Arizona-Style Laws An Attack on Women and Children

In response to frustration with the federal government’s lack of a coherent immigration policy, state legislatures across the country are considering several Arizona-style immigration bills to require or allow law enforcement officers to demand proof of immigration status from anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. Although the well-being of women and children isn’t usually the first thing that springs to mind as an immigration issue, the reality is that these types of laws put women and children in harm’s way.

Officers could be forced to interrogate all brown-skinned people, anyone speaking in accented English or Spanish – most of whom will be American citizens or legal residents. The courts are currently reviewing the constitutionality of potentially institutionalizing racial profiling, largely blocking sections of the original Arizona law from enforcement.

Regardless of how you feel about these laws, the truth is that women and children are the ones who have the most to lose if these bills pass. Families will be torn apart, children will be traumatized, domestic violence survivors will be silenced and workplace abuse will increase. Furthermore, these bills will undermine public safety for all of us.

Tearing Families Apart: Traffic cops targeting drivers for potential deportation means mothers are taken away from their children – often children who are U.S. citizens – splitting up families in pursuit of enforcement of a broken immigration system. A mother dropping her children off at school or child care in the morning doesn’t know if she’ll be there to pick them up in the afternoon. Children have been separated from parents who are detained and eventually deported; others have been removed from their parents’ homes and placed in foster care. These families endure harsh economic and emotional hardship.

Traumatizing Children: Children experience severe psychological trauma when separated from their primary caretakers. A 2010 Urban Institute report documented this: “The vast majority of children whose parents were detained in ICE raids in the workplace and in the home exhibited multiple behavioral changes in the aftermath of parental detention, including anxiety, frequent crying, changes in eating and sleeping patterns, withdrawal and anger…Disturbingly, the children also experienced dramatic increases in housing instability and food insecurity, which are both dimensions of basic well-being.”

In a Congressional hearing, 11 year-old Heidi Ruby Portugal described her reaction after her mother was seized in Arizona, “They took away the most precious thing that children have, our mother. With one hit they took away my smile and my happiness.”

Silencing Survivors of Domestic Violence: These laws actually increase the threat to women facing domestic violence or sexual assault. Domestic violence survivors will be reluctant to call the police for fear of deportation, sometimes leading to fatal consequences. Survivors of sexual assault will avoid hospitals and services, fearing the involvement of the police. This is particularly dangerous for immigrant women who already face so many barriers, including language access and cultural stigmas that may make it less likely that they will seek services.

Discriminating Against Women in the Workplace: Abusive employers who violate wage, sexual harassment and discrimination laws – laws that protect everyone who works in our country – will benefit from these measures. Immigrant women will be vulnerable to employers using the threat of deportation to control and exploit them professionally and sexually. An Arizona-style law will silence women from speaking out, from reporting crimes and violations of workplace rights.

Undermining of Public Safety: Most police chiefs and law enforcement experts agree that public safety is hurt when trust between immigrant communities and the police is replaced by fear. If police participate in immigration enforcement programs, crime victims and witnesses will be unwilling to come forward and report crime. This makes the entire community less safe.

Our immigration system is clearly not working but our time is far better spent promoting policies that help position ALL women and families to live the American dream, like policies to help close the pay gap so women can support their children now and prepare for an economically secure retirement tomorrow, and workplace standards like paid sick days that protect jobs and income for workers when faced with illness, domestic violence and sexual assault. Let’s not pass laws that attack women and children.

-Linda Meric, 9to5 Executive Director

EFCA: Who Will Take a Stand for Working Women?

Unions have been key in achieving justice for workers. Historically, unions have been a reliable way to reach economic self-sufficiency and the American dream. And in this economy, unions are integral to economic recovery.

Women have a huge stake in unionization and worker justice. And they have a huge stake in legislation that supports the rights of workers, which is why women's voices are critical to the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Denver Post published, not only the views of the members of 9to5 in a recent Sunday guest commentary piece, but the vision of all of us who believe in a free choice.

You can read the op-ed here:

GUEST COMMENTARY
Stand up for working women: Pass EFCA

By Linda Meric
POSTED: 08/02/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

When President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act in January, the nation's attention refocused for a short time on the pay inequity and gender bias that still plague the American workplace. That moment passed, and women are still paid less than men, earning only about 78 cents for every dollar, with women of color earning even less.

The Employee Free Choice Act is one sure way to address this gender-based pay gap. Unionization can provide important economic security for low-wage Colorado women and their families.

In Colorado, women who are in unions earn nearly 6 percent more than women who aren't union members. Nationwide, that difference is about 35 percent.

The benefits of union membership for women in low-wage occupations are even greater. Among those working in the 15 lowest-paying occupations, union members not only earned more than their non-union counterparts, they were also 26 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 23 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan than those who were not members of a union.

"For women, joining a union makes as much sense as going to college," said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of the CEPR study "Unions and Upward Mobility for Women Workers."

"All else equal," said Schmitt, "joining a union raises a woman's wage as much as a full year of college, and a union raises the chances a woman has health insurance by more than earning a four-year college degree."

Health insurance is just one of the positive workplace standards unions can provide for working women. Union representation is also one of the strongest predictors of family-flexible workplace policies.

More than 60 million American workers lack a single paid sick day to care for themselves when ill, and nearly 100 million workers lack paid sick time to care for an ill child. No one should lose a job because they have to care for themselves or a loved one. Companies with 30 percent or more unionized workers have been documented to be more likely than non-union companies to provide paid time off to care for sick children (65 percent compared to 46 percent).

That's why passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is so important. It would put the choice of how to form a union back into the hands of workers. A free choice means that workers would have the option of unionization if a majority of them sign up.

The Employee Free Choice Act will protect women and men who join together to negotiate with their employers for health care, fair wages, retirement security and paid sick days.

As President Obama said in signing Ledbetter, we owe a change to our daughters — and our sons.

Now is the time for that change. It's time that our economy worked for everyone again. Please join me in calling on Congress to stand up for working women and pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

Linda Meric is executive director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, a membership organization of low-wage women working to improve corporate and public policies that directly affect them.

Barbeque, Apple Pie and the Healthy Families Act

For most Americans, the Fourth of July is a day for fireworks, concerts, parades and all manner of patriotic displays. It’s as American as barbeque ribs and apple pie, reminding us of freedom, justice, community, hard work and family values; the shared ideals that define us as a nation.

We don’t need a holiday or special celebration to honor working families. But we all occasionally need time off from work to share the responsibility for our family’s health. Still, the Fourth of July is a perfect time to contact our leaders in Congress and ask that they celebrate our national values of family and work by supporting the Healthy Families Act (HFA).

On May 18, Rep Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced the Healthy Families Act to the 111th Congress. HFA is designed to allow Americans to earn paid sick time so that they can take care of their own and their family’s health needs. Care-giving responsibilities can be one of the biggest hurdles working families face in their quest to realize the American dream of economic self-sufficiency. But nearly 60 million American workers lack a single paid sick day in which to care for themselves when occasional illness strikes. Nearly 100 million lack a paid sick day to care for an ill child.

For these Americans, the lack of this basic labor standard presents unconscionable choices: whether to stay home and get better or go to work to keep from losing a job. On this Fourth of July holiday – and beyond -- there is lots of work to do to make work, well, work. Go to www.9to5.org to learn more about the Healthy Families Act. Share the information with your family, friends, co-workers, community members. Urge them to take action today by contacting their members of Congress to insure that they support the Healthy Families Act.

While we’re waving our flag this July 4th, let’s really honor all Americans by moving toward passage of the Healthy Families Act.

Women Created "Decoration Day," the forerunner of what we know as "Memorial Day"

By Linda Meric

Today is Memorial Day, a day we have come to know as the start of summer fun: BBQs, street festivals, yard work and the like. But few know that this national holiday, enacted to commemorate those who have died in war, was actually created by women.

The women in the South who started "Decoration Day" did so to call for an end to the division in the aftermath the Civil War and to honor all those who had lost their lives in a war that pitted North against South.

As Joan Wages, president of the National Women's History Museum points out, the forgotten role that women played in the creation of Memorial Day is just one more example of how the true story of the contributions of women in this country remains untold.

Read her commentary at http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=4020.