According to an article on latimes.com: “Immigrant advocates said Thursday that long-stalled efforts to legalize millions of illegal migrants, crack down on employers who hire them and win more family visas would be revived next year and could possibly succeed in early 2010 following sizable Democratic gains powered by record turnouts of Latino voters in the November election.”
If the issue is addressed, given the make up of Congress, Obama’s position on the matter and the large hispanic turnout in the 2008 election where anti-immigrant platform candidates lost big-time – it will likely pass.
An interesting point mentioned in the article is the focus that a CIR bill would have on punishing employers who underpay and otherwise abuse undocumented workers while offering the workers themselves a path to legalize their status. There are many cases where workers are underpaid, overworked and abused by unscrupulous employers yet are afraid to come forward to collect earned wages for fear of being detained or deported. This is unfortunate as it gives these employers a feeling of invincibility as they continue to violate wage and immigration laws thereby giving them an unfair competitive advantage.
Our immigration laws need to be updated to allow victims of serious workplace violations to come out of the shadows and assert their rights to stop the abuse that most everyone agrees must not continue.
Please visit our law firm’s new website www.immigrantconnect.com.
