International Examples

Police

Since the mid-1980s, major cities in the United States, including Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Philadelphia and the whole state of California, have adopted policies aimed at protecting the safety of all its residents. By passing resolutions that limit local civil servants and law enforcement officials’ involvement with immigration enforcement actions, these cities aim to promote migrants’ engagement as witnesses and allow them to come forward when they are victims of a crime, irrespective of their immigration status.

In New York City, for example, the police have developed guidance that prohibits officers from inquiring about immigration status of victims of crime, witnesses or others who approach the police seeking assistance. This has helped to make safe reporting part of their culture, and ensures that officers are held accountable and disciplined if they violate the guidance.

“What really guides the NYPD’s immigration policy is that we are charged with public safety and we are charged with supporting victims of crime. One thing as a police agency that would not be acceptable to us is for a crime victim to be continuously re-victimised because of the potential of immigration consequences. […] The ultimate goal is to solve crimes, prevent re-victimisation and bring justice to our crime victims.”

New York City Police Department senior police officer

One of the benefits of introducing safe reporting was the development of a better and more timely awareness of risk and crime within the communities by local police.

“For police departments in general [in the United States], the way we measure our success as a police agency is based on crime complaints we received – how many people have filed a complaint in a police station, or have called 911, or have made their complaint in some way. […] If you have a large segment of your population who is not willing or is hesitant to report crimes to your police department, you may not be grasping what is going on in the communities that you police.”

New York City Police Department senior police officer

Research also confirmed an increase in victims’ engagement with the police in areas where secure reporting was guaranteed, as non-governmental organisations encouraged their clients to report crimes.

Labour Enforcement

In the United States, all workers have employment rights, even if they work without a permit. Workers are encouraged to report cases of underpayment to labour inspectors, who use public service announcements, partner with councils and ethnic minority media outlets to make workers with undocumented status aware that they can safely report to them. Workers can report at the federal or state level without fear of being removed from the country, and labour inspectors support them to recover unpaid wages. This is seen as a strategy to tackle unfair labour practices by employers that benefit from underpaying and exploiting workers, and to prevent severe forms of exploitation, such as forced labour and human trafficking.

“The more we learn about human trafficking, about how it works, the more it becomes clear to us that human trafficking is a commercial enterprise – a business model that profits from taking advantage of workers, underpaying them, denying them rights that they are entitled to. So it’s important for us to help workers get the wages they are owed and address poor employment practices, because that’s how we’ll deal with the unfair advantage that this commercial enterprise creates in their supply chain.”

United States senior civil servant In 2011

The US Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security established a Memorandum of Understanding to “reiterate the national policy goal that immigration enforcement will not interfere with employment and labour rights enforcement in the workplace.” To achieve this goal, immigration enforcement agreed to withhold action on cases where a labour dispute was pending to allow all workers to access justice. The Memorandum of Understanding also clarified that immigration should not undertake enforcement visits in workplaces with an active labour dispute to allow inspectors to conduct their investigation and any related proceedings. Finally, this agreement established that immigration enforcement and the Department of Labor shall not “conduct joint or coordinated civil enforcement activities at a worksite”. Inspectors only contact immigration authorities with the consent of the worker, usually to help regularise their status by applying for a ‘T visa’, which allows certain victims of human trafficking and their immediate family members to remain and work in the United States while their case is being investigated or the trafficker is being prosecuted. “If you hold the victims accountable [by reporting them to immigration authorities], you empower the traffickers, the criminals.”

Under the Belgian system, if a worker approaches a labour inspector to report cases of labour abuse, the concept of “professional secrecy” removes the labour inspector’s duty to report undocumented migrants to immigration authorities. While this system has seen an increase in reports by undocumented migrants, a conflicting government policy creates barriers for inspectors conducting workplace visits. When an inspector identifies someone with undocumented status during a workplace inspection, they are required to inform the police under the justification that they have witnessed a crime (i.e. employment of someone with undocumented status). As the police share information with immigration authorities, the worker is then made vulnerable to immigration consequences. This is a case of chain referral, where, even though the labour inspectors themselves do not report workers to Immigration, a requirement that they inform the police makes workers unsafe. FAIRWORK Belgium has noted that this policy has stopped some workers, documented and undocumented, from contacting the relevant inspectorate due to a worry that reporting an abusive employer would lead to an inspection that would put their undocumented colleagues at risk.