5-17-06, 9:27 am
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, May 15, 2006
Broad Based Immigrant Rights Coalition Denounces Bush’s Border Control and Guest Worker Proposals
According to the Public Policy Institute of California’s 2002 report on U.S. border enforcement strategies, pouring billions of tax-payer dollars into militarizing the border has completely failed to deter unauthorized migration. Such measures have only resulted in the death of 4,000 people at the border – 10 times more deaths than those at the Berlin Wall in its 28-year history. According to Sheila Chung, Director of BAIRC, “Border militarization fails to address the root causes of migration – poverty, persecution and lack of true economic opportunities. Until we begin to provide legal ways for people to come to the U.S., migrant deaths will continue to mount at the border.”
“It is bewildering and offensive that Bush and others on Capitol Hill appear to be more concerned and responsive to the largely manufactured security concerns involving immigration than they were to the very real disaster of Hurricane Katrina. This plan not only diverts resources from where they may be more needed, it exacerbates the very real crisis of immigrants dying while attempting to cross the border.” said Carlos Villarreal of the National Lawyer’s Guild.
President Bush also touted a temporary worker program and pushed for increased employer sanctions – two initiatives that have a terrible history of abuse and misuse in the United States. The Bracero Program, a guest worker initiative launched in 1942 that attracted more than 4 million Mexican citizens to take temporary agricultural work in the United States, produced a system of legalized slavery characterized by unpaid wages, poor housing, and the physical toll of 'stoop labor.” Congress terminated the Bracero program in 1964 citing the egregious abuses of the program.
Bush also promoted another failed strategy: employer sanctions.
Enacted under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, employer sanctions make it a crime to hire an undocumented worker. Perceived as an anti-employer measure, employer sanctions actually target and abuse immigrant workers. They allow corrupt employers to intimidate and prevent immigrant workers from organizing with non-immigrant workers to seek just and fair working conditions. “Immigrants deserve the right to work, to earn a living and support their families – fundamental rights that all people deserve,” said Chris Punongbayan of Filipinos for Affirmative Action. “Employer sanctions only serve to promote abuse and racial profiling.”
Increased border controls, guest worker programs and employer sanctions will further intensify the crisis at the border and in our local communities. They do nothing to solve the true problem – how to provide a path to citizenship and civil rights for all.
Bay Area immigrant communities call on the White House and Congress to stop their election year pandering and advance fair and just immigration reform that provides for paths to legal permanent residency and increased civil rights protections, and rejects guest worker programs and misguided enforcement measures.
Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC)
