Bustamante said the United States has historically been a leader in promoting the human rights of migrants, even those without legal status, through its laws and international treaties. U.S. laws, for instance, extend even iIlegal migrants basic rights, such as access to public education, emergency healthcare and other benefits.
But Bustamante said he was concerned that the U.S. was not in actual compliance with some of its laws. That concern was a recurring theme during two days of Los Angeles meetings with immigrant advocates and others.
Jeffrey Ponting, an attorney with the California Rural Legal Assistance program, said the state had the strongest farm labor protection laws in the nation. But he said that enforcement has not kept up, as the number of labor inspectors has decreased by two dozen in the last two decades to about 425, even as the workforce has grown by 30%, including more than a million farm workers.
As a result, he said, California's overwhelmingly immigrant farm workers routinely suffer from unscrupulous contractors who fail to pay them or provide toilets, water, rest breaks or protection from pesticides.
Other migrants testified about abusive working conditions, including one Nepal-born restaurant worker who said he labored as many as 15 hours a day without overtime pay or sufficient breaks.
"Unfortunately, laws without enforcement mean nothing," Ponting said.
At the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, immigration attorney Peter A. Schey told Bustamante that new migrant protections passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2000 still have not been implemented because of bureaucratic delays. Those protections would offer visas for migrant crime victims who cooperate with law enforcement in the investigation.
But, Schey said, not one of 10,000 visas annually allotted have been granted because federal authorities still have not issued regulations for them.
On Thursday, the National Immigration Law Center and American Civil Liberties Union described what it called "widespread violations" of the federal government's own detention center standards. As the number of migrant detainees in federal custody has tripled to 27,000 in the last decade, the non-binding standards were adopted in 2000 to ensure such basic rights for detainees as medical treatment and access to attorneys, telephones and law libraries.
