This scenario is exactly what happened to Long Island residents last month, when ICE agents raided the homes of both undocumented immigrants and some naturalized citizens. A Times article about the raid details the alternative legal universe in which these immigrants live. Immigrants, according to the article, can be searched without warrants and aren't read their Miranda rights when an agent arrests them. Although they have a right to a lawyer, they must pay the legal fees. And while normal suspects are sent to jails or detention centers near the court where their case will be heard, immigrants can be moved to places far from their families or other legal advice.

Clearly, the undocumented immigrants whose homes were raided (although actually, there was one American citizen included, too) were reprehensibly treated, a shameful example of a botched government operation. But not only was the government ignoring the basic rights of these Long Islanders, it was ignoring a larger economic reality -- that immigrants, even undocumented ones, are good for the American economy and the American middle class.

Financially, immigrants have made a huge contribution to the American economy. According to IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson, undocumented immigrants are estimated to have contributed nearly $50 billion in federal taxes between 1996 and 2003, strengthening federal programs like Social Security that are essential to the middle class. Immigrants also increase consumer demand, generating economic growth and attracting investment capital from their home countries. Because immigrants are younger and tend to have more children, they slow the decline of the the worker/retiree ration, helping to maintain our already struggling Social Security system.

When immigrant labor rights are enforced, both immigrants and the middle class benefit. You've probably heard the immigrant horror stories -- immigrants who were fired for trying to join a union, forced to work with illegal hazardous chemicals, or denied wages and overtime pay. Obviously, the often-atrocious working conditions and lack of labor rights is bad for immigrants.

But it's not just immigrants and their families who suffer from bad policy -- it's the American middle class. As long as cheap immigrant labor is available, and immigrants are forced to work under degraded conditions, employers will accept cheaper labor and make no effort to improve workplace practices. This forces US-born Americans to either accept the cheaper wages or to be shut out of industries that hire mainly undocumented immigrants. As long as employees can threaten deportation, both immigrants and American born-citizens suffer.

This past May, an amendment was introduced in the Senate to eliminate the "Z visas" that were proposed in a larger immigration bill. According to TheMiddleClass.org,

"By taking out the bill's only means for otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants to remain in the country legally, the amendment effectively endorses a policy of imprisoning and deporting the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants currently helping to support the economy as workers, entrepreneurs, taxpayers and consumers. This mass deportation is the explicit aim of many of the bill's supporters. But imprisonment and deportation is not only a bad policy for the middle class but also a tremendously expensive and ultimately unworkable one. Many undocumented immigrants would still evade deportation, while others would continue to enter the country illegally. Attempting to enforce such an unworkable policy would further drain scarce enforcement resources."

As the DMI blog reported,

“Luckily Senators retained a measure of sanity when they defeated it by a resounding two-thirds majority, 66 to 29. The whole point of an immigration legislation package is to legalize undocumented immigrants and give them a reason and pathway to come out of the shadows where they are exploited in the workplace, risk undermining the quality of jobs in this country and are prevented from fully engaging in American civil society. Without a smart and enforceable legalization provision, this bill would do little to acknowledge the immigrants who have built lives in the US and give a green light to exploit workers while denying them a path to citizenship.”

The Z visas are certainly not a free pass to citizenship -- stipulations include thousands of dollars in fines, background checks, and work towards learning English. The Z visas would allow undocumented immigrants the chance to live and work legally in the U.S. while their citizenship cases were being reviewed.

Although this amendment failed, the larger immigration bill is still stuck in the Senate. Without the creation of a real pathway to citizenship, undocumented workers will continue to be forced to work in degraded working conditions for substandard wages, further undermining middle class workers, especially those who work in unskilled labor.

For more on immigration, check out the DMI's Talking Points on Immigration or DMI's Middle Class Toolkit on Immigration.