Illegals Fired for Protesting

The Detroit Free Press (a left-leaning newspaper) reported yesterday that fifteen immigrants were fired after they skipped work to attended the immigration protests.

A manager at a Detroit meatpacking plant said Monday that 15 immigrant women were fired last month after attending a protest for immigrant rights. He said they had been told that they would be terminated if they missed work on the day of the protest.

But the workers and an activist working on their behalf said the women were given no such assurances. If the workers knew they would have been fired for attending the March 27 rally in Detroit, they never would have skipped the morning shift, said Elena Herrada, a Detroit activist who is trying to help the women get their jobs back.

[General Manager Jay] Bonahoom said that as far as Wolverine [Packing Co.] knows, the workers were documented, but an employment agency does the actual hiring. He said the workers had been told, "written and verbally," on the Friday before the protests that their attendance was mandatory on the day of the protest.

They were fired "for standing up for their rights," Herrada said.

"It was not fair,'" said Mercedes, a 31-year-old Detroit woman who attended the rally and was fired. "We went to fight for our rights." Mercedes is undocumented and asked that her last name not be used.

I'm trying not to sound hard-hearted, because I do sympathize with Mercedes, who suddenly finds herself without a job. It's very possible that she didn't know ahead of time that her job would be in jeopardy if she went to the protest. From the employer to the employment agency to the workers, there were plenty of opportunities for communication to break down.

But it emphasizes a point: If you're illegal, you have no rights. If Mercedes had a green card, she would have rights. But when you bypass the law, how can you expect the law to protect you?

I met a woman from South Africa during the end of the Apartheid years. She was Colored, under a system that recognized these racial categories, in this order: White, Colored, Asian (primarily from the Indian subcontinent), Black. She had a good job, but because she wasn't all white, she wasn't allowed to live in certain areas. So a white friend rented an apartment for her in a white neighborhood, and she had to sneak into and out of her apartment every day.

One day her car was stolen, and she went to the police to report it. But when she told the police where it happened and they realized she was living where she wasn't supposed to, they dropped all their efforts to find her stolen car, and they pursued the case against her.

There's no other way around it: The law respects those who respect the law. And for people who want to do things the easy way, slip in undetected, hide in the shadows, skirt the law, for them there is no protection. They have no rights.

Building a fence will keep more people like Mercedes from being illegal and risking being taken advantage of. Streamlining the legal immigration process (after securing the border) will allow more people like Mercedes to legally get and keep their jobs, because there won't be a need to protest.