Vol. 80/No. 26 July 18, 2016
Obama executive order or not, immigrant workers face fight
At a press conference after the ruling, Obama said he issued the November 2014 executive order because he “was left with little choice” in his goal of making “our immigration system smarter, fairer, and more just” after he was unable to get immigration legislation passed by Congress.
“I have pushed to the limits of my executive authority,” Obama said, washing his hands of any further attempt to regularize the status of immigrant workers.
The 4-4 tie by the U.S. Supreme Court left in place a district court ruling barring the government from implementing so-called deferred action for parents. A related program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, continues. Under this program 730,000 immigrants who came to the U.S. as children have received two-year renewable work permits.
While Obama portrays himself as a friend of immigrants, he has continued the policies of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before him. At the June 23 press conference Obama boasted that since he took office “we’ve deployed more border agents and technology to our southern border than ever before.” Since 1995 the number of border patrol agents have gone from 5,000 to 20,000. Much of the border with Mexico is lined with fences or under surveillance from drones and scanners.
It was the Bush administration that ended factory raids; the last major raid was in Postville, Iowa, in mid-2008. More and more raids had been met by protests, with significant participation by Black, Caucasian and other U.S.-born workers. During many factory raids, these workers helped their undocumented co-workers escape.
This was a consequence of the massive protests by mostly Mexican immigrant workers that exploded with a nationwide strike of more than 2 million on May 1, 2006, and that continued for several years, winning the respect of their fellow workers.
The U.S. government used other methods to regulate the flow of immigrant labor, which it needs to push down the value of labor power.
The E-Verify program, which checks the immigration status of potential hires, has skyrocketed from about 10,000 workplaces a decade ago to 600,000 today, making it harder for workers without papers to get jobs. Some 1,400 bosses join E-Verify every week. Washington has also expanded the use of immigration “audits.”
Under Bush and then Obama, the immigration police shifted its main method of deportation from so-called voluntary departures to “removals,” meaning anyone deported faces felony charges and jail time if they return to the U.S. Instead of factory raids, immigration cops targeted alleged “criminal aliens” in homes or on the street, often catching workers whose only crime was living in the U.S. without legal documents.
The number of undocumented workers peaked at 12.2 million in 2007. Beginning from 2007-2009, the economic crisis made coming to the U.S. less attractive. As a result, combined with increased enforcement measures, the numbers dropped to less than 11 million today. The number of deportations last year was the lowest since 1971.
An exception was a sharp increase in the number of children and families fleeing gang violence and depression conditions in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in 2014. In a practical demonstration of what Obama means by a “fairer” immigration policy, his administration put in place what he called “a sustained border security surge” to turn them back at the U.S.-Mexico border or lock them up indefinitely upon arrival.
Department of Homeland Security officials — who oversee the immigration cops — have said overturning Obama’s executive order will not change any of their priorities or make deportations of “noncriminal” immigrants a priority.
Related articles:
No deportations! Legalize immigrants!
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