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Local Level Actions
Call on City of Bellingham officials to create a civilian oversight board and enact accountability measures to protect immigrants and people of color
Source: The provision for a civilian oversight board was included in the Keep Bellingham Families Working ordinance that community members from the Western Washington Blue Group, working in collaboration with specialists in immigration policy, presented to the Bellingham City Council in early 2017. Keep Bellingham Families Working has a standing call to action for this. https://keepbellinghamfamiliesworking.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/on-ordinances-and-city-council/
Description: Contact Bellingham City Council Members and Mayor Linville this month and ask that officials act swiftly to, along with other measures to provide accountability, create a civilian oversight board to ensure that law enforcement is employing necessary measures to ensure that community members who are immigrants, those who do not have documented U.S citizenship, or people of color are not persecuted and/or discriminated against in our community.
Background:
Immigrants in our own community are suffering persecution by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigrants rights advocate, Maru Mora-Villalpando is just one example of a person without documented U.S. citizenship who was targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation and now must show up to hearing after hearing in an effort to remain here in this country and to not have to suffer incarceration when she has committed no criminal offense.
In February 2017 the Bellingham City Council pushed aside the Keep Bellingham Families Working ordinance and replaced it with an ordinance created by the Bellingham City Council with the help of City staff and legal counsel. There were missing components of accountability in that ordinance, such as the civilian oversight board, or enforcement measures that could be employed should city employees be found to have collaborated with ICE agents. These missing measures are similar in intent to ones that are now being adopted and employed by Washington’s Department of Licensing after Governor Inslee’s executive order did not offer needed provisions to prevent the contact information of nearly 1000 undocumented immigrants being handed over from DOL to ICE.
Well over a year later, despite many requests for action, and 67 weeks of Dignity Vigils demonstrating public demand for the City to adopt these accountability measures, the Mayor and City Council Members still have not created a civilian oversight board nor have they adopted other accountability measures.
Contact info and script:
mayorsoffice@cob.org Kelli Linville
ccmail@cob.org (all 7 Council Members)
gknutson@cob.org (2nd ward) Gene Knutson
abarker@cob.org (1st ward) April Barker
mlilliquist@cob.org (6th ward) Michael Lilliquist
ptmvargas@cob.org (4th ward) Pinky Vargas
rjmurphy@cob.org (At-Large) Roxanne Murphy
tbornemann@cob.org (5th ward) Terry Bornemann
dchammill@cob.org (3rd ward) Dan Hammill
Demands For Bellingham City Council Members and Mayor Linville
My name is_____________________. I live in Ward__________, and I vote!
I have read the information by immigrant community leaders and am seriously concerned that the ordinance you passed is not creating a safe and secure city. In short, Bellingham is not a sanctuary city and does not protect all our community members.
I’m asking that you immediately act and change the ordinance to include the following:
-A Civilian Oversight Board as described in the ordinance provided to you by the community – an administrative or advisory committee without enforcement powers is unsatisfactory.
-Stop all activity or cooperation by Bellingham Police officers related to Secure Communities, the 287(g) program and any other collaboration without judicial warrants or court orders.
Additional information
Text of Citizen oversight chapter of Keep Bellingham Families Working Ordinance:
“CHAPTER 11: CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT BOARD
“A civilian oversight board will be formed in order to review and enforce the requirements of this Ordinance by the time the Ordinance is effective. Five (5) persons will serve be [sic] on this board for a term of three (3) years. The mayor, Latino Advocacy, the Whatcom Peace and Justice Center, Community to Community, and Northwest Youth Services may each appoint one person to serve on the board. A civilian oversight board is a crucial component to build trust with the community, establish transparency, and ensure enforcement of the Ordinance.”
Link to full KBFW Ordinance:
https://keepbellinghamfamiliesworking.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/kbfw-ordinance.pdf
Link to COB ordinance:
https://keepbellinghamfamiliesworking.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/ordinance2017-02-008.pdf
Information from COB Public Records on sanctuary city ordinance and civilian oversight board:
Regional Level Actions
Attend the Chinga La Migra Tour Kick-Off: Noise Demo at NWDC on Monday, June 4th and Follow NWDC Resistance/Resistencia on Facebook
Source: NWDC Resistance/Resistencia al NWDC and Mijente
Description: From the Facebook event description: “On June 4, Mijente will partner with NWDC Resistance to launch a multi-city #ChingaLaMigra tour here in Washington, the so-called sanctuary state and bastion of progressivism where Homeland Security Investigations continues to collaborate with local law enforcement and where 1,575 people are caged on a hazardous superfund site at Tacoma’s immigration prison. Come help us kick off the tour with a noise demo outside the Northwest Detention Center. Bring your pots and pans! Bring you musical instruments! Bring your signs that say Chinga La Migra!! Melt, Dismantle, #ResistICE!!
We’re not just here to demand real sanctuary. We’re here to demand freedom to move and freedom to stay for all people. We’re here to demand an end to ICE and an end to deportation. We won’t stop until we shut it down!”
Follow NWDC Resistance/Resistencia on Facebook.
Background: The Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, WA is one of the largest immigration prisons in the country, with a capacity to hold up to 1575 immigrants. People end up in the detention center after being transferred from local law enforcement custody, after immigration raids, and after being transferred from the border regions. Up to 200 people, mostly women, many of whom are seeking asylum, are transferred from the US-Mexico border to the NWDC each month. Many held at the NWDC have lived in the US for years, in some cases for the majority of their lives. While some are deported after only weeks, due to mandatory detention policies, some are held for months and sometimes years awaiting the outcomes of their deportation cases. Few legal protections apply to these civil detainees, and those held are not entitled to an attorney at government expense; approximately 90% of them move forward in their cases unrepresented. The NWDC is operated by GEO Group, the second-largest private prison operator in the US.
Additional Information:
PHOTOS: A rare look inside Tacoma’s immigration jail
State sues Tacoma’s Northwest Detention Center for paying immigrant detainees $1 a day
Hundreds of immigrant detainees at Tacoma ICE facility on hunger strike, activists say
Call WA state leaders and tell them to protect guestworkers from exploitation under the H2A visa program
Source: Community to Community Development
Description:
Call WA state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and demand he investigate wafla, the largest farm labor contracting business in WA.
Call WA Governor Jay Inslee and demand that he form a special task force to investigate the impact of the H2A program on farmworker families and our state economy.
Call WA Dept. of Labor and Industries Director Joel Sacks and demand that L&I reopen the investigation in the death last summer of Honesto Silva Ibarra.
Background:
The federal H2A guestworker program is deeply flawed and leaves the workers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Last August in Sumas, an H2A guestworker named Honesto Silva Ibarra died due to complications related to diabetes and long hours in extremely hot, smoke-infested fields. His diabetes was exacerbated by extreme dehydration and low food rations provided while working and living in Sarbanand Farms’ company-owned barrack housing, a prison camp-like setting. Honesto’s fellow farm workers, working under the H2A program, protested the working conditions and were fired by Sarbanand Farms.
On February 1, 2018 the Dept. of Labor and Industries (L&I) found the farm not negligent in the death of Honesto. This, in spite of the farm managers denying him his request to get health care for several days until he collapsed. L&I found that Sarbanand Farms had committed 13 violations last summer related to depriving farm workers of rest breaks and serving their meals late. L&I had chosen to fine Sarbanand for just one of those missed rest breaks and one of those late meals.
Corporations like California-based Sarbanand Farms, growing berries in Whatcom County, with the help of Dan Fazio and wafla, are leading this dangerous shift in Washington State. Fazio is the Executive Director of a farm labor contracting firm now modernized to also act as a WA-based corporate grower lobby association and rebranded as wafla. Wafla is actively campaigning to support the expansion of the H2A guestworker program into H2C (see more about this in national actions below), lobbying for the removal of worker protections and providing further incentive to similar employer associations. Their membership is calling their elected officials in support of this legislation.
Wafla made $8,191,969 this last fiscal year, compared to $150,180 only three years ago. Wafla profits off of this modern-day slave trading program: their income rises as they contract more and more H2A guestworkers in Washington, California, and more recently Idaho. This market will only expand with the proposed legislation. Unsurprisingly, there is no language in the proposed bills that would regulate employer association organizations such as wafla.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Call WA state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (360) 753-6200
“Hi, my name is ________ and I live in __________. I’m calling to ask your office to investigate farm labor contracting firm wafla. Wafla has a history of abusing workers’ rights and with their expansion in recent years under continued limited regulation and oversight, I’m concerned about their operating practices. Please keep me informed of your progress on this matter. My email address is _____________.”
Call WA Governor Jay Inslee (360) 902-4111
“Hi, my name is _________ and I live in___________. I’m calling to demand the governor form a special task force to investigate the impact of the H2A program on farmworker families and our state economy. Last year, an H2A farmworker died in my community. That is unacceptable and we cannot allow the conditions that led to his death to continue. Please keep me informed of your progress on this matter. My email address is __________________.”
Call WA Dept. of Labor and Industries Director Joel Sacks (360) 902-5584
“Hi, my name is _________ and I live in ___________. I’m calling to demand that L&I reopen the investigation in the death last summer of Honesto Silva Ibarra at Sarbanand Farms in Sumas. The results of the completed investigation do not do justice to the fact that a guestworker died. Please reopen the investigation immediately and keep me informed of the progress. My email address is ___________.”
Additional Information:
National Level Actions
Call congress and tell them to stop separating families at the border, plus bonus actions!
Source: 5 calls
Description:
Use 5calls.org to quickly and easily call your representative and senators to use their oversight authority over the Department of Homeland Security to stop separating families at the border.
Background:
At a law enforcement conference in Arizona, AG Jeff Sessions declared that the Department of Justice would seek “100% prosecution” of all who enter the U.S. illegally and separate parents from children instead of keeping them in a detention center together. “If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law.”
Homeland Security is cruelly separating families at the border for no legitimate reason. Immigration authorities have separated at least 700 children from their families, and about a hundred of them are under the age of four.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Go here and follow the directions: https://5calls.org/issue/dhs-separating-families-us-border
Bonus actions via 5calls.org:
Demand Scott Lloyd Resign For Harming Immigrant Children
Demand Oversight Hearings Into Border Patrol Tactics And Records Of Abuse
Additional Information:
Trump’s DHS is using an extremely dubious statistic to justify splitting up families at the border
CPB and DHS have a history of abusing migrant children. ACLU report: Records claim border agents neglected, abused migrant kids
Call your representative and tell them to vote no on expanding the H2A program to become H2C
Source: Community to Community Development
Description: Call your legislator in the House of Representatives and tell them to vote no on “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018” HR 4760. They are planning to vote on this bill this month, so call today.
Background: The Departments of Labor, Agriculture, State, and Homeland Security are coordinating a dangerous attack on immigrants and our food system under the guise of ‘streamlining and improving’ the H2A guestworker visa program — by expanding and rebranding it as the H2C guestworker visa program.
On October 25, 2017, the House Judiciary Committee passed Representative Goodlatte’s “Agricultural Guestworker Act” (AGA), HR 4092. The AGA was then included in a broader anti-immigrant bill, introduced by Goodlatte in January 2018: the “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018,” HR 4760. This bill is one of possibly multiple immigration bills the House of Representatives is planning to vote on in June. ‘Streamlining and improving’ is a euphemism for deregulation. If passed, this proposed legislation would:
- Extend the use of the exploitative guestworker program (which is currently limited to temporary and seasonal jobs) throughout our entire food system: from farms and ranches to packing houses and processing plants, and from seasonal crops to year-round dairy cows and poultry farms.
- Deprive local farmworkers of jobs by reducing employers’ local recruitment obligations even further.
- Limit guestworkers’ access to judicial and legal assistance, while minimizing government oversight of the guestworker program.
- Create new levels of discriminatory bureaucracy and dysfunction, such as withholding 10% of guestworkers’ wages until they meet a complicated series of requirements, and eliminating the requirement that employers provide housing or travel-expense reimbursement.
This bill does not provide a path to citizenship for the current experienced, undocumented farmworkers or their family members. Instead, it is an attack on family-based immigration, reducing immigrant workers in the food system to individual commodities to be imported and exported cheaply for the profit of agribusiness.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Not sure who represents you? Find out here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Congresswoman Suzan DelBene: WA (360) 416-7879, DC (202) 225-6311
Congressman Rick Larsen: WA (360) 733-4500, DC (202) 225-2605
“Hi, my name is ___________ and I live in _________________. I am calling to ask you to vote no on HR 4760 Securing America’s Future Act of 2018. This act would remove the already meager protections for guestworkers and make them even more vulnerable to exploitation. If anything, we need to eliminate the current H2A visa program and start over, not degregulate it even further. Please let me know how you vote on this resolution. My email address is _________.”
Additional Information:
Why today’s vote on H-2C visas is food’s biggest labor battle
Source: The provision for a civilian oversight board was included in the Keep Bellingham Families Working ordinance that community members from the Western Washington Blue Group, working in collaboration with specialists in immigration policy, presented to the Bellingham City Council in early 2017. Keep Bellingham Families Working has a standing call to action for this. https://keepbellinghamfamiliesworking.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/on-ordinances-and-city-council/
Description: Contact Bellingham City Council Members and Mayor Linville this month and ask that officials act swiftly to, along with other measures to provide accountability, create a civilian oversight board to ensure that law enforcement is employing necessary measures to ensure that community members who are immigrants, those who do not have documented U.S citizenship, or people of color are not persecuted and/or discriminated against in our community.
Background:
Immigrants in our own community are suffering persecution by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigrants rights advocate, Maru Mora-Villalpando is just one example of a person without documented U.S. citizenship who was targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation and now must show up to hearing after hearing in an effort to remain here in this country and to not have to suffer incarceration when she has committed no criminal offense.
In February 2017 the Bellingham City Council pushed aside the Keep Bellingham Families Working ordinance and replaced it with an ordinance created by the Bellingham City Council with the help of City staff and legal counsel. There were missing components of accountability in that ordinance, such as the civilian oversight board, or enforcement measures that could be employed should city employees be found to have collaborated with ICE agents. These missing measures are similar in intent to ones that are now being adopted and employed by Washington’s Department of Licensing after Governor Inslee’s executive order did not offer needed provisions to prevent the contact information of nearly 1000 undocumented immigrants being handed over from DOL to ICE.
Well over a year later, despite many requests for action, and 67 weeks of Dignity Vigils demonstrating public demand for the City to adopt these accountability measures, the Mayor and City Council Members still have not created a civilian oversight board nor have they adopted other accountability measures.
Contact info and script:
mayorsoffice@cob.org Kelli Linville
ccmail@cob.org (all 7 Council Members)
gknutson@cob.org (2nd ward) Gene Knutson
abarker@cob.org (1st ward) April Barker
mlilliquist@cob.org (6th ward) Michael Lilliquist
ptmvargas@cob.org (4th ward) Pinky Vargas
rjmurphy@cob.org (At-Large) Roxanne Murphy
tbornemann@cob.org (5th ward) Terry Bornemann
dchammill@cob.org (3rd ward) Dan Hammill
Demands For Bellingham City Council Members and Mayor Linville
My name is_____________________. I live in Ward__________, and I vote!
I have read the information by immigrant community leaders and am seriously concerned that the ordinance you passed is not creating a safe and secure city. In short, Bellingham is not a sanctuary city and does not protect all our community members.
I’m asking that you immediately act and change the ordinance to include the following:
-A Civilian Oversight Board as described in the ordinance provided to you by the community – an administrative or advisory committee without enforcement powers is unsatisfactory.
-Stop all activity or cooperation by Bellingham Police officers related to Secure Communities, the 287(g) program and any other collaboration without judicial warrants or court orders.
Additional information
Text of Citizen oversight chapter of Keep Bellingham Families Working Ordinance:
“CHAPTER 11: CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT BOARD
“A civilian oversight board will be formed in order to review and enforce the requirements of this Ordinance by the time the Ordinance is effective. Five (5) persons will serve be [sic] on this board for a term of three (3) years. The mayor, Latino Advocacy, the Whatcom Peace and Justice Center, Community to Community, and Northwest Youth Services may each appoint one person to serve on the board. A civilian oversight board is a crucial component to build trust with the community, establish transparency, and ensure enforcement of the Ordinance.”
Link to full KBFW Ordinance:
https://keepbellinghamfamiliesworking.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/kbfw-ordinance.pdf
Link to COB ordinance:
https://keepbellinghamfamiliesworking.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/ordinance2017-02-008.pdf
Information from COB Public Records on sanctuary city ordinance and civilian oversight board:
Attend the Chinga La Migra Tour Kick-Off: Noise Demo at NWDC on Monday, June 4th and Follow NWDC Resistance/Resistencia on Facebook
Source: NWDC Resistance/Resistencia al NWDC and Mijente
Description: From the Facebook event description: “On June 4, Mijente will partner with NWDC Resistance to launch a multi-city #ChingaLaMigra tour here in Washington, the so-called sanctuary state and bastion of progressivism where Homeland Security Investigations continues to collaborate with local law enforcement and where 1,575 people are caged on a hazardous superfund site at Tacoma’s immigration prison. Come help us kick off the tour with a noise demo outside the Northwest Detention Center. Bring your pots and pans! Bring you musical instruments! Bring your signs that say Chinga La Migra!! Melt, Dismantle, #ResistICE!!
We’re not just here to demand real sanctuary. We’re here to demand freedom to move and freedom to stay for all people. We’re here to demand an end to ICE and an end to deportation. We won’t stop until we shut it down!”
Follow NWDC Resistance/Resistencia on Facebook.
Background: The Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, WA is one of the largest immigration prisons in the country, with a capacity to hold up to 1575 immigrants. People end up in the detention center after being transferred from local law enforcement custody, after immigration raids, and after being transferred from the border regions. Up to 200 people, mostly women, many of whom are seeking asylum, are transferred from the US-Mexico border to the NWDC each month. Many held at the NWDC have lived in the US for years, in some cases for the majority of their lives. While some are deported after only weeks, due to mandatory detention policies, some are held for months and sometimes years awaiting the outcomes of their deportation cases. Few legal protections apply to these civil detainees, and those held are not entitled to an attorney at government expense; approximately 90% of them move forward in their cases unrepresented. The NWDC is operated by GEO Group, the second-largest private prison operator in the US.
Additional Information:
PHOTOS: A rare look inside Tacoma’s immigration jail
State sues Tacoma’s Northwest Detention Center for paying immigrant detainees $1 a day
Hundreds of immigrant detainees at Tacoma ICE facility on hunger strike, activists say
Call WA state leaders and tell them to protect guestworkers from exploitation under the H2A visa program
Source: Community to Community Development
Description:
Call WA state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and demand he investigate wafla, the largest farm labor contracting business in WA.
Call WA Governor Jay Inslee and demand that he form a special task force to investigate the impact of the H2A program on farmworker families and our state economy.
Call WA Dept. of Labor and Industries Director Joel Sacks and demand that L&I reopen the investigation in the death last summer of Honesto Silva Ibarra.
Background:
The federal H2A guestworker program is deeply flawed and leaves the workers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Last August in Sumas, an H2A guestworker named Honesto Silva Ibarra died due to complications related to diabetes and long hours in extremely hot, smoke-infested fields. His diabetes was exacerbated by extreme dehydration and low food rations provided while working and living in Sarbanand Farms’ company-owned barrack housing, a prison camp-like setting. Honesto’s fellow farm workers, working under the H2A program, protested the working conditions and were fired by Sarbanand Farms.
On February 1, 2018 the Dept. of Labor and Industries (L&I) found the farm not negligent in the death of Honesto. This, in spite of the farm managers denying him his request to get health care for several days until he collapsed. L&I found that Sarbanand Farms had committed 13 violations last summer related to depriving farm workers of rest breaks and serving their meals late. L&I had chosen to fine Sarbanand for just one of those missed rest breaks and one of those late meals.
Corporations like California-based Sarbanand Farms, growing berries in Whatcom County, with the help of Dan Fazio and wafla, are leading this dangerous shift in Washington State. Fazio is the Executive Director of a farm labor contracting firm now modernized to also act as a WA-based corporate grower lobby association and rebranded as wafla. Wafla is actively campaigning to support the expansion of the H2A guestworker program into H2C (see more about this in national actions below), lobbying for the removal of worker protections and providing further incentive to similar employer associations. Their membership is calling their elected officials in support of this legislation.
Wafla made $8,191,969 this last fiscal year, compared to $150,180 only three years ago. Wafla profits off of this modern-day slave trading program: their income rises as they contract more and more H2A guestworkers in Washington, California, and more recently Idaho. This market will only expand with the proposed legislation. Unsurprisingly, there is no language in the proposed bills that would regulate employer association organizations such as wafla.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Call WA state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (360) 753-6200
“Hi, my name is ________ and I live in __________. I’m calling to ask your office to investigate farm labor contracting firm wafla. Wafla has a history of abusing workers’ rights and with their expansion in recent years under continued limited regulation and oversight, I’m concerned about their operating practices. Please keep me informed of your progress on this matter. My email address is _____________.”
Call WA Governor Jay Inslee (360) 902-4111
“Hi, my name is _________ and I live in___________. I’m calling to demand the governor form a special task force to investigate the impact of the H2A program on farmworker families and our state economy. Last year, an H2A farmworker died in my community. That is unacceptable and we cannot allow the conditions that led to his death to continue. Please keep me informed of your progress on this matter. My email address is __________________.”
Call WA Dept. of Labor and Industries Director Joel Sacks (360) 902-5584
“Hi, my name is _________ and I live in ___________. I’m calling to demand that L&I reopen the investigation in the death last summer of Honesto Silva Ibarra at Sarbanand Farms in Sumas. The results of the completed investigation do not do justice to the fact that a guestworker died. Please reopen the investigation immediately and keep me informed of the progress. My email address is ___________.”
Additional Information:
National Level Actions
Call congress and tell them to stop separating families at the border, plus bonus actions!
Source: 5 calls
Description:
Use 5calls.org to quickly and easily call your representative and senators to use their oversight authority over the Department of Homeland Security to stop separating families at the border.
Background:
At a law enforcement conference in Arizona, AG Jeff Sessions declared that the Department of Justice would seek “100% prosecution” of all who enter the U.S. illegally and separate parents from children instead of keeping them in a detention center together. “If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law.”
Homeland Security is cruelly separating families at the border for no legitimate reason. Immigration authorities have separated at least 700 children from their families, and about a hundred of them are under the age of four.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Go here and follow the directions: https://5calls.org/issue/dhs-separating-families-us-border
Bonus actions via 5calls.org:
Demand Scott Lloyd Resign For Harming Immigrant Children
Demand Oversight Hearings Into Border Patrol Tactics And Records Of Abuse
Additional Information:
Trump’s DHS is using an extremely dubious statistic to justify splitting up families at the border
CPB and DHS have a history of abusing migrant children. ACLU report: Records claim border agents neglected, abused migrant kids
Call your representative and tell them to vote no on expanding the H2A program to become H2C
Source: Community to Community Development
Description: Call your legislator in the House of Representatives and tell them to vote no on “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018” HR 4760. They are planning to vote on this bill this month, so call today.
Background: The Departments of Labor, Agriculture, State, and Homeland Security are coordinating a dangerous attack on immigrants and our food system under the guise of ‘streamlining and improving’ the H2A guestworker visa program — by expanding and rebranding it as the H2C guestworker visa program.
On October 25, 2017, the House Judiciary Committee passed Representative Goodlatte’s “Agricultural Guestworker Act” (AGA), HR 4092. The AGA was then included in a broader anti-immigrant bill, introduced by Goodlatte in January 2018: the “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018,” HR 4760. This bill is one of possibly multiple immigration bills the House of Representatives is planning to vote on in June. ‘Streamlining and improving’ is a euphemism for deregulation. If passed, this proposed legislation would:
- Extend the use of the exploitative guestworker program (which is currently limited to temporary and seasonal jobs) throughout our entire food system: from farms and ranches to packing houses and processing plants, and from seasonal crops to year-round dairy cows and poultry farms.
- Deprive local farmworkers of jobs by reducing employers’ local recruitment obligations even further.
- Limit guestworkers’ access to judicial and legal assistance, while minimizing government oversight of the guestworker program.
- Create new levels of discriminatory bureaucracy and dysfunction, such as withholding 10% of guestworkers’ wages until they meet a complicated series of requirements, and eliminating the requirement that employers provide housing or travel-expense reimbursement.
This bill does not provide a path to citizenship for the current experienced, undocumented farmworkers or their family members. Instead, it is an attack on family-based immigration, reducing immigrant workers in the food system to individual commodities to be imported and exported cheaply for the profit of agribusiness.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Not sure who represents you? Find out here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Congresswoman Suzan DelBene: WA (360) 416-7879, DC (202) 225-6311
Congressman Rick Larsen: WA (360) 733-4500, DC (202) 225-2605
“Hi, my name is ___________ and I live in _________________. I am calling to ask you to vote no on HR 4760 Securing America’s Future Act of 2018. This act would remove the already meager protections for guestworkers and make them even more vulnerable to exploitation. If anything, we need to eliminate the current H2A visa program and start over, not degregulate it even further. Please let me know how you vote on this resolution. My email address is _________.”
Additional Information:
Why today’s vote on H-2C visas is food’s biggest labor battle
Source: Community to Community Development
Description:
Call WA state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and demand he investigate wafla, the largest farm labor contracting business in WA.
Call WA Governor Jay Inslee and demand that he form a special task force to investigate the impact of the H2A program on farmworker families and our state economy.
Call WA Dept. of Labor and Industries Director Joel Sacks and demand that L&I reopen the investigation in the death last summer of Honesto Silva Ibarra.
Background:
The federal H2A guestworker program is deeply flawed and leaves the workers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Last August in Sumas, an H2A guestworker named Honesto Silva Ibarra died due to complications related to diabetes and long hours in extremely hot, smoke-infested fields. His diabetes was exacerbated by extreme dehydration and low food rations provided while working and living in Sarbanand Farms’ company-owned barrack housing, a prison camp-like setting. Honesto’s fellow farm workers, working under the H2A program, protested the working conditions and were fired by Sarbanand Farms.
On February 1, 2018 the Dept. of Labor and Industries (L&I) found the farm not negligent in the death of Honesto. This, in spite of the farm managers denying him his request to get health care for several days until he collapsed. L&I found that Sarbanand Farms had committed 13 violations last summer related to depriving farm workers of rest breaks and serving their meals late. L&I had chosen to fine Sarbanand for just one of those missed rest breaks and one of those late meals.
Corporations like California-based Sarbanand Farms, growing berries in Whatcom County, with the help of Dan Fazio and wafla, are leading this dangerous shift in Washington State. Fazio is the Executive Director of a farm labor contracting firm now modernized to also act as a WA-based corporate grower lobby association and rebranded as wafla. Wafla is actively campaigning to support the expansion of the H2A guestworker program into H2C (see more about this in national actions below), lobbying for the removal of worker protections and providing further incentive to similar employer associations. Their membership is calling their elected officials in support of this legislation.
Wafla made $8,191,969 this last fiscal year, compared to $150,180 only three years ago. Wafla profits off of this modern-day slave trading program: their income rises as they contract more and more H2A guestworkers in Washington, California, and more recently Idaho. This market will only expand with the proposed legislation. Unsurprisingly, there is no language in the proposed bills that would regulate employer association organizations such as wafla.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Call WA state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (360) 753-6200
“Hi, my name is ________ and I live in __________. I’m calling to ask your office to investigate farm labor contracting firm wafla. Wafla has a history of abusing workers’ rights and with their expansion in recent years under continued limited regulation and oversight, I’m concerned about their operating practices. Please keep me informed of your progress on this matter. My email address is _____________.”
Call WA Governor Jay Inslee (360) 902-4111
“Hi, my name is _________ and I live in___________. I’m calling to demand the governor form a special task force to investigate the impact of the H2A program on farmworker families and our state economy. Last year, an H2A farmworker died in my community. That is unacceptable and we cannot allow the conditions that led to his death to continue. Please keep me informed of your progress on this matter. My email address is __________________.”
Call WA Dept. of Labor and Industries Director Joel Sacks (360) 902-5584
“Hi, my name is _________ and I live in ___________. I’m calling to demand that L&I reopen the investigation in the death last summer of Honesto Silva Ibarra at Sarbanand Farms in Sumas. The results of the completed investigation do not do justice to the fact that a guestworker died. Please reopen the investigation immediately and keep me informed of the progress. My email address is ___________.”
Additional Information:
Call congress and tell them to stop separating families at the border, plus bonus actions!
Source: 5 calls
Description:
Use 5calls.org to quickly and easily call your representative and senators to use their oversight authority over the Department of Homeland Security to stop separating families at the border.
Background:
At a law enforcement conference in Arizona, AG Jeff Sessions declared that the Department of Justice would seek “100% prosecution” of all who enter the U.S. illegally and separate parents from children instead of keeping them in a detention center together. “If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law.”
Homeland Security is cruelly separating families at the border for no legitimate reason. Immigration authorities have separated at least 700 children from their families, and about a hundred of them are under the age of four.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Go here and follow the directions: https://5calls.org/issue/dhs-separating-families-us-border
Bonus actions via 5calls.org:
Demand Scott Lloyd Resign For Harming Immigrant Children
Demand Oversight Hearings Into Border Patrol Tactics And Records Of Abuse
Additional Information:
Trump’s DHS is using an extremely dubious statistic to justify splitting up families at the border
CPB and DHS have a history of abusing migrant children. ACLU report: Records claim border agents neglected, abused migrant kids
Call your representative and tell them to vote no on expanding the H2A program to become H2C
Source: Community to Community Development
Description: Call your legislator in the House of Representatives and tell them to vote no on “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018” HR 4760. They are planning to vote on this bill this month, so call today.
Background: The Departments of Labor, Agriculture, State, and Homeland Security are coordinating a dangerous attack on immigrants and our food system under the guise of ‘streamlining and improving’ the H2A guestworker visa program — by expanding and rebranding it as the H2C guestworker visa program.
On October 25, 2017, the House Judiciary Committee passed Representative Goodlatte’s “Agricultural Guestworker Act” (AGA), HR 4092. The AGA was then included in a broader anti-immigrant bill, introduced by Goodlatte in January 2018: the “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018,” HR 4760. This bill is one of possibly multiple immigration bills the House of Representatives is planning to vote on in June. ‘Streamlining and improving’ is a euphemism for deregulation. If passed, this proposed legislation would:
- Extend the use of the exploitative guestworker program (which is currently limited to temporary and seasonal jobs) throughout our entire food system: from farms and ranches to packing houses and processing plants, and from seasonal crops to year-round dairy cows and poultry farms.
- Deprive local farmworkers of jobs by reducing employers’ local recruitment obligations even further.
- Limit guestworkers’ access to judicial and legal assistance, while minimizing government oversight of the guestworker program.
- Create new levels of discriminatory bureaucracy and dysfunction, such as withholding 10% of guestworkers’ wages until they meet a complicated series of requirements, and eliminating the requirement that employers provide housing or travel-expense reimbursement.
This bill does not provide a path to citizenship for the current experienced, undocumented farmworkers or their family members. Instead, it is an attack on family-based immigration, reducing immigrant workers in the food system to individual commodities to be imported and exported cheaply for the profit of agribusiness.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Not sure who represents you? Find out here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Congresswoman Suzan DelBene: WA (360) 416-7879, DC (202) 225-6311
Congressman Rick Larsen: WA (360) 733-4500, DC (202) 225-2605
“Hi, my name is ___________ and I live in _________________. I am calling to ask you to vote no on HR 4760 Securing America’s Future Act of 2018. This act would remove the already meager protections for guestworkers and make them even more vulnerable to exploitation. If anything, we need to eliminate the current H2A visa program and start over, not degregulate it even further. Please let me know how you vote on this resolution. My email address is _________.”
Additional Information:
Why today’s vote on H-2C visas is food’s biggest labor battle
Source: Community to Community Development
Description: Call your legislator in the House of Representatives and tell them to vote no on “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018” HR 4760. They are planning to vote on this bill this month, so call today.
Background: The Departments of Labor, Agriculture, State, and Homeland Security are coordinating a dangerous attack on immigrants and our food system under the guise of ‘streamlining and improving’ the H2A guestworker visa program — by expanding and rebranding it as the H2C guestworker visa program.
On October 25, 2017, the House Judiciary Committee passed Representative Goodlatte’s “Agricultural Guestworker Act” (AGA), HR 4092. The AGA was then included in a broader anti-immigrant bill, introduced by Goodlatte in January 2018: the “Securing America’s Future Act of 2018,” HR 4760. This bill is one of possibly multiple immigration bills the House of Representatives is planning to vote on in June. ‘Streamlining and improving’ is a euphemism for deregulation. If passed, this proposed legislation would:
- Extend the use of the exploitative guestworker program (which is currently limited to temporary and seasonal jobs) throughout our entire food system: from farms and ranches to packing houses and processing plants, and from seasonal crops to year-round dairy cows and poultry farms.
- Deprive local farmworkers of jobs by reducing employers’ local recruitment obligations even further.
- Limit guestworkers’ access to judicial and legal assistance, while minimizing government oversight of the guestworker program.
- Create new levels of discriminatory bureaucracy and dysfunction, such as withholding 10% of guestworkers’ wages until they meet a complicated series of requirements, and eliminating the requirement that employers provide housing or travel-expense reimbursement.
This bill does not provide a path to citizenship for the current experienced, undocumented farmworkers or their family members. Instead, it is an attack on family-based immigration, reducing immigrant workers in the food system to individual commodities to be imported and exported cheaply for the profit of agribusiness.
Contact info and suggested scripts
Not sure who represents you? Find out here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Congresswoman Suzan DelBene: WA (360) 416-7879, DC (202) 225-6311
Congressman Rick Larsen: WA (360) 733-4500, DC (202) 225-2605
“Hi, my name is ___________ and I live in _________________. I am calling to ask you to vote no on HR 4760 Securing America’s Future Act of 2018. This act would remove the already meager protections for guestworkers and make them even more vulnerable to exploitation. If anything, we need to eliminate the current H2A visa program and start over, not degregulate it even further. Please let me know how you vote on this resolution. My email address is _________.”
Additional Information:
Why today’s vote on H-2C visas is food’s biggest labor battle
