In Mississippi, Work Is Now a Felony for Undocumented Immigrants
By David Bacon
Sunday 20 April 2008
Jackson, MS - On March 17, Mississippi Governor Hayley Barbour
signed into law the farthest-reaching employer sanctions law of any on the books
in the U.S. Employer sanctions is a shorthand name for laws that prohibit employers
from hiring immigrants who don't have legal immigration status in the
U.S. That provision was part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed
by Congress in 1986, which for the first time in U.S. history required employers
to verify the immigration status of employees.
The Mississippi bill, SB 2988, requires employers to use an electronic system
to verify immigration status, called E-Verify. That system has only recently
been developed by the Department of Homeland Security, and by the department's
own admission, is not a complete record. Its accuracy is unknown, but by comparison,
the Social Security database of U.S. workers, compiled since the 1930s, contains
millions of errors.
The Mississippi bill goes much further, however. Employers are absolved from
any liability for hiring undocumented workers so long as they use the E-Verify
system. But it will become a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job.
Anyone caught "shall be subject to imprisonment in the custody of the
Department of Corrections for not less than one (1) year nor more than five
(5) years, a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($1000) nor more than
ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or both." Anyone charged with the crime
of working without papers will not be eligible for bail. The law is set to become
effective for large employers on July 1.
In the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, University of Mississippi journalism professor
Joe Atkins called the law "a new xenophobia ... that threatens once again
to lock down the state's borders and resurrect the 'closed society'
that once made it the shame of the nation." According to the Mississippi
Immigrant Rights Alliance, the bill got the support of many Democratic state
legislators because party leaders "wanted the house to bring out at least
one bill dealing with immigration to relieve the political pressure being put
on members (i.e. white Democrats), by right-wing forces in their districts.
Many Black Caucus members were persuaded to go along. Unfortunately the bill
they brought out was the worst of the six the Mississippi Senate passed."
Passage of the bill was a setback to the political strategy that has shown
the most promise of changing the old conservative power structure in the state,
the "closed society" described by Professor Atkins. That strategy,
building over the last several years, has relied on creating an electoral base
of African Americans, immigrants and unions. The new employer sanctions law,
according to supporters of that strategy, is intended to drive immigrants out
of the state by making it impossible for them to find work.
In Mississippi African American political leaders, and immigrant and labor
organizers have cooperated in organizing one of the country's most active
immigrant rights coalitions - the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance.
They see hope for political transformation in the demographic changes sweeping
the south. Beginning before World War 2, Mississippi, like most southern states,
began to lose its Black population. Out-migration reached its peak in the 60s,
when 66,614 African Americans left between 1965 and 1970, while civil rights
activists were murdered, hosed and went to jail. But in the following decades,
Midwest industrial jobs began to vanish overseas, the cost of living in northern
cities skyrocketed, and the flow began to reverse.
From 1995 to 2000, the state capital, Jackson, gained 3600 Black residents.
In the 2000 census, African Americans made up over 36% of Mississippi's
2.8 million residents - no doubt more today. And while immigrants were
statistically insignificant two decades ago, today they're over 4.5% of
the total, according to news reports. "Immigrants are always undercounted,
but I think they're now about 130,000, and they'll be 10% of the
population ten years from now," predicts MIRA Director Bill Chandler.
"We have the chance here to avoid the rivalry that plagues Los Angeles,
and build real power," says Chandler. Erik Fleming, a MIRA staff member
and former state legislator who recently filed for the Democratic nomination
for the Senate seat held by Thad Cochrane, believes "we can stop Mississippi
from making the same mistakes others have made."
The same calculus can apply across the South, which is now the entry point
for a third of all new immigrants to the U.S. Four decades ago, President Richard
Nixon brought its white power structure, threatened by civil rights, into the
Republican Party. President Ronald Reagan celebrated that achievement at the
Confederate monument at Georgia's Stone Mountain. MIRA-type alliances
could transform the region, and change the politics of the country as a whole.
SB 2988 is not only intended to stir anti-immigrant sentiment, but to reverse
that demographic change and the political transformation it might make possible.
MIRA is the fruit of strategic thinking among a diverse group that reaches
from African American workers' centers on catfish farms and immigrant
union organizers in chicken plants to guest workers and contract laborers on
the Gulf Coast, and ultimately, into the halls of the state legislature in Jackson.
Activists look back to changes that started when Mississippi passed a law permitting
casino development in 1991, bringing the first immigrant construction workers
from Florida. Employers in gaming then began to use contractors to supply their
growing labor needs. Guest workers, eventually numbering in the thousands, were
brought under the H2-B program to fill many of the jobs development created.
Through the 90s more immigrants arrived looking for work. Some guest workers
overstayed their visas, while husbands brought wives, cousins and friends from
home. Mexicans and Central Americans joined South and Southeast Asians, and
began traveling north through the state, getting jobs in rural poultry plants.
There they met African Americans, many of whom had fought hard campaigns to
organize unions for chicken and catfish workers over the preceding decade.
It was not easy for newcomers to fit in. Their union representatives didn't
speak their languages. When workers got pulled over by state troopers they found
themselves, not only cited for lacking drivers' licenses, but also often
handed over to the Border Patrol. Sometimes their children weren't even
allowed to enroll in school.
In the fall of 2000, labor, church and civil rights activists formed an impromptu
coalition, and went to the legislature. At their heart was the core of activists
who'd organized Mississippi's state workers, and a growing caucus
of Black legislators sympathetic to labor. Jim Evans, a former organizer for
the National Football League Players Association, helped lead the group on the
House side, while Senator Alice Harden, who'd led a state teachers'
strike in 1986, organized the vote in the Senate. "We decided that the
place to start was trying to get a bill passed allowing everyone to get drivers'
licenses, regardless of who they were or where they came from," Evans
remembers.
Harden's efforts bore fruit when the drivers' license bill passed
the Senate unanimously in 2001. "But they saw us coming in the House,
and killed it," Chandler says. Nevertheless, the close fight convinced
them that a coalition supporting immigrant rights had a wide potential base
of support, and could help change the state's political landscape. In
a meeting that November, the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance was born.
To build a grassroots base, MIRA volunteers went into chicken plants to help
recruit newly-arrived immigrants into unions. In the casinos, MIRA volunteers
worked with UNITE HERE organizers. In Jackson, the coalition got 6 bills passed
the following year, stopping schools from requiring Social Security numbers
from immigrant parents, and winning in-state tuition for any student who'd
spent four years in a Mississippi high school.
Then Katrina hit the Gulf. MIRA fought evictions and the cases of workers cheated
by employers, and eventually recovered over a million dollars. MIRA organizer
Vicky Cintra and other activists participated in several celebrated cases defending
guest workers, especially in the Signal International shipyard in Pascagoula.
"There's still a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment here," Cintra
says, "but when people give the police their MIRA ID card they get treated
with more respect, because they know their rights and have some support."
Laborers Union organizer Frank Curiel says, "In Kentucky, outside of Louisville,
Latinos are afraid to go out into the street. In Mississippi it's different."
Not always that different, however. In Laurel and many other Mississippi towns
police still set up roadblocks to trap immigrants without licenses. "They
take us away in handcuffs and we have to pay over $1000 to get out of jail and
get our cars back," according to chicken plant worker Elisa Reyes. And
the way the state's Council of Conservative Citizens demonizes immigrants
is reminiscent of the language of its predecessor - the White Citizens
Councils: "The CofCC Not only fights for European rights, but also for
Confederate Heritage, fights against illegal immigration, Fights against gun
control, fights against abortion, fights against gay rights etc. SO JOIN UP!!!"
its website urges.
In 2007 the Republican machine introduced twenty-one anti-immigrant bills into
the state legislature, including ones to impose state penalties for hiring undocumented
workers and English-only requirements on state license and benefit applicants,
to prohibit undocumented students at state universities, and to require local
police to check immigration status. MIRA defeated all of them. "The Black
Caucus stood behind us every time," Evans says proudly. There are no immigrant
or Latino legislators. Without the Caucus all 21 bills would have passed in
2007, and 19 similar bills in 2006.
The 2008 legislative session was different, however. Chandler describes three
factions in the party - the Black Caucus at one end, white conservatives
hanging on at the other, and "liberals who will do whatever they have
to do to get elected" in the middle. After some Democratic candidates
campaigned in 2007 on an anti-immigrant platform, MIRA wrote a letter in protest
to Howard Dean, national chair of the Democratic Party. Those tactics, it said,
were undermining the only strategy capable of changing the state's politics.
"The attacks on Latinos, initiated by Republican Phil Bryant a year and
a half ago, and joined by other Republicans, are now being echoed by Democrats
like John Arthur Eaves and Jamie Franks," the letter said. State party
leaders who "would go along to be accepted, rather than show the courage
necessary for positive change... are peddling racist lies against immigrants
that violate the core of the party's progressive agenda."
Anti-immigrant campaigning by Democrats was unsuccessful. Conservative Republican
Hayley Barbour was returned to the governor's mansion and Phil Bryant
was elected lieutenant governor. And in the legislative session that followed,
some Democrats began to buckle under pressure from vocal rightwing groups, including
the Klan.
During the 2007 elections the Ku Klux Klan held a rally of 500 people in front
of the Lee County court house in Tupelo, wearing white hoods and robes, and
carrying signs saying, "Stop the Latino Invasion." Their presence
was so intimidating that Ricky Cummings, a generally progressive Democrat running
for re-election to the State House of Representatives, voted for some of the
anti-immigrant bills in the legislature. When MIRA leaders challenged him, he
told them that Klan-generated calls had "worn out his cell phone."
The Klan's website says "it's time to declare war on these
illegal Mexicans ... The racial war is among us, will you fight with us for the
future of our race and for our children? Or will you sit on your ass and do
nothing? Our blissful ignorance is over. It is time to fight. Time for Mexico
and Mexicans to get the hell out!"
The web site has links to the site of the Mississippi Federation for Immigration
Reform and Enforcement (the state affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration
Reform), directed by Mike Lott, who sat in the state legislature before being
defeated in a run for the Democratic nomination for Secretary of State. .After
MIRA's Erik Fleming urged Governor Barbour to veto the employer sanctions
bill, saying it would be "devastating to our economy and community here
in Mississippi," he was then targeted on the MFIRE website.
For those threatened by changing demographics, and the political upsurge they
might produce, SB 2988 law is a finger in the dike. The fight to implement it
is not over, however, and MIRA has assembled a legal team to challenge its constitutionality
in court.
David Bacon is a California photojournalist who documents labor, migration and globalization. His book "Communities Without Borders" was just published by Cornell University/ILR Press.
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