Paper Chase
Immigrant Rights and Undocumented Workers
By Sasha Khokha

Applause thundered through the stadium. More than 16,000 people filled the Los Angeles Sports Arena, wearing colorful T-shirts, chanting and standing up in vibrant waves. Thousands more pressed against the doors that had shut when the stadium filled to capacity. But this was not another raucous Lakers game. This crowd would quiet down to listen to a young Mexican immigrant woman tell about her family's pain.

"My name is Carmen," she said in a choked voice through the microphone. "I am 17 years old, and I work 11-hour days for less than $2.70 an hour. I wash dishes, clean bathrooms, mop floors, cook, and make homemade tortillas.… When I get home, my hands are cut and burned, and my entire body aches."

The testimony of Carmen and others at this AFL-CIO-sponsored rally last June was just one sign of what has become an electrifying call for the immigrant rights movement: legalization for undocumented immigrants.

Over the past year, tens of thousands have marched in the streets of New York, Oregon, California, Illinois and Washington, DC, and have packed church basements and community centers in many other states. Their demand? Reform of an immigration system that denies legal status to many migrants, disproportionately affecting those from Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. But the legalization movement goes beyond that to call for an end to the system that heightens exploitation in the workplace and keeps families separated.

The promise of this period sharply contrasts with previous years, when legislation led to the criminalization of immigrants, and deliberate scapegoating fed public anxieties and hostilities. Now, encouraged by a massive groundswell at the grassroots and the interest and publicity generated by labor's unprecedented support, the immigrant rights movement is demanding a serious overhaul of policies that have left millions without immigration status.

Once Upon a Legal Time
It hasn't always been a crime to enter the U.S. without documents. Longtime immigrant activist María Jiménez points out that "it wasn't until 1929 that the U.S. government introduced concepts designating immigrants as 'legal' or 'illegal.' Previously, laws had excluded individuals based on nationality, illness, political beliefs or criminal records, but not simply for moving across borders without documents."

Immigration policies since then have left many migrants with few alternatives other than to enter without authorization. Countries such as the Philippines, India or Mexico have waiting lists for family visas so backlogged that some families wait 15 years to be reunited. Migrant workers without highly specialized technical knowledge have little chance of procuring work-related visas.

When overlaid with the class and gender dimensions of who gets in and how, it becomes clear that women of color - who constitute half of new migrants - and poor Asian, African and Latino families are hardest-hit by these policies. Families sponsoring their relatives must earn at least 125 percent of poverty level and many immigrant families fail to meet this requirement.

Immigration policies often have been designed to control the flow of labor. The first colonial settlers faced few restrictions when they brought indentured white servants, and later African slaves, to provide labor for the colonial economy. Chinese workers, welcomed to the Western U.S. to lay railroad track, were targeted for exclusion once the railroads were completed. Mexican laborers were imported to work in the fields during harvest time and then subjected to mass deportations during periods of economic recession in the 1930s and 1950s.

Working Without Papers
It is the sting of undocumented status at the workplace that fuels many immigrant communities' drive for legalization. But it hasn't always been a crime to work without papers, either. In 1986, a dramatic shift in immigration law known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) made it illegal to work without immigration papers. Congress members backed a quick-fix solution to "eliminate the magnet" of U.S. jobs by imposing stiff fines on employers who hire unauthorized workers.

In exchange, IRCA allowed thousands of immigrant workers to legalize their status during the last "amnesty" in 1986. The trade-off had a price, however: sanctions gave employers a tool to silence workers. Many workers unable to show documentation endure harsh working conditions, knowing that finding another job will be difficult without authorization. Employers facing a union organizing drive frequently threaten to call the INS "on themselves," knowing that an INS raid will have a chilling effect.

Such conditions have fueled the underground economy over the last 15 years, creating a climate in which flagrant labor law violations are the norm. Today, the average wage for an undocumented restaurant worker in New York City is approximately $200 for a 72-hour workweek. Undocumented workers sewing through piles of clothing in sweatshops may not be paid for weeks or months at a time. Why? "Because if they speak up, they know they'll pay a price-getting fired or deported," says longtime labor organizer Eddie Canales, who was active in campaigns to repeal sanctions in Denver. "It's a misnomer-employer sanctions are really employee sanctions."

Numerous government reports have further concluded that employer sanctions have led to widespread discrimination against people of color-citizen and non-citizen-in hiring. Those who look or sound foreign to employers have been refused jobs, asked for extra documentation or had their documents viewed with special scrutiny.

The Undocumented Organize
Texas, where wading through the Rio Grande can be a baptism into a new life without papers, is one of the epicenters of the legalization movement. "This issue is giving undocumented people the impetus to organize," says Fernando García, director of the Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project (ILEMP) in El Paso. "Fear has immobilized a lot of people. But now they are joining the call: 'If we don't have papers, we'll fight for them.'"

García sees grassroots structures as key to the national mobilization generated to press Congress and the White House to consider a new legalization program. "For undocumented immigrants who may be afraid to get involved in anything public, they can participate right in their neighborhood, with neighbors who may be in the same situation," he says. "The organizing strategy in Texas is that each of the most vulnerable communities has to organize itself. People are holding meetings at their neighbors' homes, at community centers and at churches." Immigrant leaders developed through the committees become spokespeople for their communities, visit Congress, tell their stories to the media and help to document cases of abuse.

Immigrant communities in Chicago took a different approach, trying to address local policy first. Chicago activists decided to show local officials just how much support for amnesty could be found in their own communities. "We started with a signature campaign to assess the level of support in key alderman districts," says Maricela García, the Guatemalan-born director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "The response was incredible. We collected over 70,000 signatures in 10 weeks."

She explains that Chicago's diverse immigrant communities - including undocumented Mexicans, Indians, Pakistanis and Poles - mobilized in droves behind the petition. Unmasking the stereotype that all undocumented are Latino or Asian, Chicago's sizable Polish community made a huge effort. "The Polish newspaper printed our petition. We got piles and piles of petitions on newsprint that Poles had cut out and collected," she recalls.

When the bill was introduced, it won broad support - except for the votes from two African American aldermen. They wanted to change language stating that the city was founded by immigrants to language acknowledging that, in fact, an early African explorer had first come to what is now Chicago.

Garcia immediately backed the changes. "We wanted to make sure that we had the support of the African American community and that they understood how key this was. If we just went on with majority vote at the expense of a minority group, it would have been expedient." In September 27, the City of Chicago voted unanimously to support a legalization program for immigrants.

Redefining the Terms
Immigrant communities are demanding a serious reconsideration of how legal status is determined, and even the language used to talk about it. The intensive organizing for legalization has given the immigrant rights movement a critical opportunity to define a different vision for an immigration policy framework.

Many want to avoid the compromises that emerged as part of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. "Some politicians want to exchange legalization for more border enforcement or raids," says Sung Kyu Yun of the New York City-based National Korean American Service and Education Consortium, which is mobilizing the Asian community around the issue. "We have to be careful and define our bottom lines."

Ninaj Raoul of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees in Brooklyn, New York, points to another critical trade-off that frustrated many immigrant-rights leaders in the waning days of the Clinton administration: the divide-and-conquer prioritization of different immigrant communities. "With recent organizing around bills, it was as if legislators were playing games, trying to make groups feel like their opportunities would be limited if they made coalitions with Haitians," she says. "They were saying, 'Just wait, next year, we'll do something for the Hondurans.'"

Similar tensions surfaced last year on proposals to increase the ceiling on temporary work visas under the H-1B (high-tech workers) and H-2A (agricultural workers) categories. Immigrants-rights organizations have often opposed job-based immigration (bracero programs), which exposes immigrant workers to exploitation. However, some groups initially tempered their opposition in hopes of exacting favorable provisions in another immigration-related bill-the Legal Immigration and Family Equity (LIFE) Act. However, in the final shaping of the LIFE Act at the end of 2000, many immigrants who had hoped for Clinton's support in reversing some harsh immigration reforms were left hung out to dry.

Katy Quan, a longtime Chinese labor leader in the Bay Area, says a narrow "amnesty" platform also may be divisive if it does not reflect the concerns of all immigrants. In Chinese immigrant communities, she asserts, the proportion of undocumented tends to be lower, and "a more immediate concern is expanding 'family reunification' for legal immigrants. These are critical issues for people who have struggled for legal status, and have been waiting 10 years to bring in a sister or a brother."

Quan found that many Chinese workers, while understanding the importance of legalization, are concerned that "an amnesty might encourage more undocumented to come in and result in a reduction of slots for legal immigrants." Quan sees a need for education in the Chinese community to combat fears that there is "some magic total" and to broaden an understanding of legalization as something that promotes family reunification.

The support of African American communities for immigrant rights is also key. Maricela García notes, "This issue needs to be defined as an issue about all workers' rights, about all people of color." At a huge legalization march held in Chicago last September, about 1,000 of the 10,000 participants were African American. A number of African American labor leaders spoke at the rally about the importance of a new legalization program, noting that employers exploit undocumented workers to keep everyone's wages low.

The legalization issue could be divisive if there seems to be limited room for compromise when it comes to jobs and rights for communities of color, both immigrant and non-immigrant. If some immigrant communities are seen as more deserving of rights and privileges than others, or if the issue of job displacement of African Americans is not tackled head-on, the issue could fracture potential alliances.

But Maricela García and other immigrant leaders believe that if the resounding call for legalization is successful, it will bring together a broad coalition that recognizes that any workplace or community is better off if people have legal status. She says, "At every step of our organizing work, we need to mainstream the issue of immigrants as a broader issue affecting others in society."

Sasha Khokha is communications director for the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), an alliance of grassroots immigrant-based organizations based in Oakland, California. NNIRR has launched a national legalization initiative to link the efforts of local groups and provide a forum for sharing strategy, addressing policy developments and creating education tools. More information is available online at www.nnirr.org. (Reprinted with permission, Colorlines, Summer 2001. www.colorlines.com.)

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