Illegal Immigrants: A View from the Barrio
Day, Mark
Illegal Immigrants A View from the Barrio MARK DAY Maria Hernandez was changing her baby's diapers when U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents arrested her at a deteriorating...
...The House Judiciary Committee approved the Eilberg bill in October...
...Harry Bernstein, labor reporter for the Los Angeles Times who broke the Bafiuelos story, also revealed that an illegal immigrant was working at the Western White House...
...Badillo noted that the news media have been responsible for advancing erroneous figures on the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States...
...The last I heard was that the baby was taken to the County Hospital with a serious case of pneumonia...
...Soon after the intensified raids began, churches, television stations, and community organizations were inundated with complaints alleging that the agents made unlawful arrests, broke up families, ignored the constitutional right of due process, brutalized and harassed brown-skinned people regardless of their status in this country, and created an atmosphere of terror—especially in the Chicano community...
...The opposition to the Rodino bill in the House was led by Representative Herman Badillo of New York and Representative Edward Roybal of California, both Democrats...
...This, he believes, would drastically reduce the problems caused by the present vulnerability of their status...
...Several immigrants told me they had married legal residents and had children born in the United States...
...The Mexican-American Labor Council of Los Angeles, headed by Trinidad Flores, also has attacked the Rodino bill...
...More than sixty-five per cent of these church-goers at St...
...He disagreed with claims that aliens take jobs from U.S...
...Church and social centers, especially in the Los Angeles area, were flooded with hardship cases...
...At a recent rally in New York City, Henry Foner, the president of the Fur, Leather & Machine Workers Union, AFL-CIO, protested the dragnet raids conducted there by the INS...
...Chavez referred directly to the detrimental effects of the Arnett law...
...The House passed the bill, almost a carbon copy of the Arnett law, in May 1973...
...Chicano activist Bert Corona, the director of the Center for Autonomous Social Action (CASA) of Los Angeles, an organization working for reforms in immigration law and practices, claims that the present labor certification regulations are designed to keep out foreign labor...
...When an attorney questioned INS officials about the incident, they told him that the child was born in the United States and was not under the jurisdiction of the Service...
...Government statistics show a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants deported each year...
...The UFW statement also opposed the bill "for encouraging discrimination against brown-skinned people and for breaking up families who had long standing roots in this country, and who, for the lack of a piece of paper [a visa], are subjected to embarrassing and burdensome practices and rules enforced by government bureaucrats unconcerned with the plight of poor people...
...One method of control has been periodic sweeps of city streets and factories by the INS...
...The band plays each Sunday at our church services...
...As yet no decision has been reached by the Federal court...
...As of now, some immigrants have to return to their country and wait more than two years before they can return...
...Joseph's in downtown Los Angeles are in this country illegally...
...Representatives Roybal and Henry Gonzalez, Texas Democrat, argue that the bill discriminates against Mexicans, cutting the present immigration quota from Mexico by one-half...
...Corona believes that many employers find this desirable, since they can pay the aliens lower wages and dispose of workers at whim merely by calling the immigration department—often just before payday...
...citizens, increase welfare costs, and create balance of payments deficits by sending money abroad...
...Other newspapers have published such figures without attempting to verify the facts...
...Maria, a Mexican citizen who had overstayed her visitor's visa in the United States, was hysterical when she arrived at the alien detention center in the basement of the New Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles...
...The concern of the California legislature led to the enactment of the Dixon Arnett law in November 1971...
...Another bill, sponsored by Representative Joshua Eilberg, Pennsylvania Democrat, stipulates that all immigrants will be allowed to change their status while remaining in the United States, a privilege which is now accorded only to Eastern Hemisphere immigrants...
...The real culprits, say the defenders of the immigrants, are the employers who seek to employ these workers—whatever the source—who will work at the cheapest possible pay rates...
...The boss asks the worker, tongue in cheek, if he is lawfully entitled to work...
...The majority are Mexicans, refugees attracted by a better standard of living in the United States...
...In 1972, of the 492,189 aliens arrested, more than eighty per cent were apprehended in the Southwestern states, some 94,000 in Southern California alone...
...He also wanted to avoid any damaging rift between rural and urban Chicanos, since his battle with the Teamsters was just beginning...
...Aliens, he said, take jobs that lawful U.S...
...The UFW leader said that the bill "would not help either urban or rural workers in their common struggle against unscrupulous employers...
...He was referring to stories such as the one that appeared in The Washington Post, November 21, 1971...
...Joseph's Catholic church in Los Angeles...
...Instead of the employers, it was the workers—both lawful and alien residents—who felt the brunt of the law...
...Kennedy agrees with the UFW position that the Rodino bill would not effectively punish the unscrupulous employer who hires aliens to exploit them...
...The lead sentence read: "Up to one million New Yorkers may not be New Yorkers at all . . . instead, they are aliens...
...that the system which gives preference to reuniting families, now applicable to the Eastern Hemisphere, be extended to all Western applicants...
...Besides Cesar Chavez, other labor leaders have disagreed with the rationale behind the Rodino bill...
...It's a crime to have brown skin in this town," one of the members of a Mexican mariachi band told me...
...Months before the law was to go into effect, employers began to fire anyone suspected of not having proper documentation...
...Yet, he points out, because the border is, in effect, open, foreign workers enter the country to work and are burdened by the stigma of illegality...
...Senator Edward Kennedy, a member of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, spoke sympathetically about the plight of the aliens on a television interview in Fresno, California, during last year's convention of Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers Union...
...According to the news story, an INS official claimed that there are more than 2.5 million illegal aliens in New York City, while Sol Marks, the local INS director, expressed doubts that there are even tens of thousands in the New York City metropolitan area...
...Representative Roybal has suggested several positive solutions to the alien dilemma...
...His major objection was that the bill should have had provisions directed against labor contractors who recruit aliens as strikebreakers...
...He is the author of "Forty Acres," a study of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement, and is currently writing a book on teen-age gangs in Los Angeles...
...The worker, however, is now in a more dependent position than before because his boss has done him another "favor...
...The law, fining employers for hiring illegal immigrants, was to have gone into effect in March 1972...
...Arnett listened carefully, but said that his law was the only way to handle the problems caused by the aliens...
...The illegal immigrant issue, described by a labor leader in Los Angeles as a dilemma surrounded by an enigma, is one of the most complex social problems in the United States today...
...They maintain that unique historical, economic, and social relationships between the two countries warrant this preference...
...Roybal and Gonzalez have supported an amendment to the Eilberg bill which provides for special preference for Mexican immigrants...
...National attention focused on the problem of the aliens in October 1971 when INS agents rounded up several of them at a food processing plant belonging to Ramona Bafiuelos, President Nixon's appointee as treasurer of the United States...
...It is unfortunate that we have not yet learned to overcome the nativistic mentality in our country which continues to regard the foreign born as economically threatening, unclean, and "un-American...
...His poor grasp of the English language led several employers to believe he was an illegal immigrant...
...It came as no surprise to me that aliens worked for either Ms...
...As a means of reducing the number of illegal immigrants, Roybal proposes that the Western Hemisphere ceiling for legal admissions to the United States—which is now 120,000 annually—be increased to 170,000 to equal total admissions permitted from the Eastern Hemisphere countries (including Europe and the Orient...
...It became a hotly debated civil rights issue, since it authorized employers to question the immigration status of predominantly brown-skinned people...
...Corona and a growing number of activists throughout the country disagree with the assertion that the aliens themselves are responsible for depressing wages and depriving local residents of low income jobs...
...In a meeting with the bill's sponsor, Assemblyman Dixon Arnett, workers complained that their employer, a large soup company, had demanded that all employes without documents put up a $400 cash bond in case of a fine...
...If the worker answers affirmatively, the employer has exercised his duty under the law...
...In some cases, Chicanos who were legal residents were turned away because of their skin color or their heavily accented English...
...Opponents of this bill argue that the measure limits annual immigration from any one country to 20,000 a year...
...comes to life with blaring trumpets and cheerful hymns at these masses...
...Matters worsened last June when the INS conducted a series of dragnet raids in Southern California to round up the illegal immigrants...
...Nixon...
...The congregation, whose membership is now almost totally Spanish-speaking, Mark Day is a parish priest at St...
...We still tend to hang labels on groups of people, then conclude that any means necessary can be used to get rid of them, including approaches that lessen our basic freedoms and make a mockery of the Constitution...
...Unfortunately, these suggested amendments were killed during the House debate last May...
...A growing number of legislators fear that the Federal bill will create the same injustices as the California law...
...Since they could not produce visas, their employers had laid them off...
...residents do not want...
...The simplest way for an employer to evade the law, we told Arnett, was by using a simple legalistic device...
...The bill, stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee, has strong support from many liberal legislators and much of the labor movement, though there is growing dissent within the unions on this issue...
...A class action suit on behalf of several plaintiffs was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to "insure that the law enforcement officers would follow their own [Federal] law in making arrests...
...Therefore, when the House of Representatives passed the Rodino bill, Chavez condemned it...
...On one occasion, a Puerto Rican worker asked me to write a letter for him in English, guaranteeing that he was from Puerto Rico and not from Mexico...
...The United Farm Workers have always had the problem of aliens being transported to the fields to break their strikes, especially in the Coachella and San Joaquin Valleys of California...
...The law was declared unconstitutional in February 1972 for two reasons: The field of immigration and naturalization is preempted by the Federal Government, and the act, with its criminal sanctions, was considered "too vague, indefinite, and uncertain...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents arrested her at a deteriorating East Los Angeles apartment house in February 1973...
...In a letter to Andrew J. Biemiller, the AFL-CIO's chief lobbyist in Washington, Flores said that the Rodino bill "does not serve the best interests of the Mexican-American community nor that of labor...
...Bafiuelos or Mr...
...Although farm labor leader Cesar Chavez never made a statement supporting the Arnett law, it is believed that he initially favored the measure...
...Other workers complained that their bosses fired them, rather than newer workers, since they enjoyed seniority, paid vacations, and other benefits...
...The young mother cried out desperately for her baby...
...They point to the shortages of workers in some industries such as garment manufacturing and add that local residents generally have a natural edge on the job market since they can speak English, supply references, and are familiar with local community resources...
...and that immigrants from both hemispheres be permitted, to legalize their status while remaining in the United States...
...they pay taxes, are consumers, and stay away from public assistance programs...
...982), introduced by Representative Peter Ro-dino, New Jersey Democrat...
...The Arnett law was followed by a Federal bill (H.R...
...Bert Corona of CASA has suggested that workers who are not here legally but have jobs as well as roots in the community should have their status legalized...
...The agents allowed her to recover the infant hours later, when he was found nearly suffocated in his excrement...
...It would follow that any legislation restricting aliens from the labor market would be beneficial to his organizing activities...
...Foner told the group, composed mainly of Latin Americans: "As long as unions allow themselves to be deluded into believing that the illegal immigrant is their enemy—so long will they be demobilized in the important and necessary fight against their real enemies—the big business interests, the profiteers, and their corrupt protectors in government...
...There are from 300,000 to 500,000 such workers in Southern California, occupying menial jobs in places like food packing plants, factories, and restaurants, or pruning rosebushes and trimming hedges on the grounds of most parks and suburban estates...
...Badillo, whose ancestry is Puerto Rican, said that the illegal immigrant "has become one of the most popular scapegoats for our bankrupt economic policies and soaring unemployment problems...
...But Chavez undoubtedly saw the suffering that the Arnett law, even in anticipation of its going into full effect, caused Chicanos and other Latins working in urban areas...
Vol. 38 • February 1974 • No. 2
