Groups Call for Balance in Labor, Immigration Laws

Workplace immigration raids during the Bush administration interfered with ongoing labor investigations and allowed employers to exploit workers who complained about conditions on the job, labor groups said in a report released Tuesday.

The stepped-up immigration enforcement came at the expense of rigorous enforcement of labor protections that are guaranteed to all workers regardless of immigration status, the groups said.

"The single-minded focus on immigration enforcement without regard to violations of workplace laws has enabled employers with rampant labor and employment violations to profit by employing workers who are terrified to complain," said the authors of the report by the AFL-CIO, National Employment Law Project and American Rights at Work Education Fund.

The groups called on the Obama administration to balance immigration and labor law enforcement.

They recommend a return to the type of agreement forged in 1998 between the Labor Department and the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service. It established rules for cooperation but prohibited immigration enforcement from trumping labor law enforcement to ensure immigrant employees would not fear complaining about problem employers.

"You can do both. You can enforce immigration laws and you can protect the workers who are being victimized by unscrupulous employers," said Julie Martinez Ortega, American Rights at Work research director.

Martinez acknowledged that the Obama administration has ended high-profile raids. Homeland Security Department spokesman Matt Chandler said work site enforcement policy distributed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in April emphasizes targeting immigrants who have committed crimes and focuses on employers who knowingly hire people who cannot legally work in the country to "target the root cause of illegal immigration."

Among the disruptive enforcement actions highlighted by the labor groups: