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‘Immigration Bill Dangerously Flawed’ |
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| AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), right, oppose immigration reform bill in the Senate. | |
The immigration reform bill before the Senate will depress wages for all employees and create a permanent underclass of workers. Instead of passing this bill, Congress should start over and create a bill that provides comprehensive immigration reform, say union leaders and a leading senator.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told a Capitol Hill press conference today that Congress should place workers’ rights at the forefront of any immigration reform plan and pass a broad legalization program, free of new temporary guest worker programs. Said Trumka:
The current system is unworkable. It has become a blueprint for exploitation of all workers, both U.S. and foreign-born. As long as this broken system persists, all workers will suffer because employers will be able to turn to a ready pool of exploitable workers to drive down wages, benefits, health and safety protections and other workplace standards for all workers.
The bottom line is that this bill is far from the kind of comprehensive immigration reform that would improve the status quo for either U.S.-born or immigrant workers or their families, and, in fact, it is likely to make matters much worse.
The Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act (S. 1348) is a compromise fashioned by the Democratic majority in the Senate and the Bush White House. It would expand the guest worker program, eliminate certain provisions that favor keeping families together and create difficult obstacles for undocumented workers who want to become citizens.
Even though the bill has the backing of some long-time supporters of working families such as Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), a strong backer of the Employee Free Choice Act now in the Senate, Trumka said:
It’s like a family. You can have disagreements, but they’re still your brothers and sisters.
The immigration bill is dangerously flawed, Ed Sullivan, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), said today.
This legislation won’t work because creating any workable solution to this crisis must first begin with, and remain centered upon, the impact that it will have on American workers. This bill failed that measure from the very start.
Sullivan says the BCTD unions have three major concerns about the bill:
- It lacks an effective and reliable employment-verification system.
- The penalties and sanctions for employers who violate the law are weak.
- The new guest worker provisions will provide further incentive for employers to drive down wages and benefit standards for all who work in the U.S. construction industry.
Sullivan says that despite the image that only Latino undocumented workers are being abused in the construction industry, the reality is that contractors “move construction workers from the Philippines, Pakistan and Eastern Europe around the world like indentured servants.”
This is how they plan to use the new guest worker program—as a tool to drive down wages and benefit standards for all who work in the U.S. construction industry.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said highly skilled workers also will suffer under this bill.
The same corporations that supported disastrous trade agreements such as NAFTA, the same anti-worker businesses that have fought an increase in the minimum wage and that vigorously oppose the rights of workers to unionize…are many of the same companies who are strongly supporting this bill and the guest worker programs contained in it.
To add insult to injury, while high-tech companies are telling Congress that they need to import more high-skilled workers from overseas, these very same companies are busy laying off thousands of American workers.
Joseph Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, told the press conference the bill is a “far cry from what our country and our workers deserve.”
At its core, this is about workers. Congress needs to create a bill that helps people fulfill the American Dream, not one that institutionalizes an underclass of workers.
In a June 18 letter to the Senate, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney reiterated that the federation supports immigration reform that provides “an opportunity for the current undocumented population to earn a path towards legal status.”
And it should uphold long-standing U.S. policy favoring the reunification of families. In addition, it should limit the size and scope of guest worker programs so that the presence of hundreds of thousands of temporary workers in permanent jobs does not drive down wages, benefits and health and safety protections.
Unfortunately, S.1348 fails each of these tests.
A Southern Poverty Law Center study, Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States, relates that guest workers often pay exorbitant fees to obtain a seasonal position. Because workers in these programs are always dependent on their host employers for both their livelihoods and legal status, these programs create an underclass of workers that employers often exploit.
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The current system is unworkable because present laws are not and have not been enforced. Before the illegal immigrants are given any rights, the borders and ports have to be secured, otherwise the incentive is for millions more to invade our country.
Our country must stop businesses from hiring cheap labor and get the wage scale back up to a livable wage. This bill does not fix our borders. The politicians just want the hispanic vote and the Bush administration just wants to please big business.
Here are some Lawyers in a how-to video in how to avoid hiring an American.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/16421
or;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enetworkworld%2Ecom%2Fcommunity%2F%3Fq%3Dnode%2F16421
The comprehensive immigration bill is a deceitful piece of legislation that distorts it’s true purpose of legalizing 30 million (the real number) illegal immigrants and allowing a flood of other ‘legal immigration’ and massive increases in guest workers (who will never leave). American workers already suffer from the effects of NAFTA, CAFTA and all the other free trade agreements that the Congress promised the American people would be good for us , add the boondoggle of House giving the President Fast Track authority and the decline of real wage and working conditions for Americans is rapidly declining. The whole purpose of this bill is to flood the market with cheap labor to increase the downward pressure on wages and working conditions in this country. The Federal Government has created this problem by not enforcing immigration laws and repeatedly giving amnesty to illegal immigrants. This has created a cycle of illegal immigration-amnesty-more illegal immigration-amnesty-… . We are first and foremost a nation of laws and our laws and sovereignity must be enforced and respected by all, no exceptions. No amnesty now or ever.
Any ‘immigration’ bill that allows border jumping home invaders, aka illegals, to merrily remain in this country and be handed citizenship is UNACCEPTABLE! Our government is giving in to the demands these bjhi’s made in their ‘marches’. These are rights to which they are NOT entitled. And they can call their little anchor babies citizens if they want but to me it’s a matter of semantics. Or a misinterpretation of our Constitution if you will.
IMO an immigrant is a person who comes to this country legally. To call these bjhi’s immigrants is to disparage those who’ve ‘done it right’! And it is NOT good for our country. It’s a major drain on our country is what it is.
The motto of my union is “An Injury To One Is An Injury To All”. All is everyone. It covers all who call themselves members of the working class.
There are no illegal workers. There are, however, phony, pro-corporate, anti-union, anti-worker laws that should be declared illegal.
How many people have actually read the over 780 pages of
S. 1348 or the 690 pages of the STRIVE Act? How many know that both of those lousy pieces of legislation contain provisions that go way beyond “immigration reform”? How many people are aware there are devious parts of both bills that would further erode the rights of ALL workers?
It wasn’t Congress that got us what we workers currently enjoy. It was labor! Labor is my partner at the dance and that’s who I’ll be taking home.
We in labor cannot embrace solidarity just when it pleases us. Solidarity is an everyday obligation. We cannot love labor all week but abandon it on membership meeting night. We cannot preach unionism, then turn around and shop at places like Wal-Mart. And we cannot say we support labor but then go off on our own tangents when we do not get our way.
Over the years I have walked a number of picket lines. I walked them with fellow union members. Congress was nowhere to be found.
It is labor who speaks for all workers. Congress does not.
Support the AFL-CIO Policy on Immigration. It is pro-worker!
“An Injury To One Is An Ijury To All”. Period!
Good job FW Rich A., but good luck preaching solidarity unionism to conservatives. The bill in question has many flaws, but the major problem I have with it is that it is being debated at all! Why should we, the working class, put up with congress telling us were we can live, work, raise our families ect. The comments here are exactly the same foolish propaganda being spread on right-wing radio. Lets look at a couple. Patriot says “before the illegal immigrants are given any rights, the borders and ports have to be secured”, as if rights were somthing bestowed upon us by congress. People are born with rights. The framers of the constitution understood this, many of our fellow workers do not. Bgordon says, “the whole purpose of this bill is to flood the market with cheap labor”. Thats half right! The “guest worker program” is designed to do just that. However, the legalization of millions of people who are ALLREADY HERE WORKING will not depress wages, in fact it might help us rase standards if we work together.
An injury to one is truely an injury to all!!!
Dear Wobbly -
Right on! I don’t know where you live (I hale from WA) but I do know I like your working class ideology.
Yup, Congress is supposed to come to we, the people with their hats in their hands. Instead, it expects us to crawl on our knees to gather the crumbs it throws our way.
Here’s a case in point: Each year - according to the Institute of Medicine - 18,000 working class people perish because they cannot afford the medical care or prescription drugs they need to stay alive. 18,000! That’s 180,000 poor folks in the last decade! Where is the war on that terror…the terror of health care denial?
Congress knows 18,000 will die this year. So does the White House and corporate America. And there is a solution! It is HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act. The bill was introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and is being co-sponsored by 74 additional Democrats in the House. That means that the other 158 Dems. are no-shows. (Some of them - and most likely all the Republicans - are probably gathering up the dough that the insurance company/for-profit hospital/pharmaceutical industry mob threw through the open transoms of their offices in the dead of night.) So…if all the lawmakers and corporate chieftains know 18,000 will die and opt to do nothing about it, why are they exempt from prosecution for conspiracy to commit wholesale murder?
Perhaps part of the dilemma is that too many working class folks forgot the teachings of their parents: “To help any worker in distress”. As a youth, when a neighbor family fell on hard times I recall that my mother would whip up a bowl of potato salad. Someone else would cook a ham, or bake some bread, or cook something else. They’d take the stuff to the distressed family. Or perhaps someone needed a lift downtown, or help with their plumbing, or a babysitter. Presto! Fellow workers would step up and lend a hand.
Alas, in today’s world it seems the self-absorbed phrase “you made your bed, now lie in it” is heard all to frequently. Unless, of course, the person that said it yesterday lost his/her job today. That, then, becomes a horse of a different color!
Here is a clue of what may be wrong back in Congress: According to the Congressional Research Service of The Library of Congress, less than 15% of Members of Congress identify themselves as blue collar Americans.
We must keep up the struggle and remain willing to speak the truth, however galling the truth may be to some. All is not lost. My daughter (43) and her family, and my son (39) and his family are practitioners of working class solidarity. They have numerous friends who are likewise involved. And when a phony - from whatever walk of life - spits out hateful venom, they are among the first to give that person the old single-digit salute.
Thanks for your comments, fellow worker.
United we stand, divided we fall. “An Injury To One Is An Injury To All”!
Senator Ted Kennedy said in 1986 ‘This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.’ except for the 1994 amnesty, the 1997 amnesty extension, the 1997 amnesty, the 1998 amnesty, the 2000 amnesty extension, the 2000 amnesty and now the 2007 (amnesty) immigration reform bill. Amnesty encourages illegal immigration and creates a permanent rolling underclass of workers. If the predictions for the number of illegals in this country are as understated as the 1986 estimate we are looking at amnesty for 27 million people. Flooding the market with this many people will increase competition for jobs and put downward pressure on wages and working conditions. More illegal workers will come to fill the positions vacated by the amnesty and we will be right back where we started. This cycle will not end until we say no to amnesty.
bgordon -
It is apparent you have not read the proposed immigration language. You appear to be parroting the anti-labor, right-wing lie about “amnesty”. Those liars pretend the bills include amnesty. Yeah, sure, after immigrants are forced to stand in line for 9 - 11 years. That’s “amnesty”? Baloney!
Lest anyone doubt my position, I support “amnesty”. Besides being a moral working class position, amnesty would allow immigrants to openly seek union protection which would result in driving UP wages and conditions for all of us.
In an earlier post, you correctly identified NAFTA, CAFTA, etc., as the source of the problem. But please remember, it was Congress, and not undocumented workers, who passed those phony trade agreements. Since the passage of NAFTA, Mexico’s working class has seen its purchasing power reduced by 50% !!!!! Folks come north in order to find jobs so they can feed their families. Since when has working become a crime?
Why, oh why would you want to let Congress off the hook? Why allow Congress - through lousy legisaltion - to escape responsibility for passing anti-worker, anti-union trade agreements?
Our natural allies are our fellow workers. The way to beat the “globalizers” is to out-globalize them with internatuional solidarity. Punishing those who seek work does not make sense. Let’s work to raise the standards of all who toil for wages. Do not allow Congress to pit worker against worker. Do not fall for Congressional scape-goating double-talk.
Congress does a horrible job representing working class America. Look at the health care crisis, or the illegal war on Iraq, or under-funded public education, or the pro-corporate bankruptcy bill. Undocumented workers are not to be blamed for the crummy job Congress has done. Blame Congress! Demand that the needs of working class America are addressed and resolved.
We need unity in order to get Congress to do what is right and just. Blaming fellow workers or denying them protection is akin to kissing the fannies of the crowd in Washington D.C. who caused the problems in the first place.
Supprt and work to enact the AFL-CIO Policy on Immigration!!!!!
“An Injury To One Is An Injury To All”.