Immigration and Illegality

Last week I said I thought that what drags down wages in illegal immigration isn't the immigration but the illegality. Here's a story that would appear to support that:

Sonia Cano was happy to win thousands of dollars from the San Francisco taqueria that for two years had paid her less than the city minimum wage. But she may have lost far more when someone anonymously reported her and her husband to immigration authorities.

Cano and her husband, Carlos Barrancos, illegal immigrants from Mexico, were reported to federal authorities in November. Cano was eight months pregnant at the time and gave birth to their baby in San Francisco alone -- while Barrancos was in an Arizona immigration jail....

Cradling her 4-month-old son on Wednesday, Cano said she filed a complaint with the city's Office of Labor Standards Enforcement in June after she learned that her employer, Si Señor Taqueria, wasn't paying the city's minimum wage. Days later, the Financial District restaurant fired her, she said.

The city investigated her claim and concluded that Si Señor owed Cano and 13 other employees more than $22,000 in back wages, said Donna Levitt, who heads the labor enforcement office. She said Si Señor has paid the workers what they were owed.

Seville and Young Workers United, a nonprofit organization that organizes restaurant workers, helped Cano file complaints with the city and state over her firing and began negotiating with the restaurant.

Then, early one morning in December, immigration agents knocked on the couple's apartment door and arrested Barrancos.

First: 'anonymous' my ass. I think we all know who phoned in the tip.

Second: this illustrates vividly how 'illegal' workers have no bargaining power at all. Yes, the law said she was entitled to be paid minimum wage (in the first place), and to back wages (when that didn't happen); and yes, it actually worked out that way in this case. In the end, her employer was still able to screw her because she was arbitrarily defined as 'illegal'.

Nor is that unusual:

Many employers do use the threat of deportation against illegal immigrants who try to assert their rights in the workplace, said Katie Quan, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center. That led the AFL-CIO to change its policy on immigration in 2000 and support legalization for undocumented workers who are already in the United States, she added.

This is heartening news to those of us who remember the wrongheaded policies labor had on immigration back in the '80s. Because Quan is exactly right:

"If we allow a situation where certain workers are not entitled to the same rights as other workers, then we're essentially creating an underclass, a substandard tier of workers," Quan said. "This will only encourage employers to employ more workers who are undocumented ... . The standards and rights of everyone are eroded when there's an underclass created."

[That's all, folks]