Not So Super Market
12/22/2003. City Limits
When Wal-Mart was raided by federal agents in October, it was front page news. The chain was accused of employing undocumented workers, many of whom were underpaid by the cleaning companies used by the chain. But, around the same time, a smaller version of the same story was unfolding here in New York....

Religious Procession Highlights Union Drive
12/22/2003. The Look Out News
The Posada, organized by Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism (SMART) in collaboration with St. Anne's Catholic Church, depicted the journey of immigrant workers to California to "highlight the social injustice experienced by immigrants here, all desperate people looking for a better life," said Derek Smith, SMART's community organizer....

When Workers Die: US Rarely Seeks Charges for Deaths in Workplace
12/22/2003. Common Dreams
Every one of their deaths was a potential crime. Workers decapitated on assembly lines, shredded in machinery, burned beyond recognition, electrocuted, buried alive � all of them killed, investigators concluded, because their employers willfully violated workplace safety laws. These deaths represent the very worst in the American workplace, acts of intentional wrongdoing or plain indifference that kill about 100 workers each year. They were not accidents. They happened because a boss removed a safety device to speed up production, or because a company ignored explicit safety warnings, or because a worker was denied proper protective gear....

Flash of Honesty
12/22/2003. The Washington Post
A glimmer of a change in Bush administration immigration policy appeared, not at a press conference or in a major speech but in an off-the-cuff remark during a town hall meeting in Miami earlier this month. Asked there about proposed immigration legislation, Tom Ridge, secretary for homeland security, replied that he thought Americans needed to "come to grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegals, afford them some kind of legal status."...

Calif. Immigrant Initiative Revived
12/22/2003. The Washington Post
Backers of a contentious 1994 initiative denying some social services to illegal immigrants have resurrected their effort and are gathering signatures to qualify a new measure for the November ballot. The "Save Our State Initiative" would bar undocumented immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses and most public services, including non-emergency health care. ...

Backers of Prop. 187 Push for New Initiative
12/20/2003. The Los Angeles Times
Organizers who a decade ago wrote Proposition 187 � a landmark ballot measure that divided California � are now gathering signatures for a new initiative that again would attempt to prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving a broad array of public services....

Immigrant and Refugee Rights Organizations Nationwide Protest Post-9/11 Immigration Policy
12/18/2003.
Over 60 immigrant, civil, and human rights organizations around the U.S. today denounced U.S. immigration policies as endangering, not protecting, the rights of immigrants nationwide. �Immigrants and refugees continue to be the specific targets of intensified law enforcement and public scapegoating in the name of national security,� concluded a national statement endorsed by the organizations and which was released on the occasion of the United Nations� International Migrants Day....

U.S. Considers Expanding FBI Database
12/17/2003. The Washington Post
Homeland security officials want to add tens of thousands of illegal immigrants and foreign students to an FBI database designed primarily to help police apprehend wanted criminals, allowing them to instantly identify foreign nationals who have been deported or have violated student visas--raising concerns among some civil liberties advocates and law enforcement groups that fear it will bring police heavily into the business of apprehending immigration violators who have committed no serious crimes. ...

New Hope on Immigration
12/15/2003. The New York Times
Without more detail, it was hard to determine, exactly, what Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge meant when he called for an ambitious plan to give millions of illegal immigrants some kind of legal status. But his candid comments in Miami last Tuesday, which apparently caught the White House off guard, offer the first hopeful sign since the World Trade Center attack that the Bush Administration is returning to immigration reform....

New effort underway to protect immigrant workers
12/13/2003. KUSA TV Denver
The federal government is part of a new effort to try and improve safety for immigrant workers. According to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Spanish-speaking workers in Colorado get hurt on the job at a disproportionately higher level than non-Hispanics. The agency says immigrant workers often do not feel comfortable speaking out when they see unsafe conditions at work....