Amnesty May Work Against Sweatshops

Garment sweatshops continue to multiply in Los Angeles, seemingly invulnerable to eradication.

State and federal enforcement agencies have thrown their collective hands up in frustration and legitimate contractors [who could be doing the work] are living off credit cards.

Sweatshops thrive on a captive, vulnerable work force: undocumented workers who have very few options other than underground work.

A grant of amnesty [“Unions Questioning Sanctions Against Employers Over Hiring,” Oct. 12] would offer immigrant workers the option of leaving unregulated shops to work for legitimate contractors or in the service sector.

Effectively, amnesty just might dry up the sweatshop labor pool. By contrast, implicit in a new “guest worker” program is bracero-era abuse and the threat of deportation, which would only serve to feed the sweatshop labor pool.

Mexican workers are not plow mules that can be moved back and forth across the border at the whim of U.S. manufacturing sectors. We need their labor; they deserve the rights of settlement.

JUDI KESSLER

Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies

UC San Diego