ImmigrationPolicyCenter

What’s the best way to help workers form a union in a workplace where managers have spent years wantonly violating labor laws by threatening and intimidating workers into resisting unionization? If you’re the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the answer would seem to be “get rid of the workers.” At least, that is one of the main recommendations contained within a rather confusing new CIS report on the aftermath of the January 2007 immigration raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at the Smithfield pork plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. Holding up Smithfield as a prototype for the nation, the CIS report vaguely suggests that destructive immigration raids and a flawed electronic employment-verification system will not only succeed in draining millions of unauthorized immigrants from the United States, but bolster unionization for American workers, too. These are fanciful notions at best.

Anti-immigrant groups have repeatedly tried to drive a wedge between African Americans and immigrants by capitalizing on the myth that immigrants take American jobs—particularly jobs that would otherwise go to African Americans. That myth, as anti-immigrant groups present it, is simply not true, says Gerald Jaynes, a professor of Economics and African American Studies at Yale University. In a new Perspectives piece for the Immigration Policy Center, A Conversation about the Economic Effects of Immigration on African Americans, Jaynes dispels the myth that immigrants take “black jobs” and instead suggests we find solutions on how to lift up all low-wage American workers.

Last Friday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano announced changes to the controversial 287(g) program—a program which allows state and local police agencies to partner with ICE to enforce federal immigration laws. DHS also announced that, rather than waiting for the new policies to be implemented and tested, it has expanded the problematic 287(g) program with 11 new Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs).

It’s time to take a deep breath and recognize that you can rarely take Senate votes at face value when it comes to immigration. The amount of posturing and political preening that goes on is directly proportionate to how close we really are to pushing a substantive immigration proposal. So, what have we seen this week? Senator Schumer announces that there will be a comprehensive immigration reform bill by Labor Day. That’s good policy. The Council on Foreign Relations says comprehensive immigration reform is vital to our nation’s interests. Also good policy. Enforcement only amendments win on the Senate floor—bad policy, but great political theater.

Utah’s “get tough on immigration” legislation, Senate Bill 81 (SB81), went into effect last week on July 1st. The litany of protests from faith groups, local police, and conservatives, however, demonstrates the futility of trying to solve a federal immigration problem through state law. Even Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. hesitated before signing SB81 into law back in March 2008, hoping the federal government would intervene with a national immigration reform bill before the July 1st implementation date.

In a new “special report” released on July 1, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) regurgitates an old and deeply flawed argument: that immigration causes pollution. Specifically, the report claims that, because immigration increases the size of the U.S. population, it also increases U.S. energy consumption, which increases U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which contributes to global warming. If this line of reasoning seems a tad weak, that’s because it is. As Andrea Nill writes for the ThinkProgress Wonk Room, the report relies largely on “anecdotes and inferences” in an “attempt to pander to progressive soft spots” on the environment.