Illegal Immigration Abets the Exploitation of Workers
From Marx to "Office Space"
By Andrew R. Arthur on August 16, 2019
In my last post, I discussed congressional complaints about an August 7 worksite-enforcement operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in which 680 aliens were arrested at seven agricultural processing plants in Mississippi. That operation is part of ongoing criminal investigations, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, including (according to ICE affidavits had anyone bothered to read them) investigations of some or all of the five employers who run those plants and/or their employees. In addition to the complaints I discussed previously, lawmakers critical of immigration enforcement have also asserted such operations have a "chilling effect" on workers seeking to protect their rights to a safe workplace. They have it exactly backwards: Illegal immigration creates conditions in which all employees are subject to exploitation, while worksite enforcement prevents such exploitation.
Specifically, on August 9, 2019, Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Chairman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) of that committee's Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) of the House Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan demanding information about that operation.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Illegal-Immigration-Abets-Exploitation-Workers
