Labor Files Friend of the Court Brief Against Muslim Ban

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has made the briefs and livestream of the 2/7/17 hearing available to the public without having to use PACER due to the high interest in the case State of Washington v Trump, 17-35105, on the Muslim ban. The long list of friend of the court (amicus) briefs and other items of interest may be found here.

Since any attack on immigrants is by definition an anti-labor action since it is labor who creates all wealth, the Washington State Labor Council's brief is of high importance and may be found here.

Quotable quotes from this brief:

"The Washington State Labor Council is a non-profit organization of 600 union locals and councils representing approximately 400,000 rank-and-file union members throughout the State of Washington."

"Moreover, as a representative of working people, WSLC is keenly aware that the United States has a lamentable history of wrongfully using the nation’s immigration laws against labor, for political purposes. Perhaps most famously, from February 1917 to November 1919, during the notorious “Palmer Raids,” federal agents working at the direction of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer deported more than 500 foreign citizens, including a number of prominent leftist leaders, for reasons that are now generally understood to have been overtly political, i.e., to eliminate (through deportation) the representatives and leaders of movements intended to improve the lives and working conditions of blue-collar workers. See generally The Palmer Raids (Labor Research Association 1948) (Robert W. Dunn, ed.)."

"For more than half a century the United States maintained discriminatory immigration laws excluding Chinese laborers and others of Chinese descent; in 2012, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution acknowledging that “the United States was founded on the principle that all persons are created equal” and formally expressing the regret of the House of Representatives for the Chinese Exclusion Acts. H.R. Res. 683, 112th Cong. (2012)."

"Acknowledging “the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation, and internment of United States citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II," in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 to offer a formal apology, and grant reparations in the amount of $20,000, to each living victim of the Japanese internment resulting from an Executive Order issued in 1942. Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-383, 102 Stat. 903 (1998). The Act stated that the government “actions were carried out without adequate security reasons… and were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” Id."

"After decades of maintaining discriminatory national origin quotas that disfavored non-European immigrants, Congress enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965, Pub.L. No. 89-236, 79 Stat. 911 (1965) Case: 17-35105, 02/06/2017, ID: 10304141, DktEntry: 69-2, Page 6 of 40 2 (hereinafter, “INA”), which finally ended “strong overtures of an indefensible acial preference” in our immigration law. John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants 77 (1964)."


Footnotes:

Washington State Labor Council statement
http://www.thestand.org/2017/01/wslc-trump-orders-bring-shame-to-the-u-s/

Service Employees International Union statement
http://www.seiu.org/2017/01/seius-saenz-trumps-executive-actions-are-an-attackon-american-values-that-will-hurt-immigrant-muslim-and-refugee-families;

American Federation of Teachers statement
http://allin.rtp.aft.org/aft-opposestrump-executive-orders-information-and-resources

American Nurses Association statement
http://nursingworld.org/FunctionalMenuCategories/MediaResources/PressReleases
/ANAPresidentResponds-ImmigrationEO.html

Teamsters Joint Council 16
http://teamsters.nyc/2017/02/01/new-york-teamsters-support-immigrants-opposetrump-
immigration-orders/

AFL-CIO’s statement
http://www.thestand.org/2017/02/attacking-immigrants-refugeeshurts-us-all/

UniteHERE! statement
http://unitehere.org/pressreleases/statement-by-d-taylor-on-president-trumps-travel-ban/

United Farmworkers statement
http://www.ufw.org/_board.php?mode=view&b_code=news_press&b_no=19078&page=1&field=&key=&n=1221;

SEIU California’s statement
http://www.seiuca.org/2014/11/21/seiu-california-statement-on-the-presidentsaction-on-immigration/

California Faculty Association
http://www.calfac.org/headline/cfa-issues-statement-trump-immigration-ban