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Maybe you weren’t expecting a nicetime on immigration today, but we have one anyway! On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced new protections for undocumented immigrants who report violations of labor rights, giving the government an extra tool to use in cracking down on companies that exploit workers. Owners and managers tend to assume they can get away with cheating undocumented workers, threatening to call La Migra if workers complain or simply assuming that undocumented workers would never risk being deported if they report their employer.
Under the new policy, DHS will streamline its processes for providing up to two years of protection for undocumented workers who report violations of worker rights, as well as a permit to legally seek work. That policy has always been an option, DHS says, but it will now be made easier, with a centralized portal to make such reports and request deferred action (in English or Spanish). It’s an incentive for people to come forward and cooperate with labor investigations, and obviously a useful tool for investigators, too.
As DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas explained in a statement,
Unscrupulous employers who prey on the vulnerability of noncitizen workers harm all workers and disadvantage businesses who play by the rules. […] We will hold these predatory actors accountable by encouraging all workers to assert their rights, report violations they have suffered or observed, and cooperate in labor standards investigations. Through these efforts, and with our labor agency partners, we will effectively protect the American labor market, the conditions of the American worksite, and the dignity of the workers who power our economy.”
It’s a win-win-win: Whistleblowers get protection for reporting exploitation, the government gets witnesses who’ll help with investigations, and workers will be better protected from employers who use undocumented workers to drive down wages and protections for all workers.
Here’s an ABC News interview with Mayorkas, who emphasizes that this will be good for everyone except the “exploitative employers” who take advantage of undocumented laborers and drive down pay and working conditions. As Mayorkas notes, “Employers who play by the rules are disadvantaged by those who don’t.”
OK, so yes, add a fourth “win,” for companies that don’t exploit their workers but can be at a competitive disadvantage to the cheaters.
As Chris Newman, general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told the Washington Post (gift link), “It removes the pernicious incentive for predatory employers to hire undocumented immigrants with the intent to abuse them.”
Surprisingly, notes WaPo’s Greg Sargent, the Usual GOP Suspects haven’t gone ballistic over the semi-new policy, even if it has some elements that seem ripe for MAGA freakouts. It would “allow some migrants here unlawfully to remain in the U.S.,” after all, and that would be based on “prosecutorial discretion” instead of automatically deporting everyone here without papers, which isn’t possible anyway but which no MAGAturd can ever admit.
Sargent suggests that the relative quiet may have something to do with what the policy actually does: Solidarity.
This policy attempts to align the interests of undocumented workers with those of native-born workers. For some on the right, casting those interests as irrevocably in conflict has been essential to their project. This zero-sum agitprop packages the nativist impulse to drasticallylimit immigration as all about protecting the American worker.
But if Republicans make a big stink about this policy, they might have to acknowledge that undocumented workers aren’t just showing up and shoving MAGA dudes out of jobs. Rather, it’s a matter of employers cheating American workers for the sake of cheap labor.
We aren’t sure how well Sargent’s explanation holds up, though. He notes that Republicans already lie wildly about their objections to letting the IRS go after rich tax cheats, by claiming the agency will go after ordinary taxpayers or small businesses, adding that
this immigration move could maneuver Republicans into defending exploitative employers (also while pretending not to). It will be hard for Republicans to attack this policy without lying about it or revealing deeply unpopular priorities.
To which most MAGA Republicans would likely start at him blankly and say, “Yeah, so? We’ve been lying about vaccines, abortion, COVID, global warming, trans kids, US history, the significance of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the debt limit, and Donald Trump’s everything. You think we’d be dissuaded by the challenge of being hypocritical about immigration policy? We do that six times before breakfast!”
We are kidding, of course. They would point at Greg Sargent like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and scream, AMNESTY!!!!
For evidence, see the YouTube comments in response to Mayorkas explaining why this is good for American workers. The hell with worker rights, those people need to be deported, because THE LAW. What about labor law? Nobody cares, commie! Immigration law is all that matters, and the CHUDitariat is happy to be ripped off by employers if only those horrible illegals can be deported or shot.
We think most Republicans in Congress have simply been too busy this last week with their plans to hold hearings on why Joe Biden wants to send Drag Queens to take away your gas stoves so he can burn his classified files. And now Sargent has gone and invited them to pile on this perfectly sane and smart immigration policy. Thanks a lot, Greg.
[WaPo (gift link) / DHS announcement / DHS labor enforcement hub (y en español)]
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