A recent column in the San Diego Union-Tribune expressed what so many firmly believe: “immigrants — authorized and unauthorized — energize and sustain California’s economy.”
David Garcias, president of Service Employees International Union Local 221 and a U.S. Army veteran, writes that two key pieces of legislation currently before lawmakers will help protect immigrants from detention and deportation while at the same time safeguarding our state’s growing economy.
The California Values Act (SB 54) would function “as a protective shield against the deportations,” Garcias writes. The bill would prevent state and local law enforcement agencies from investigating, detaining or arresting people as part of an immigrantion enforcement effort.
SB 54 would also keep the state’s schools, courts and health facilities open to all, no matter what their immigrantion status might be.
AB 450 (The Immigrant Protection Act) is a companion piece of legislation that would make clear that immigrant workers have rights on the job and shield them from improper immigrantion raids.
Garcias said ICE has many times violated workers’ rights by conducting raids based on racial profiling. The worksite sweeps are based on little more than skin color and the place of work rather than legally sound suspicions that laws are being violated.
Garcias wrote that he and many others suspect that the federal government is going to try mass deportations and more “illegally conducted raids.”
An experienced San Diego immigrantion attorney can help you and your family with a wide variety of immigrantion-related issues, including deportation, visas, naturalization and employment-based immigrantion.