8. 9. 10. no. 6. 1975. For a discussion of the change-over in labor supply, For a description of the problems encountered in organizing undoc- Sar Levitan and Richard S. Belous. More than Subsistence. January 14, 1980. " This elaborates the argument made by Michael Piore in "The Illegal Alien March/April 1978. [From the Los Angeles Times, September 1981] FBI PROBES IMMIGRATION AGENCY ON RIGHTS CHARGE (By Marita Hernandez) The FBI is investigating allegations that U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officers violated the civil rights of a Mexican-born photographer who is employed by a Los Angeles newspaper while he was trying to do his job. The investigation, it was learned Thursday, began after the Spanish-language newspaper, La Opinion, registered a complaint with the U.S. attorney's office this week, alleging that on two recent occasions immigration officers stopped photographer Octavio Gomez from taking pictures and asked for proof of his legal immigrant status without probable cause to suspect he was in this country illegally. The newspaper also filed a complaint Thursday on the matter with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Ignacio Lozano Jr., editor and publisher of La Opinion and former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador under the Ford administration, accused the immigration agency of "overt harassment" against Gomez, a Mexican alien resident. According to Lozano, Gomez, an employee of the newspaper for more than a year, had his first encounter with immigration officers on Aug. 20, while he was photographing a group of nuns near the Federal Courthouse downtown. The nuns were trying to stop the deportation of Salvadoran refugees by agency officers. Lozano also accused the agency of "retaliatory" action against the newspaper when, on Wednesday—the day after its complaint to the U.S. attorney's office-immigration officers apprehended two undocumented construction workers at the newspaper. The workers were not employees of the newspaper, but were hired by a contractor to do remodeling work on the building's exterior. "I don't consider it a coincidence," Lozano said. "We've been here 55 years and this is the first time that the INS has conducted a sweep in the vicinity.", Omer G. Sewell, agency deputy district director, Thursday refused to comment on Lozano's charges, other than to maintain that the apprehension of the two workers was "purely coincidental." Regarding the other charges involving Gomez, Sewell said: "I don't think it warrants much conversation. It's pretty routine." In refusing to comment on the issue, Sewell said his office had not been alerted by the U.S. attorney's office about the allegations. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney, however, said that immigration district director Michael Landon was contacted Wednesday about the matter. TURNED OVER TO FBI U.S. Atty. Andrea Ordin said Lozano's allegations were turned over to the FBI for preliminary investigation and a determination on whether the facts warrant further investigation. This is standard procedure in civil rights cases, she said. In cases in which civil rights violations are proven, remedial measures may include civil action, criminal prosecution or a recommendation that the agency in question take steps to correct its own violations, Ordin said. "Clearly, we are looking at the possibility of individual employees of INS having overstepped their bounds," Ordin said, "That's why one possibility would be for the agency itself to take remedial action." The FBI confirmed they were looking into the matter, but would make no further comment. During the Aug. 20 incident, Lozano said, an immigration officer placed his hand over Gomez' camera lense while he was trying to photograph the demonstration by the nuns. When Gomez pushed his hand away, three officers grabbed him and forced him toward a nearby agency van. They asked for identification and when Gomez offered his official press credentials, they asked that his citizenship and for documentation of his legal immigrant status, Lozano said. Gomez showed the officers his legal resident card, from which officers copied the serial number and, Lozano said "as a way of intimidation, they told him he was on limited status." Lozano also described the second incident. While driving to work on Aug. 28, Gomez spotted several immigration agency vans involved in a sweep of illegal aliens in Glendale, and he stopped to take photographs. After he identified himself as a press photographer, he was again asked to produce his legal immigrant card. The officers unsuccessfully tried to take the film out of his camera and placed it in the van, but Gomez retrieved it. Senator SIMPSON. There is a motion to table pending over on the Senate floor. It is about 10 minutes before that vote period will end. Before then I must go vote. Let us proceed now. I will be able to hear, I think, most of the next testimony. And then let us recess for 10 minutes so that I might personally hear the testimony of Ms. Cooper. So, please proceed. STATEMENT OF ARNOLDO S. TORRES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS (LULAC) Mr. TORRES. Let me just begin by reiterating what John has indicated. LULAC and Mr. Tony Bonilla, the national president, very much appreciate the fact that there is a great deal of flexibility in the approaches that are used by the subcommittee at your discretion as the Chair and that you have allowed the Hispanic organizations to come before you and testify. More importantly, we appreciate the fact that you have had an extremely open door policy with us even though we do not always agree. We have had a great deal of openness on the perspectives that we both espouse. And we do recognize the genuineness of your concerns and certainly do not point the finger at you and say that your insistence on employer sanctions and ID is racially motivated. I am Arnoldo Torres. I am the national executive director of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens. Our testimony indicates the size and distribution of our membership in this country. Basically, the opposition that we have to the employer sanctions program as proposed by the administration as well as in other leg islative initiatives has been virtually covered by John insofar as the discrimination factors. And the fact that with a declining budget and with an extremely and more importantly a declining emphasis on protecting the civil rights of people by this administration, we are concerned that regardless of how an employer sanctions program is designed and regardless of the concerns that you have continually indicated, there still will be a factor of discrimination involved. And how do we properly address that? We feel that under the present scheme of things there is an extremely relaxing attitude toward antidiscrimination statutes, and consequently poor enforcement of these laws. In view of this, employer sanctions will have some severe problems. The other point that we have heard throughout the day regards job displacement. However, if we look at Mr. Lawrence Fuchs' comments earlier today-and you have praised Mr. Fuchs for his background, and Senator DeConcini in fact said that he was the leading immigration expert-Mr. Fuchs argues that there is, in fact, no large-scale job displacement, that the crucial problem is the ill effects of a subsociety being created. Our question would then be. Will not sanctions increase this subsociety, making employment practices illegal and providing incentives to stay away from the legal channels? In other words, Mr. Fuchs himself has indicated that there isn't a large displacement factor, but we have heard from the AFL-CIO earlier in the panel and we have heard from Mr. Jack Otero today that there is an extreme problem with displacement. Second, we have heard from Ms. Meissner that there would be 75-percent compliance on good faith. I do not know what would lead anybody to believe that there is going to be good-faith compliance, because we have a number of labor laws on the books now and there does not appear to be an extreme high percentage of good-faith compliance there. Furthermore, the concern has been developed throughout these hearings today that there is a high magnitude of displacement. We see, and we have heard Mr. Oswald from the AFL-CIO say, that 60 percent, over 60 percent, of undocumented workers earn more than the minimum wage. Unfortunately, Mr. Oswald perhaps did not mean to, but he left out the important fact that this was one study of a targeted piece of work that did not reflect a nationwide assessment and certainly was not indicative of the overall situation in the country. And I am sure that if he were given the opportunity to clarify his statement, I am sure that he would, because those are the facts. Let us look at the hirings, the reasons why American employers hire undocumented workers. Our contention is simply that for some reason or the other there is this obsession with cheap labor primarily of Latin American stock, good Latin American labor. But primarily, U.S. employers hire undocumented workers because they can and do violate U.S. labor laws. In an article that appeared-and we included it in our testimony-in Time magazine of September 7, there is a quote that states, "In the restaurant business California State investigators have inspected 2,835 Los Angeles restaurants and found that 65 percent of them were breaking wage laws." That to us would indicate that they are also hiring undocumented workers. And I think that the article goes on to substantiate that. There is a very direct correlation between the violation of labor laws and the hiring of undocumented workers, and this is why in the alternative approach we have taken solely to the employer sanction proposal, we advocate a very strong and vigorous enforcement of these labor laws. Also, we would be very interested in, increasing the penalties associated with the number of violations that an employer has of the National Labor Relations Act and many of the laws Mr. Otero has previously mentioned. I am going to leave the rest for later. I have the red light, and you have to go. I hope we can get into a good question-and-answer session. But thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Mr. Torres follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF ARNOLDO S. TORRES GOOD AFTERNOON, MR, CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE U.S. SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEE POLICY. MY NAME IS ARNOLDO S. TORRES, I AM THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR THE LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS (LULAC). LULAC IS THIS NATION'S OLDEST AND LARGEST HISPANIC CIVIL RIGHTS AND SERVICE ORGANIZATION WITH A MEMBERSHIP OF OVER 100,000 IN 44 STATES OF THE UNION. SINCE THE INITIAL LEGISLATIVE DISCUSSIONS BEGINNING IN 1970 ON U.S. IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEE POLICY, LULAC HAS BEEN EXTREMELY CONCERNED WITH THE PHILOSOPHICAL DIRECTION BEING TAKEN IN CONGRESS AND SOCIETY IN GENERAL. WE HAVE OBSERVED, STUDIED, EXPERIENCED AND FELT THE EVER GROWING ANIMOSITY TOWARDS NEW IMMIGRANT FLOWS LEGAL AS WELL AS ILLEGAL. OVER THIS TIME WE HAVE WITNESSED THE INABILITY OF CONGRESS TO SERIOUSLY REFORM, AND IMPROVE THE OPERATIONS OF THE IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT AND THE IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE (INS). DESPITE A FAVORABLE ENVIRONMENT AND AVAILABLE FINANCIAL RESOURCES TO INITIATE POSITIVE CHANGES IN THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM WE FOUND A DECADE OF INEPTITUDE, CONFUSION, AND COMPLEXITIES WHICH HAVE BROUGHT US TO TODAY, TO THESE AND OTHER HEARINGS WHICH CONGRESS WILL BE CONDUCTING. IN ADDITION, THE HISPANIC COMMUNITY FINDS ITSELF SINCE THE MID-1970'S TO THE PRESENT, IN A SOCIETY WHICH BLAMES US FOR EMPLOYMEN ECONOMIC STAGNATION AND MOST THREATENING ANTI-AMERICAN SENTIMENTS. WE FIND THAT THE GENERAL PUBLIC VIEWS THE FLOWS OF UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS, THE CUBAN REFUGEES, AS PRESENTING SERIOUS ECONOMIC AND SECURITY THREATS TO THIS COUNTRY. CONSEQUENTLY, WE OFTEN TIMES ARE MADE TO FEEL THAT WE ARE THE REASONS FOR THE PROBLEMS FACING THIS COUNTRY. ARTICLES, COMMENTARIES, THE MEDIA AND PUBLIC OFFICIALS OVERALL APPEAR TO HAVE CONSTRUCTED AN IMAGE OF UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS AS ATTILA OF THE HUN STREAMING ACROSS THE BORDERS OF THIS COUNTRY IN A CONSPIRACY TO RAPE, PILLAGE, PLUNDER AND DESTROY THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE. THIS IMAGE IS CONSTANTLY FED BY PUBLIC OFFICIALS CLAIMING THAT AMERICAN VALUES ARE THREATENED BY NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLE. THIS HAS EVOLVED INTO THE ANTIBICULTURAL/BILINGUALISM MENTALITY. NOT ONLY ARE THESE PUBLIC |