The government chaired by Joe Biden is considering protecting undocumented immigrants who report an abusive employer from deportation, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This proposal was included in an internal memorandum that the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, sent this Tuesday to Tae Johnson, acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE, for its acronym in English).
The goal of this measure is to go after employers who hire undocumented immigrants and pay them lower wages or steal their money, or those who do not have proper security measures in place in the workplace.
The Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, indicated that he will immediately return to a policy of not carrying out raids on workplaces.
Scott Applewhite / AP
Mayorkas indicates in the document that
this measure can reduce the demand for employment by people without authorization to work in the United States, by more aggressively pursuing "unscrupulous" entrepreneurs
who take advantage of undocumented immigrants, thus facilitating trafficking of people and child exploitation.
"The message is that exploitative entrepreneurs must be careful," Mayorkas wrote.
In the memorandum, he asks Johnson and other senior immigration officials
to develop policy proposals within the next 60 days to carry out this change.
[ICE will not be able to arrest and deport immigrants "just for being undocumented," according to new regulations]
Mayorkas calls on senior officials to, for example, develop ways to motivate immigrant employees who are victims or witnesses of labor exploitation to collaborate with law enforcement.
One possibility, he says, is to grant them forms of protection against deportation.
It also requests that it be examined whether the online tool e-Verify, which allows checking the immigration status of a job applicant, is being used by employers to retaliate against workers who complain of illegally low wages or working conditions. insecure.
[Undocumented employees report the fear they have felt that their employers will report them for their immigration status]
Mayorkas also indicated that companies that employ immigrants without authorization to work but pay them living wages and offer them safe working conditions will not be a priority for immigration enforcement.
Mayorkas adds in the memo that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
will immediately revert to a policy of not carrying out any large-scale workplace raids.
