03-29-2009, 10:36 AM
Hmmm, I wonder why this ambitious Sicilian boy moved the business here and how he got the special favors from the GOB's?
mmigration raids ignite hard feelings
By: Melody Simmons
August 27, 2008
By 6 a.m. most days, immigrants looking for daywork gather at the Baltimore Workers Employment Center on East Fayette Street near Fells Point. Hours later, they fan out across the area, painting buildings, constructing sidewalks, cleaning houses and landscaping yards for hourly, cash wages. Itâs a scene played out in cities across Maryland as many of the stateâs nearly 200,000 illegal immigrants seek to support themselves.
Such day laboring has ignited a bitter public debate. To some, hiring undocumented workers threatens the stateâs workforce, while others insist they have a clear right to seek employment and are ramping up legal battles to prove it.
âI feel like the only place where a shimmer of light can be seen is in the courts,â said Melissa Crow, a private immigration attorney in Baltimore. She used to serve as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where federal immigration legislation was written.
Crow said the failure of Congress to pass the legislation to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country has left it to states to address the issueâand workplace raids abound. Such incidents, Crow said, have forced state and local courts to bear the legal load.
She describes her casework as constantly âputting out firesâ for the immigrants.
âThereâs a lot of tension between the needs of employers who donât have enough unskilled laborers to get their work done and the vulnerability of the workers who are here and ready to do the jobs nobody else wants to do,â Crow said.
Crow says workplace raids by local and federal immigration enforcement officers over the past two years escalated the immigrantsâ legal problems. Raids in Baltimore and Annapolis have prompted crackdowns on hiring undocumented workers and led to deportations.
mmigration raids ignite hard feelings
By: Melody Simmons
August 27, 2008
By 6 a.m. most days, immigrants looking for daywork gather at the Baltimore Workers Employment Center on East Fayette Street near Fells Point. Hours later, they fan out across the area, painting buildings, constructing sidewalks, cleaning houses and landscaping yards for hourly, cash wages. Itâs a scene played out in cities across Maryland as many of the stateâs nearly 200,000 illegal immigrants seek to support themselves.
Such day laboring has ignited a bitter public debate. To some, hiring undocumented workers threatens the stateâs workforce, while others insist they have a clear right to seek employment and are ramping up legal battles to prove it.
âI feel like the only place where a shimmer of light can be seen is in the courts,â said Melissa Crow, a private immigration attorney in Baltimore. She used to serve as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where federal immigration legislation was written.
Crow said the failure of Congress to pass the legislation to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country has left it to states to address the issueâand workplace raids abound. Such incidents, Crow said, have forced state and local courts to bear the legal load.
She describes her casework as constantly âputting out firesâ for the immigrants.
âThereâs a lot of tension between the needs of employers who donât have enough unskilled laborers to get their work done and the vulnerability of the workers who are here and ready to do the jobs nobody else wants to do,â Crow said.
Crow says workplace raids by local and federal immigration enforcement officers over the past two years escalated the immigrantsâ legal problems. Raids in Baltimore and Annapolis have prompted crackdowns on hiring undocumented workers and led to deportations.