Faith Community Say: Stop the layoffs of 400 OC USCIS immigration workers!

Dear friends,

We're sad to report that 400 immigration workers at the USCIS service center in Laguna Niguel, CA are in the process of being laid off. As many of you know, these are the workers who dig through, process and file the tons of federal immigration paperwork that immigrants seeking asylum, work permits, and citizenship. Immigrant families spend countless hours working with lawyers and paying expensive fees filling out and sending in this paperwork, and then often wait years with their lives in limbo because of massive federal backlogs of applications.

And yet despite this incredible backlog, the federal government has decided to shutter this last remaining USCIS service center in California(!) in order to send these immigration jobs to a lower-paying, nonunion facility in Texas.

Faith community are currently gathering around to support these brave workers as they try to get their jobs back.

More information is in the letter below. Can you please click-to-send our letter to the heads of USCIS?

Thank you! 🙏

Here is our letter:

. . .

To:
Ur M. Jaddou
USCIS Director

Belinda Woods
Associate Chief
USCIS Office of Contracting, Operations Division

Re:   Faith Community Say: Stop the layoffs of 400 OC USCIS immigration workers!


Dear Ms. Jaddou and Ms. Woods,

Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) educates, organizes, and mobilizes the faith community throughout Orange County and LA County to accompany workers and their families in their struggle for good jobs, dignity, and justice.

As a person of faith, I am deeply concerned about the ongoing layoffs of 400 immigration workers at the USCIS California Service Center in Laguna Niguel, CA, and what this means for them, their families, and for all the immigrant families they serve.

Your essential immigration workers, many of whom have worked at the service center for decades, work tirelessly, day in and day out, desperately trying to make the United States’ broken and over-politicized immigration system work. I am especially disappointed that USCIS/DHS still has not resolved the well-documented backlogs impacting asylum seekers going through the onerous, expensive, time-consuming, and emotional federal legal process outlined for them. Laying off these 400 skilled, experienced USCIS immigration workers will only exacerbate this problem, increasing wait times and clerical errors. The impacts of immigration backlogs are widespread, unfair, and unjust, including in the communities in which I live. It is crucial to be able to recruit and retain adequately trained immigration workers so that residents of my district can get the USCIS services and relief that they need.

Furthermore, I am deeply troubled by your ongoing elimination of 400 good union jobs — all members of United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1008. In addition to impacting them, your actions will weaken the rights of federal workers throughout the country. Despite your immigration workers recently securing a new collective bargaining agreement to improve the working conditions of this vital workforce, they are now having their lives placed in upheaval, in what workers tell us they believe is retaliatory union-busting by USCIS/DHS leadership against the rank-and-file membership of UE Local 1008.

The pain of these workers, and of the immigrant families they support, can be avoided if you act right now.

We call on you to:

  1. Reverse your decision to lay off these 400 vital, experienced USCIS workers and members of UE Local 1008.

  2. Honor the right of these and other federal workers to unionize without facing intimidation, coercion, or surveillance.

  3. Honor their right to a safe and secure workplace where workers are included in the decisions that impact them.

  4. Provide employment with fair wages that allow workers to make ends meet while working only one full-time job, with affordable family healthcare, and with a secure retirement.

  5. Comply with all local, state, and federal laws.


Faith community will continue accompanying these amazing workers throughout this unfair process, and lifting up their good work and message. Please make the right decision to continue to make good use of this dedicated, capable workforce in addressing what remain unacceptable delays in immigration processing.

Sincerely,


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