Project Censored Updates

"Immigrants find High-Tech Servitude in Silicon Valley" exposed the impact of Silicon Valley's H1-B contract labor program on both contract workers themselves, and on other workers in high-tech and other industries. The media generally accept uncritically the idea that a legitimate purpose of immigration law is to supply labor to U.S. industry, and therefore saw little wrong with contract labor proposals.

Other proposals to institute and expand contract labor programs in agriculture, meatpacking, and other industries were made this year. If adopted, they will have a disastrous impact on immigrant workers, treating them as cheap, disposable labor instead of giving them legal status and protecting their rights. As just one result, efforts to organize unions by immigrants and non-immigrants alike will be made much more difficult.

These consequences for workers were ignored by the generally supportive way the mainstream press covered Silicon Valley's effort to pass a bill expanding the H1-B program. A few articles covered fraud in the program's administration, but hardly any looked at the exploitation of the workers themselves, and none at the bill's potential impact on labor and union organizing.

This year immigrant rights groups were joined by the AFL-CIO in an historic call for a general immigration amnesty and the repeal of employer sanctions (the law which makes it a crime for an undocumented worker to hold a job). That received some press coverage, but the media then ignored the way those proposals fell victim to calls for contract labor.

In early October, Silicon Valley's proposal was adopted by a unanimous vote in the House, and only one dissent, Ernest Hollings, in the Senate. To ensure the right outcome, the vote was held late at night, after the Republican leadership had assured Democrats that no more significant votes would be taken.

Microsoft, Intel, and other high tech giants showed their gratitude by contributing hundreds of thousands of soft-money dollars, through the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, to the unsuccessful reelection campaign of Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI), who shepherded the bill to passage.

The H-1B+ strategy, which tried to tie limited immigration reforms to the proposal, failed. Republican Congressional leaders passed the contract labor proposal without amendments. In an election year in which both parties were courting the votes of the powerful and wealthy high-tech industry, no one wanted to vote against it, with or without pro-immigrant reforms.

In subsequent weeks, the administration and Democratic leaders tried to tack the proposal, called the Latino Immigrant Fairness Act, onto other legislation. Through the November election, that effort was resisted by Republicans, and Democrats negotiated further and further concessions. In the closing days of Congress, an agreement was reached on legislation which contained almost none of the original proposals.

Meanwhile, however, the danger of contract labor actually increased. Agribusiness negotiated an expansion of the current "guestworker" law, which permits growers to import farm workers. In return, many undocumented farm workers would have been allowed to apply for visas. Although anti-immigrant Congress members defeated that proposal, it will be reintroduced next year.

In Nebraska, scene of the nation's largest workplace immigration raids two years ago, the governor proposed a contract labor program to supply workers to the meatpacking industry. And as unions and community organizations geared up to organize workers in non-union plants, the INS resumed wholesale deportations.

A new Republican administration will have an even more favorable attitude toward business proposals for contract worker programs. Divisions among Democrats will make it difficult to defeat them. At the same time, the anti-immigrant Right will oppose any broad amnesty for undocumented workers or effort to lift employer sanctions and end INS workplace raids.

The AFL-CIO, churches, and community organizations, however, remain committed to those pro-immigrant reforms. That promises a fight over these proposals in this year's Congress.