An interfaith coalition is planning to demonstrate in Postville, Iowa, in support of justice for workers and comprehensive immigration reform.
Conceived by Jewish Community Action, a Minnesota social justice group, the rally comes in response to allegations of worker mistreatment at Agriprocessors, the largest kosher meat producer in the United States.
Among the groups supporting the July 27 rally are the Chicago-based Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish Labor Committee and Workmen’s Circle. Transportation funds were provided by Mazon, a Jewish hunger relief group.
“There are two targets here,” said Jane Ramsey, the executive director of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. “One is a message to the government for comprehensive immigration reform on the one hand, and secondly to Agriprocessors for the permanent implementation of livable wages, health care benefits and worker safety.”
Chaim Abrahams, an Agriprocessors representative, said the company is committed to abiding by all state and federal laws.
The plant’s purchase in 1987 by the Brooklyn butcher Aaron Rubashkin injected a much-needed dose of economic vitality into Postville, which was a struggling farm community. With a workforce of approximately 1,000, Agriprocessors was said to be the largest employer in northern Iowa.
The arrest of nearly half its employees in the raid has significantly cut the plant’s production.
Agriprocessors is hardly alone. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 4,940 workplace arrests were made in the 2007 fiscal year, up from 510 in 2002. As of May, the agency had made 3,750 arrests this year.
Critics say arrests are devastating to workers and their families and can have crippling effects on communities. Jewish Community Action raised $10,000 for Postville families, according to its executive director, Vic Rosenthal. Jewish Council on Urban Affairs has delivered another $5,000.
“We think that this was a very poorly conceived action by ICE that hurt people and didn’t bring any further safety to you and me,” Ramsey said. “Who did this help? They swept into a little town of 2,500 that has now been devastated, that has a just-opened playground and now there are no children for that playground.”
Steven Steinlight, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Study and a leading critic of the mainstream Jewish position on immigration, says such stories are sad on a human level but are not a basis for making policy.
“I can’t get bleary-eyed about these people,” Steinlight said. “They’re here in violation of federal immigration law. You don’t know if these people are from Mexico or from al Qaida. They have engaged in identity theft. They have engaged in felonies. These are not minor issues. I don’t consider the violation of America’s sovereignty to be a minor issue.”