AILA proudly welcomes this weblog put up from Range, Fairness, and Inclusion Committee Legislation Pupil Scholarship recipient Taylor Flores, a part of a sequence meant to spotlight the vital methods during which range, fairness, and inclusion inform immigration regulation and coverage. Extra details about AILA’s DEI Committee and its important work is available on AILA’s website
Preliminary Deliberate Exclusion of Agricultural Employees from Protections
Varied news outlets and workers’ rights groups argue racial discrimination focused at home work and agriculture emerged with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (“FLSA”). Although the FLSA is praised for shielding employees by creating the federal minimal wage, the standardized workweek, and additional time pay as we all know it as we speak, it explicitly excluded home and agricultural employees from receiving additional time pay safety. Since domestic and agricultural workers at this time were largely people of color, they have been unsparingly excluded from these momentous protections.
Financial Dependency on Undocumented Labor and Continued Lack of Protections
At the moment, about 86% of agricultural workers in the USA are immigrants with an estimated 45% of all agricultural employees being undocumented. Agriculture contributed over $1.2 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product in 2021, together with greater than $164 billion from farms alone. With out undocumented labor, agricultural output would plummet an estimated $30 to $60 billion with lasting ripple results on our economic system, equivalent to a rise in meals costs and total loss in home agricultural manufacturing. Be aware this solely highlights agricultural loss and doesn’t account for financial losses with out undocumented labor in home work, garment work, and development and landscaping, amongst others.
Extra importantly, undocumented workers are at greater risk for hazardous work conditions, employer retaliation, low wages or wage violations, and office infractions along with limited access employer-provided health coverage. Undocumented immigrants don’t report their employers for these violations out of concern of deportation or loss of work. For a rustic that has traditionally condemned and criminalized undocumented migration, it isn’t a mere coincidence that the U.S. economic system depends closely on the fruits of undocumented labor whereas offering minimal safety towards labor violations. Immigrant employees deserve equal protections no matter their immigration standing.
Motion within the Biden-Harris Administration Immigration Reform: Deferred Motion
To deal with this challenge, the Biden-Harris Administration recently enacted a policy to extend protections for sure noncitizens who witness or expertise employer labor violations. These employees can now submit labor and employment agency-related requests for deferred motion, which is “a discretionary determination to defer removal of an individual as an act of prosecutorial discretion.” This new policy additionally streamlines the Division of Homeland Safety’s (DHS’s) technique of contemplating deferred motion by making a single consumption level for these requests to “help labor company investigative and enforcement efforts.” These requests from “noncitizens who’re in elimination proceedings or have a last order of elimination” will probably be forwarded from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Providers (USCIS) to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for last dedication on a case-by-case foundation. The coverage is anticipated to “defend[] noncitizen employees from threats of immigration-related retaliation from [] exploitive employers.”
Coverage and Platform Shortcomings
Many human and employees’ rights teams, such because the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Economic Policy Institute, think about this coverage as an unprecedented victory for undocumented employees and the labor motion and for permitting employees to reclaim their autonomy by not being afraid to report employer violations. Nonetheless, whereas this new coverage is a exceptional step ahead for rising protections for noncitizen employees, there may be trigger for concern about ICE’s function within the course of. Implicit biases are equal or greater in the immigration system in comparison with the felony system, which is basically composed of racial profiling (ICE notably). These biases have an effect on the federal government’s train of prosecutorial discretion and which immigrants are positioned into elimination proceedings and deported. If prosecutorial discretion within the immigration system already suffers from implicit biases, how can noncitizens in elimination proceedings or beneath order of elimination place their belief in ICE to have last dedication to resolve their deferred motion requests impartially beneath this new coverage?
Moreover, how can noncitizens anticipate the Biden-Harris Administration to meaningfully oversee ICE and its last determinations for deferred motion? The administration not too long ago handed new border measures in an effort to make the southern border safer. Whereas the insurance policies create new pathways for short-term work authorization for sure immigrants, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans who enter or try and enter the U.S. with out prior authorization are summarily expelled to Mexico. Although asylum purposes are presupposed to be accepted “regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status,” President Biden informed Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans to “[s]tay where you are and apply legally from there.” This doesn’t sound just like the president whose immigration platform pledged to “welcome immigrants in our communities.”
Have a good time the Small Victories
Although the deferred motion coverage for labor and employment agency-related requests has room for enchancment, the importance of this new coverage for noncitizen employees is plain. For now, we should take a second to acknowledge and have a good time this historic win within the labor motion. Hopefully, this coverage is simply the start in increasing authorized and everlasting protections for noncitizen employees.