Much of the debate about undocumented workers (illegal immigrants) seems to blame only the immigrants for the problem. But in many cases it is the employers who are to blame. Why? They want cheap, docile labor.
In case after case, employers deliberately hire - and even actively recruit - undocumented immigrants, then use the threat of deportation to force the immigrants to accept unsafe working conditions, lower than minimum-wage pay, and lack of basic protections like worker's compensation for on-the-job injuries. They also retaliate against workers who protest these conditions or attempt to form unions, confident that this otherwise illegal behavior is OK as long as the workers are undocumented. Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has aptly described the state of undocumented workers today as "a kind of slavery."
Employers have long been able to use the threat of deportation to keep undocumented workers in line, of course. Although technically, employers face sanctions for hiring people without work authorization, gaping loopholes make it easy to claim ignorance of a worker's immigration status.
However, exploitative employers received a major boost from the Supreme Court in 2002. In Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB, 535 U.S. 137 (2002), the Court held by a 5-4 majority, that workers illegally fired for union activity were not entitled to back pay if they were undocumented.
As the National Employment Law Project has documented, many employers have used the Hoffman precedent to argue that undocumented workers have no labor rights at all. So far, many courts have refused to accept this argument, although some have adopted it.
Anti-immigrant groups are loud in their rejection of any amnesty for undocumented workers. They say that it would "reward illegal behavior." Yet the policies they favor reward illegal behavior on a much larger scale: the illegal behavior of exploitative employers.
Employers that exploit undocumented workers face little or no legal punishment for their behavior. Through denying undocumented workers basic legal rights, they cut costs far below what a law-abiding employer can do. Soon law-abiding employers will be driven out of the market, unable to compete, or they'll stop abiding by the law. This in turn hurts American workers and legal immigrants who would be employed by these companies.
This race to the bottom, if unchecked, will ultimately result in a two-tier society whose economic prosperity is built on the labor of those without rights. It is indeed "a kind of slavery."
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