another memo restating his previous strategy and goals for immigration enforcement.

287(g) Focus on Minor Infractions Hurting Local Budgets: In fact, evidence indicates that 287(g) efforts have been misused to target minor offenses rather than violent criminals, which has ended up increasing local budget costs for jurisdictions participating in the program. According to a University of North Carolina analysis, 87% of all individuals booked through 287(g) in the state were charged with misdemeanors, while only 13% were charged with felonies. In Gaston County, North Carolina, 95% of those charged and apprehended through the program committed misdemeanors - 60% of them for traffic violations that did not include drunk driving.

As an Immigration Policy Center analysis details, the 287(g) program operates in 67 jurisdictions in 24 states. The program has frequently increased costs for state and local police departments, since ICE does not provide funding for police departments to implement 287(g) programs and other immigration enforcement initiatives. In addition, the program has eroded more effective community policing practices and encouraged racial profiling - often sweeping immigrants with legal status and US citizens into immigration enforcement actions.

A University of North Carolina Latino Migration Project analysis notes the program's costs in Alamance County, North Carolina totaled $4.8 million the first year alone. Mecklenburg County, NC devotes an estimated $5.5 million annually to implement its 287(g) program. A Brookings Institute report found Virginia's Prince William County had to raise property taxes by 5 % and dip into its 'rainy day' fund to cover higher-than-anticipated costs for the 287(g) program, which totaled $6.4 million the first year alone, $1.4 million more than initial estimates. Maricopa County, Arizona's infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his draconian approach to implementing their 287(g) program created a $1.3 million budget deficit in just three months, according to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of investigative articles from the East Valley Tribune. States and localities who enter into 287(g) agreements also often incur indirect expenses such as litigation fees and reductions in local business revenues and sales taxes. For example, undocumented immigrants in the metropolitan Chicago area spend $2.89 billion annually on goods and services alone, creating an additional 31,908 jobs in the local economy. And North Carolina's Latino residents contribute an estimated $9.2 billion annually to the state's economy. Apprehending and eventually deporting undocumented immigrants means they are no longer consumers who contribute to state and local tax coffers every time they buy local goods.

State and Local Communities Turning to Better Approaches: A number of local communities have recently opted out of the program due to its high costs, including Morris County, New Jersey and Houston, Texas. The Board of Commissioners of Chatham County, North Carolina rejected adopting a 287(g) program in January 2009, citing "a lack of fiscal resources" and the "high risk of civil liability" stemming from possible lawsuits against the county. As PSN noted last fall, many states are instead focusing on community policing approaches that seek to collaborate with immigrant communities to lower crime at far lower cost than pursuing punitive anti-immigrant enforcement policies encouraged by the 287(g) program. Such an approach to criminal justice in immigrant communities is far more likely to be a success, especially in light of the 287(g) program's widespread failures.

Resources:
Progressive States Network - Community Policing as an Alternative to Local Enforcement of Immigration Law, Community Policing Conference Call
Immigration Policy Center - Local Enforcement of Immigration Laws Through the 287(g) Program: Time, Money, and Resources Don't Add Up to Community Safety
Justice Strategies - Local Democracy on ICE: Why State and Local Governments Have No Business in Federal Immigration Law Enforcement
Government Accountability Office - Immigration Enforcement: Better Controls Needed Over Program Authorizing State and Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws
Department of Homeland Security - The Performance of 287(g) Agreements
Migration Policy Institute - A Program In Flux: New Priorities and Implementation Challenges for 287(g)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Latino Migration Project - The 287(g) Program: The Costs and Consequences of Local Immigration Enforcement in North Carolina Communities
Immigration and Human Rights Policy Clinic at UNC Chapel Hill and ACLU-NC - The Policies and Politics of Local Immigration Enforcement Laws: 287(g) Program in North Carolina
University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development - Chicago’s Undocumented Immigrants: An Analysis of Wages, Working Conditions, And Economic Contributions
American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation & University of North Carolina Immigration and Human Rights Policy Clinic - The Policies and Politics of Local Immigration Enforcement Laws: the 287 (g) Program in North Carolina
The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy - Fact Sheet: Immigrants' Economic Contributions - Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class: 2009 Edition
Center for American Progress - The Costs of Mass Deportation: Impractical, Expensive, and Ineffective

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