Here's why: for immigrants crimes are not just crimes. There are the criminal sanctions and procedures, but then there are the immigration consequences. For example, misdemeanor possession of marijuana in Oregon is something for which you get the equivalent of a speeding ticket. For immigration purposes, it's a felony.
The Brownback legislation you refer to with this notion about a "victory" was NEVER going to pass - never. If it had, local police would have been able to go into a plant or a field or a construction site and say "Hey you, Pedro, you are breaking immigration law. Come with us." All of a sudden there could have been widespread enforcement of immigration laws at workplaces across the country and that was NOT going to happen - not while Bush was in the White House.
The only desirable features of the Brownback approach, from American captital's standpoint, was that it would have essentially criminalized the practice of immigration law.
And speaking of the law, how exactly do you propose that illegal workers hire lawyers to get their back pay? With what money? How will they even know what to do?
The Left wants to preserve this fuzzy, silly notion about the "undocumented". Too many of us on the left lie to ourselves that the situation of having a legal underclass is acceptable, because we don't want to deal with the sadness and difficulty of the situation.
I've worked with and known far too many illegals to think that way. When illegals allow themselves to pretend that they are just like citizens, they set themselves up for heartbreak. You have to deal rationally with the system that is.
boddi
On 12/19/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/06, boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Come on, Yoshie, this is just not serious.
> >
> > Even before Hoffman, illegal immigrants were effectively at the
> > employer's mercy.
>
> It doesn't help undocumented workers for leftists to assert, as you
> do, that they don't have the rights that they _do_ have. Undocumented
> workers _are_ entitled to back wages for the hours they worked, and
> that's the law. Let's not spread a lie.
>
> Most workers, be they citizens or documented or undocumented workers,
> seldom know what their rights are, and leftists, especially left-wing
> lawyers, should make sure that people first of all become aware of and
> make use of all rights they do have.
>
> > After Hoffman, they clearly are. What avenues do they have? What
> > avenues do they pursue now? Almost none. It's just unreasonable to
> > think that the law protects illegal workers' pay. The practical
> > barriers are just too high.
>
> It's actually undocumented workers who won the only big working-class
> victory in recent history, for themselves and for native-born workers:
> stopping the US government from making a federal crime out of merely
> being "out of status."
>
> In comparison to undocumented workers and their allies, native-born
> workers have less class consciousness and are more passive.
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
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>