Postville, Iowa Anniversary Reminds Us what is at Stake in Immigration Reform

May 11, 2009

Washington, DC – Tuesday, May 12, 2009, is the first anniversary of the massive raid on a kosher meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa.  At the time, it was the largest immigration workplace enforcement raid in U.S. history, although it has been surpassed since.  The following is a statement by Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, a non-partisan pro-immigrant advocacy group in Washington. 

Postville was the most egregious example of immigration enforcement on steroids.  It is the model of what we don’t want to do and what successful immigration reform is designed to avoid. 

We cannot base our immigration policies on the fantasy that we will deport or drive out 12,000,000 immigrants in the country illegally – an estimated 5.4% of the U.S. workforce playing a critical role in keeping our economy afloat.  Those who embrace mass deportation or a lengthy process to wait while immigrants deport themselves are deluded.  It isn’t going to happen.  Furthermore, as the devastation of Postville shows all too graphically, we would not want mass expulsion to happen.

The President and Members of Congress in both parties have begun the process for crafting immigration reform for consideration in this Congress and the Postville anniversary underscores what is at stake.  We need a system that allows workers and families to come with visas in the first place and for those here illegally to earn their way to legal status.  In that way, all workers and employers are part of the same system of taxation and labor law and playing by the same set of rules.  When legality in immigration is reestablished and an accurate employment verification system in place, massive raids, unacceptable abridgements of people’s basic rights, and the economic disruption of actions like Postville will no longer be necessary.

The previous Homeland Security Secretary literally unleashed his frustration over immigration reform on the small Midwestern town of Postville.  Blocked from enacting immigration reform by their own party in 2007, the Bush Administration ramped up militaristic, headline grabbing enforcement actions, escalated the use of criminal charges to railroad immigrants into hasty deportations – a process found to be unconstitutional – and used ICE enforcement in opposition to ongoing labor law investigations.  Rather then empowering workers to serve in the prosecution of their employer – perhaps one of the worst and most exploitative employers in recent American history – workers were carted off to a cattle fair ground and expedited out of the country without any meaningful chance to defend the few rights they had. 

The emphasis that the new Secretary of Homeland Security is reportedly putting on bad-actor employers – prioritizing them over individual immigrant workers and families – is a welcome first step but not a substitute for legislative reform.  We expect the President and the Secretary to demonstrate leadership in pushing the legislative process forward, regardless of adjustments they are able to make in priorities in immigration and labor law enforcement.

Postville will one day be remembered as a dark chapter in U.S. history that served as a catalyst for reforming our nation’s immigration system into something we can take pride in again, something that honors our history as a nation of immigrants, and something that helps to renew and strengthen America.

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