Despite considerable talk of an "immigration crisis," studies show that undocumented immigrants are net contributors to the economy, especially in California. In fact, employers have used immigration laws intended to protect most workers as a way to stop the undocumented from organizing or even receiving their legally mandated minimum benefits. PNS associate editor David Bacon writes widely on immigrant and labor issues.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- The dirty secret about undocumented workers is that they contribute a lot more to the economy than they get out of it.

A recent UCLA study finds that these workers are responsible for approximately 7 percent of the goods and services produced in California each year. This comes to about $45,000 per person -- including children and those too old or ill to work.

As almost all these workers receive wages near the legal minimum -- $5.75 per hour, less than $12,000 a year -- it is clear that it is possible to make large profits on immigrant labor..

This is the real immigration crisis. The problem is not too many immigrants. It is a sweatshop crisis, a return to workplace conditions common a century ago. Immigration law is not directed at eradicating these conditions. Instead a policy of raids and employer sanctions actively undermines immigrant workers' ability to fight for better pay and treatment.

Any worker who seeks to organize a union risks retaliation, of course, but immigrant workers face a special threat as employers can and do use immigration law, often with the cooperation of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, to stop them.

A report issued last month by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights details case after case in which immigration laws have been enforced to deny workplace rights:

In Washington state, the Stemilt Fruit Company threatened workers with raids from the Immigration and Naturalization (INS) if they voted to be represented by the Teamsters Union -- and the Teamsters lost. In San Leandro, California, the Mediacopy factory cooperated with the INS before a union election. In all, 99 people were picked up for deportation. In the same city this spring, an INS document check led to the deportation of eight workers involved in a wildcat work stoppage over safety at Waste Management, Inc.

Last year, a federal judge in New York ruled that an employer acted legally when it called the INS on its own employees during an organizing drive. Ten workers were arrested, including an active member of the union committee.

Employer sanctions set up a process in which employers are required to request documents from workers to verify their legal right to reside in the United States. In practice, employers increasingly demand verifying documents as a tactic to stop organizing. This effectively undermines federal prohibitions against terminating workers for union activity, and subverts the National Labor Relations Act, which says all employees, regardless of status, have union rights.

Federal law also says all workers are entitled to minimum wage and overtime, regardless of immigration status. But employer sanctions prevent enforcement of that law as well. Under a memorandum of understanding signed in 1992, the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) must turn over to the INS the names of undocumented workers who call them over wage and hour violations.

A Department of Labor survey shows that less than 40 percent of licensed garment factories in Southern California pay federally-mandated minimum wages and overtime. In Los Angeles the INS initiated a series of raids against sweatshop workers, "Operation Buttonhole," based on information from DoL inspectors. Across the country, at the Launderall plant on Staten Island, the INS conducted a raid after employees earning $300 for a 72-80 hour week called in DoL inspectors this fall.

In September, the Yale Law School Workers Rights Project and the American Civil Liberties Union filed charges under NAFTA's labor side agreement against the DoL/INS memorandum of understanding. "The Clinton policy amounts to a gag order on immigrant workers," explained Shayne Stevenson, student director of the Yale group. "If no one can complain about slave wages, sweatshop owners have a green light to ignore minimum wage and overtime laws."

At the same time, the INS has great latitude. This spring in Georgia, the local district director suspended raids entirely at the request of onion growers until their crop had been harvested. Meanwhile, a new INS program is proposing massive immigration raids in midwest meatpacking plants. In an industry in which wages have fallen drastically as unions have been weakened, this program will make it even harder for workers and unions to organize.

When workers are afraid to assert their rights, wages drop. According to UCLA professor Goetz Wolff, the average hourly wage of California garment workers fell from $6.37 in 1988, when employer sanctions became part of federal law, to $5.62 in 1993.

In California, the state labor federation, the Service Employees International Union, UNITE (the garment workers' union), and the United Electrical Workers, have called for the repeal of employer sanctions. As AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka says, "we are all illegals. No matter how many years we've been here, in the eyes of Wall St. we're still all immigrants from Europe or Mexico, on our knees, digging in the dirt."