Three West Coast mayors are asking the leaders of other cities to take a stand against workplace immigration raids that they say hurt local economies and may force companies to relocate.
At the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors this week in Miami, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels will ask their colleagues to challenge how the government raids businesses in search of illegal workers.
They want Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to focus on businesses that exploit workers, such as those that violate wage and safety laws, not “responsible employers” that contribute to economies, their resolution says.
“We’ve never taken the position that you shouldn’t enforce the law,” Villaraigosa says. “What we’ve said is, in a time of limited resources, we should prioritize our enforcement. At a time when we don’t have the resources to go after criminals, we’re going after legitimate businesses and workers instead. That doesn’t make sense.”
The resolution will be discussed by a committee Saturday and, if approved, will go to all the mayors for a vote Monday.
8 Thoughts to “Mayors Against Workplace Raids”
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Los Angeles and Oakland are Sancutary Cities (self declared via ordinances) and Seattle, is well, Seattle. Interesting to note that Mayor Villaraigosa (a pro-amnesty proponet) states that ICE should not raid “responsible employers’ who hire illegal aliens, just the businesses who do not treat illegal aliens very well. Since when is it “responsible” to hire people with false identification or no identification so long as you treat them well? Its irresponsible to even hire someone with false ID or no ID and both styles of businesses are wrong and should be subjected to workplace monitering by ICE.
Interesting to note the paper states that Micron Corp. lost production and money because of an ICE raid. Yet, the raid resulted in nearly 20%, yes, 20% of Micron’s workforce being arrested for being in this Country illegally. Does that sound like a “responsible” employer in your world? Micron’s managers need to be criminally charged.
Allowing illegal aliens to work for companies that treat them well is not a justification for being exempt from the law. It is as unethical as any other business practice. Who gets to decide which business is “responsible” and which one is not?
Sanctuary Cities asking for a stop to ICE raids is not news.
This ordinance really makes no sense. Plus where are the statistics showing businesses relocating because of the raids? I haven’t heard of any relocating.
I have heard that they have to pay higher wages to American workers to fill the jobs vacated by illegal immigrants.
Lucky Duck, Micron is the largest employer in the City of Manassas and a first rate
corporate citizen. Which paper(s) had the news you describe? I tried
Google, Ask and Yahoo – asking for info in several different formats – -zip.
Where and when did this happen? Por favor.
The story is in USA Today and Alanna provided the link above near the story headline.
There should be more workforce raids. I support them. if the people are in fear of working their then they should not be working their in the first place. interesting on how many of these places are found due to indentity theft issues. apparentley the folks on this blog have no issue with identity theft. the blog should focus on all the negative things illegals do (identity theft comes to mind) and while the blog owners are busy taking care of their children they should take some time out to check their kids credit reports to see if any illegals are using their identity.
illegals are no good for this country, if they break the law once then they’ll continue to do it again. they in general do not care for the laws of “our” society because they dont feel they are a part of it. they’ll bitch about themselves wanting to assimilate but the truth is they want no part of this society, they are parasites looking for the fast buck.
I support workforce raids but for some reason these companies are still in business. If illegal labor makes up 20% of your workforce the company should be fined so much they are pretty much put out of business or they should have their business license revoked.
After all, most people here always say that immigration is a federal issue, not one for counties to handle. But when the feds do something like a raid people are all up in arms about it. So which is it…?
Hello, the raids are a panacea that allows politicians to give the impression that something is being done and allows the anti-immigration groups to feel better, but they do practically zip to solve any problems. Most workers caught up in the raids will be released with the admonition to get their paperwork in order.
Hi Censored… I would have to greatly disagree with you. The raids really do make a difference, the only problem is that they aren’t done often enough. I know because I’ve got allot of friends in the construction business and when the Manassas place got raided it made a big difference. What needs to happen now is they need to do another raid on a business that has a high percentage of illegal labor to show they mean business.
The business owners don’t care how many of them actually get deported, they care because something like that can put them out of business (even though they need bigger fines). Thus, they are less likely to hire illegal immigrants.