Wage theft is illegal. Yet rightwing politicians largely dismiss the problem and most systematically oppose laws to increase enforcement of wage laws. Yet at the same time in recent years, those conservative politicians have been attacking undocumented immigrants as undermining wage standards for native workers. The hypocrisy is palpable, but here's a lesson: state legislators standing up against wage theft have been able to expose that hypocrisy.

At Progressive States Network, we've worked with community groups, advocates and legislators to promote wage enforcement directly as a counterpoint to anti-immigrant rhetoric and promote a policy agenda that builds support for all workers, native and immigrant alike. In states like Kansas, Iowa, and Connecticut, anti-immigrant legislation has been derailed once the issue of the failure to enforce broader wage laws entered the discussion. For example (see below the fold):

• In Connecticut in 2007, a bill was introduced that would have made it a criminal offense to hire undocumented workers, but instead it was modified into a state law that goes after all employers who commit workers' compensation premium fraud in order to cheat workers out of benefits.
• When the Iowa Senate in 2008 approved SF 2416, a bill to toughen enforcement against employers who violate Iowa wage laws, it stalled movement in that chamber of an anti-immigrant bill approved in that state's House and halted anti-immigrant legislation for 2008.
• When the Kansas House in 2008 voted to gut an anti-immigrant bill by adding provisions to severely punish employers violating wage laws and exploiting undocumented immigrants, it led to deadlock on a purely anti-immigrant bill in the state Senate that lacked those wage enforcement provisions. Anti-immigrant politicians walked away from their own bill rather than support wage law enforcement amendments.
  

If anti-immigrant politicians resist such wage enforcement proposals, it just emphasizes that their supposed concern for wage losses by low-income workers is an empty smokescreen for hatred and nativism.

And let me say that I am more optimistic than Liza about Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary.  She may not have the same grassroots pressure on her as Perkins had, although with tens of millions of undocumented and legal immigrants in sweatshop conditions, there is that potential.   But Solis comes to the position with a deep personal and political understanding of what is at stake.  As the San Francisco Chronicle highlighted in analyzing her history and approach to the issues, "President Obama's pick for secretary of labor, Rep. Hilda Solis, could help shape a new approach to immigration control that emphasizes the robust enforcement of labor laws."

And Solis will be building on new enforcement legislation and executive task forces on wage law enforcement advancing in states around the country.   One of Solis's first staffing decisions was to bring in Patricia Smith as Solicitor for the Labor Department, essentially the chief lawyer in charge of enforcement, who herself embodies those rising state enforcement efforts.  

Patricia Smith for years led enforcement efforts at the New York Attorneys General office and then at the state DOL, where she made protection of immigrant and low-wage workers her priority.  Her NYSDOL bio notes that Smith created a task force that found some 2,000 misclassified workers and more than $19 million dollars in unreported wages, $1.2 million in unpaid unemployment taxes and penalties, and more than $3 million owed to 646 workers in back wages.  And emphasizing the radically different priorities of emphasizing wage enforcement as opposing to attacking immigrants themselves, Smith set up a Bureau of Immigrant Workers' Rights. This new agency has already moved forward to crack down on low-wage law violators, sending an outreach van to churches and community groups to encourage immigrant workers to come forward and report wage law violations. This was both innovative and emphasized that encouraging immigrants to come out of the shadows is the key to raising wage standards for all.

The point is that anti-immigrant resentment smolders across the country, partly because of racism and cultural xenophobia, but also with a greater number of people who recognize the unacceptability of illegal sweatshops, but wrongly have been told to scapegoat immigrants and the immigration system.   When progressives stand up and attack wage theft directly and demand real enforcement of wage and hour laws, the elimination of illegal sweatshops will help blunt the effectiveness of much of the overall anti-immigrant political attack.