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6. Manipulating New Immigration Laws
- Temple University Press
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Six Manipulating New Immigration Laws Once new immigrants successfully negotiate the border crossing and gain entry into the United States, the process of settling into a strange city, securing passable documents, and finding jobs ensues. Undocumented Central Americans hardly cower in fear of detention and deportation every time they venture out on the streets in the nation's capital. It is common knowledge that there are too few INS agents deployed in the Washington area to police the buses, apartment buildings, or employment sites where immigrants spend a majority of their time. Indeed, life in Washington for the undocumented appears to be far less stressful in certain aspects than for undocumented Central Americans and Mexicans in southern California. For example , Leo Chavez (1992) describes how undocumented immigrants in San Diego live with the fear that family members might be apprehended any time they venture out of their homes. The heightened state of tension exists because immigration agents are known to target buses for inspection, stop cars on the roads in order to examine documents, and even raid home sites where people live in makeshift camps. None of these practices occurs in the Washington area, and only immigrants without documents who work at high-visibility employment sites (such as restaurants or landscaping companies) fear the odd visit by INS 126 Chapter Six agents. Even then, because of the ease with which work permits and social security cards may be obtained on the black market, few Central Americans in Washington are totally without documentation (see Table 16). Lawmakers intended to make life a good deal more difficult for undocumented immigrants with the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. However, they did not foresee or intend to effect a gender bias within various immigrant groups when they implemented the new law. IRCA required employers to request documents authorizing immigrants to work in the United States, and the law should have made it nearly impossible for the undocumented to find jobs any longer. But streetwise Central Americans soon developed the means of obtaining falsified documents through social networks, and relatively few were fired from or denied jobs because of a lack of employment authorization. Central American women in Washington were affected less than men by the new immigration law because a large proportion of women entered the labor market and continued to work in the nonregulated sector as household workers and child-care providers.! Few employers required women to show documents in order to secure such positions, and none of the women (though 11 percent of the men) surveyed in Washington were fired from a job because of IRCA. Most of the Central American immigrants in Washington agreed that it was easier for women than for men to find work after IRCA went into effect. In the long run the nationwide recession of the early 1990s was more effective at curtailing employment opportunities for newly arrived immigrants than were laboriously crafted immigration laws; but neither the recession nor IRCA had the same even impact on Central American women that they did on Central American men. Ironically, perhaps as many employers as undocumented immigrants in the Washington area quickly devised strategies to circumvent IRCA, claiming that their ability to conduct business operations was greatly hampered by the immigration law. In [54.196.27.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:00 GMT) Manipulating New Immigration Laws 127 Table 16 How Documents Were Obtained by Respondents (survey sample, in persons) Purchased social security card in Washington, D.C. Purchased social security card in other u.s. city Legal social security card Invented social security no. Temporary work permit Legal work permit Employer issued false permit Lawyers said they applied for work permit No legal documents No response Men (N=57) 6 7 5 2 11 8 0 2 6 10 Women (N=43) 3 2 2 2 13 1 10 8 many cases reputable law-abiding employers resorted to the same methods that occur to international migrants who must support themselves (and families as well) by whatever means possible. Zoe Baird, President Clinton's original nominee for attorney general, was neither unique nor reprehensible when she hired two undocumented Peruvian immigrants as household helpers. Countless congressional representatives, government 128 Chapter Six employees, diplomats, and other professionals in Washington and elsewhere have done the same for years and continue to hire undocumented immigrants to fill a labor vacuum for household workers. The following stories related by Washington-area employers and Central American workers...