By Chris Fuchs
The gathering was held at the Park Avenue South headquarters of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, an umbrella union with 1.5 million rank-and-file, where more than a hundred union members, most of them immigrants, crammed into a small conference room holding placards demanding equitable treatment.
The president of the union, Brian M. McLaughlin, who is also the state assemblyman from Flushing, said that immigration is inextricably linked to the labor movement, with more and more new Americans taking union-covered jobs, and that it was necessary to ask President-elect George W. Bush and the 107th Congress to begin considering these changes – now.
“All too often, immigrants are confronted with narrow-mindedness, oppression and exploitation at the hands of their employer,” he said, “and all too often by a government that's too narrow-minded to advance an agenda that embraces all of that enthusiasm for the betterment of our community and country as a whole.”
The elected officials at the conference spoke at length about two pieces of legislation, one that passed in December and another that was being introduced in Congress by U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). All of the officials expressed reservations about the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act, which passed in December and, among other things, addresses two new categories of temporary visas.
“We keep hearing a common theme throughout all of this – justice,” said U.S. Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-St. Albans), in sermonic tones. “And it is time that we have to make sure in the halls of Congress – everywhere – that we live up to our true creed.”
U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-Astoria) explained a little about the recently passed act. “A new visa for families, who are legal residents and have been here for more than two years, will now be able to bring their permanent family members here,” she said.
The bill that passed in December creates or expands upon two categories of temporary visas: one for the spouse and children of a permanent resident and the other for the spouse and children of a U.S. citizen, both having been designed to speed up the visitation process.
The first grouping, the “V” visa, permits the spouses and children of permanent residents who have been waiting more than three years for a green card to be given work authorization. The second category, the “K” visa, allows spouses of U.S. citizens to enter the country while waiting for their visa applications to be approved.
But the labor council said that in the end, the benefits of the bill would be felt by only 850,000 immigrants, leaving out some 6 million others.
Schumer also spoke about a bill he said he would introduce in Congress called the “Immigrants Protection Act.” Most significantly, the bill would convert the federal crime of defrauding an immigrant, now a misdemeanor, into a felony, he said. It would also require that immigration consultants inform their clients that they are not attorneys and require that they set up contracts that their clients could abrogate in 72 hours if desired.
“As people struggle, they are preyed upon as they seek to become part of the American dream,” Schumer said. “Every day that immigrants go to the INS office at Federal Plaza because they are so desperate to be part of America, scam artists come to them and say, 'Hey, give me 3,000 bucks. I'll get you a green card.'”
In addition, the act would allow attorneys general to file suits on behalf of defrauded immigrants to recoup the fees they paid, as well as to impose other penalties and injunctions on those who bilked them. It would also create and underwrite task forces in eight cities to investigate such claims of frauds and set up a hotline for immigrants to report abuses.
