The men thought UKBA officials would force Arefin to give them their unpaid wages and treat them as legitimate workers.
"These were legitimate workers who were here on legitimate visas and made good money, and they were disappointed they couldn't continue to make good money," said David J. Quan, a lawyer who represented ILP Agency in the state suit.
He said the department's own analysis, which it was forced to do after the judge blocked the rule, shows that 37,000 to 165,000 legitimate workers would not be able to work because of the rule.
In the view of professional sex workers and some human-rights organizations, it is not prostitution itself that harms women but, rather, the refusal to treat prostitutes as legitimate workers, leading police to repress, extort, and assault them, and making it difficult for them to obtain health services.
By adopting a "guest worker" program, we will be creating millions of legitimate workers, and those hard-pressed employers will be forced to seek out (and "invite" into our country) another illegal group willing to be paid less, denied health care and dismissed at will.
But groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the National Immigration Law Center and the chamber say the plan could lead to discrimination, racial profiling and illegal firing of legitimate workers in the same way that babies and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, mistakenly ended up on the government's "no-fly list".
If illegal immigrants all aspire to be drug mules rather than legitimate workers, then why do our newest enforcement strategies all focus on day laborers and landscaping companies?
"Sex workers, particularly those working with disabled people need to get respected as legitimate workers who do a great job.
They used a 'rights framework' to demand women sex workers' recognition as citizens and legitimate workers (Azim 2005).
