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Trumka: Immigration Reform Crucial For New Economy
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The United States needs a new economic strategy to replace the failed model of the past 30 years–one that focuses on developing a workforce with world class skills and world class rights and trade policies that serve the interests of the American people, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the City Club of Cleveland today.
But we cannot talk about any meaningful workforce strategy without confronting our own “contradictions, hypocrisy and history on immigration,” he said. In a dynamic global economy in the 21st century,
we simply cannot afford to have millions of hard-working people without legal protections, without meaningful access to higher education, shut off from the high-wage, high-productivity economy.
It is just too costly to waste all that talent and strength and drive.
(Trumka will be live on “America’s Workforce” radio show on WERE Radio 1490 AM at 4 p.m. EDT. Click here to hear the broadcast.)
The labor movement and a broad coalition of faith-based and immigrants’ rights groups worked with former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall to put together a comprehensive immigration reform plan, Trumka said. (You can find the plan here.)
As President of the AFL-CIO, my message to working people is that we all are bound together by our lives as workers, our dreams for our families, and our hopes for this country’s future.
The labor movement stands for giving all workers in America the right to dream the American Dream.
And so when we talk about making the American Dream real, the labor movement stands for making it real for all of us who do the work of our country.
All of us–no matter what we look like, who we choose to love, or where we come from.
Surely there we can find common ground.
Immigration reform is not just an economic issue, he added. The way we as a nation treat the immigrants among us is also about who we are as a nation. He pointed out that we are a nation of immigrants, chronicling how his parents fled poverty and war from different corners of Europe.
When I was a kid, there was an ugly name for every one of us in all twelve languages spoken in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania-wop and hunkie and polack and kike.
We were the last hired and first fired, the people who did the hardest and most dangerous work, the people whose pay got shorted because we didn’t know the language and were afraid to complain.
And yet, he said, today he hears working people, including some in his own family say that immigrants are taking our jobs, ruining our country. But workers should know better, he said:
When I hear that kind of talk, I want to say, did an immigrant move your plant overseas? Did an immigrant take away your pension? Or cut your health care?
He added that the union movement grew not because of workers’ differences, but because of their common concerns. Today, the union movement needs to build on those same principles, he said:
Our strategy must help us be the kind of country we want our children to thrive in-the country our history tells us we can be.
Despite promises that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would create good jobs in Mexico and the United States, Trumka said, the reality is that inequality has grown and workers’ rights have eroded in both countries and illegal immigration flows have tripled.
At the center of our failed immigration policy, Trumka said, is the fact that many U.S. employers actually like the current state of the immigration system-”a system where immigrants are both plentiful and undocumented-afraid and available.”
Our immigration system makes a mockery of the American dream. The people doing the hardest work for the least money have no legal protections, no ability to send their children to college, no real right to form a union, no economic or legal security.
You can read Trumka’s full speech here
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22 Comments
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The big mistake the U.S. is making with Mexico is to lump it in with immigration from overseas. Mexicans are not overseas, they are already here and have a right to share the New World with us. The only question is how, a political question only: two govts. or one? The totally corrupt Mexican govt. is the invisible elephant in the room that makes sweetheart deals with the U.S. establishment to avoid exposure, when it’s what has to go for any permanent solution. Learn about the nonpartisan nonracist Megamerge Dissolution Solution of working with the Mexican people to dissolve their failed country in favor of full phased-in citizenship and reorganization as several new states to permit Mexico to be developed as a U.S. sector, creating millions of new jobs for all. http://go.to/megamerge
The comment by “tlwinslow” is almost as delusional as those of clueless Mr. Trumka forever babbling about the “American Dream”.
Both perspectives refuse to examine the root cause that is creating the many economic, social and even environmental crises that are impoverishing and destroying millions of people in the U.S., Mexico and globally.
The U.S. capitalism, 30 years in decline, and has now collapsed. The “golden age” of U.S. capitalism after WWII is long over. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the capitalist and financial ruling class realized that the US was the world’s military superpower. Thus the ruling Corporate elite could use this military power to secure the economic resources of the planet. Most important was to secure the oil resources of the Middle East. Thus the wars in the entire region, whiich also helped expand the huge profits to the military-industrial complex and the historic high profits of oil companies.
The fossil-fuel energy corporations, organized to maximize profit, have used their vast profits to buy Congress and Obama, and routinely ignore
safety violations and procedures, killing workers and destroying the environment, and being the driving force behind Global Warming.
The BP oil “spill” (volcano) is just the latest example of how run-amok, gangster capitalism is destroying the planet and it’s peoples for profit.
The majority of people in Mexico are living in poverty for decades, due to the U.S. ruling corporate elite exploiting Mexico. Treaties such as NAFTA and CAFTA, subsidies to US agriculture to dump cheap corn into Mexico, etc. are all examples of the capitalist relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. State run social services have been destroyed and privatization demanded. The richest man in the world is a Mexican.
The only hope for the working people of the U.S. and Mexico is to examine the lack of “living wage” jobs (starvation wages) that drives millions away from their homeland. To support a merger between the U.S. and Mexico while the economies of both countries are under control of corporate and capitalist elites, to further make more efficient the massive exploitation of all working people.
As long as the “leadership” of the organized labor movement continue to support Obama and the Democratic Party, nothing seriously will change.
As a minimal first step, Mr. Trumka should issue a call to establish a new political party, refusing corporate money and agends, that would represent the economic indterests of all working people, organized and unorganized.
The entire energy industry needs to be nationalized (socialised) and converted into a public utility to serve the energy needs of the people and not the profiteering needs of the tiny ruling elite. Only with the nationalization of energy resources will the wars in the Middle East End. Only with the nationalization of the energy industry will the crisis of Global Warming and the destruction of the environment be addressed.
Great Post and Dead On Jerry!
More SOCIALISM CRAP from Jerry Wells and more REFORM CRAP from Trumpka.Let’s enforce our laws and stand up for LEGAL AMERICANS for a change.
so•cial•ism
Date: 1837
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
Hey Doc,what do legal AMERICANS look like?
I’m proud once again to see President Trumka and the AFL-CIO hit this issue dead-on. The employers want immigrant labor—but without legal and labor rights to organize and protect themselves. There are some 7000 Guatemalans who have come to my town, Lynn, Ma., in the last 15-20 years. They are fleeing a long civil war and repression and big corporate mega-projects that continue to displace rural people. The war, which lasted over thirty years, started after the CIA and the Boston-based United Fruit Company overthrew their elected government back in 1954, and didn’t end until 1996. It devasted the country and cost several hundred thousand lives. The immigrant Guatemalans here work the longest hours and have the highest level of participation in the workforce of any group in the state. They pay taxes. To think that somehow the US can throw everybody back over the border is nonsense economically, and politically it would require a police that that will harm us all, if it is even possible. Not to mention it is immoral given the history. All folks want is a chance to continue to work hard without having to live in fear of raids, to stay here with their families and co-workers. They arleady are organizing to protect themselves on the job, with the help of our Labor Council. With legal rights and protection they won’t be undercutting anyone else. A path to citizenship and a reversal of the neo-liberal economic model of the last 30 years that Pres. Trumka mentions–that’s our answer.
Dear K2Kelly,I’m going to try and answer your foolish racial question.To me a legal American can be Black,Brown,Red,Yellow,White or any other color you might have in mind.I just want them to have come here legally and not by trompling all over the rights of the legal immigrant that puts up with a lot crap to become a citizen of this country.Why is it that you and many others are all for civil rights yet not one word is said about the rights of the legal immigrant or the rights of born here citizens?Why do we owe these people something for nothing?There are plenty of people in the world that would love to get the chance to come and are circumvented by our unenforced immirgation laws.They have useful skills and educations that will benefit this nation,I welcome all of them.The people you want to give AMNESTY to offer very little to our society.In fact they take more from it than they can return.I really can not understand why anyone with half a brain would take a stand for these law breakers.To me they are detriment to our nation.
I do not want to give anyone Amnesty!I do want employers to bear the brunt of any immigration reform.I want them to start paying the true cost of their slave labor.When illegal employers are forced to come clean on taxes now being deferred to the taxpayers like myself,that will be a start.You should be ashamed of yourself for the way you present your arguments against the lowly worker and not the real criminal here-The Employer.Once again-businesses and corporations that make billions of ill gotten profits off the backs of LABOR,any LABOR is conveniently left out of your hate filled comments.
Once Laws of Hiring are enforced and the incentive of avoiding the taxes and costs of a legitimate employee has vanished;the incentive for seeking out illegal laborers is gone and hiring will commence!
They don’t take more than they return. Your argument is fundamentally flawed because data suggests otherwise. They pay our taxes and don’t get our best social services in return. Many americans who are against them DO take more than they return. I’m not saying you’re one of them but by condemning without a dialog you’re put into the group of people who vote against social services and then use them more than they should.
Right now there’s laws that protect bad employers and condemn good workers. That’s who we want to help, the good workers. Sometimes the best way to change a law is to defy it.
Illegal workers are the modern day SCABS They work for less and Take work from the American Taxpaying worker.
The Canadians have taken over the Steel fabrication in the NY region, They are being subsidised by the Canadian Govt. The Freedom Tower at Ground Zero is being fabricated and erected by a Canadian Contractor. Enough said for NAFTA.
Dr on, you seem to focus all your energy on attacking undocumented workers. President Trumka is right. There are powerful economic and political forces that control our trade policies, our foreign policy, and have essentially destroyed the right to organize and collectively bargain in the US and abroad.
To focus your attacks on workers that have essentially been forced to migrate without authorization to the US under a system of immigration laws that are broken, is a recipe for disaster.
Trumka is correct in putting the rights of workers, all workers, at the forefront of our trade policy, labor policy, and immigration policy.
Dr on, we would all be better off if you use your energy going after the banks, big business, and the politicians who will do whatever is in their interests. Stop hating on people who actually contribute their sweat and tears to the country. The sooner you figure out what side you’re on, the sooner we can join together and solve these problems.
Once again, Mr Trumka does the bidding of his masters in big business. How has that worked out for the labor movement? I suggest he look at the stats on immigration and the labor movement over the years. if he does he will notice that in the years of high LEGAL immigration, the labor movement was at its lowest levels. It should also cause him so doubts that he is on the SAME side as the Chamber of Commerce and NAM in this. Who do you think is right and who will this approach benefit the most? Judging from the stats again, it would seem that big business is getting the better part of this policy, NOT the labor movement. I also have to remind him that the labor movement was AGAINST even LEGAL immigration back in the 20th century. During the Depression, FDR and the labor movement BANNED ALL immigration. Who do you think was right? Was it the conservatives who wanted more workers to keep down the wages? How is it that having a large pool of labor benefits labor. Have you discovered some new economic theory?
Well I am sick of illegals stealing construction jobs that were union,competing against non-union is one thing,but I personally could care less what Trumka says,anyone who supports a leagalization for law breakers in any form will be voted against by me.
Mr. Trumpka,
The illegals in the town where I live are used by Republican business owners for cheap nonunion labor. Do not try to tell me, an American citizen, the illegals are not destroying job opportunities and higher wages for those of us who live in America legally. What Republican is putting money into your pocket? Your above comments suggest to me you have a high paying job and could not care less about those Americans who have to work for $7.25 and no benefits. Without a union contract, too many American citizens are receiving poverty wages or none at all because of illegal immigrants from South America who are flooding the job market. I have worked with them at local plants owned by Republican millionaires. Have you? If you want a platform for the benefit of legal American workers, quadruple the number of border and coastal guards, stop illegal immigration everywhere, and enforce the immigration laws which exist for the supply and demand benefit of union labor. The USA does not need an illegal workforce which reduces wages for themselves and for legal citizens. DUMB! We have too many illegals and unemployed right now. We do not need any more. Secure the border and enforce the law!
ORGANIZED LABOR means just that.Labor and working men and women from all over the world,once harnessed,will control that world!
Dream on! This is America, and its supreme law is the Constitution: In the USA, we obey the law. Illegals are illegal! The USA is a democratic republic, a nation of law, not of anarchy or communism.
Read the following ABC news link about Fremont, Nebraska, a community which is taking a stand against greedy, employers who hire illegals, and put local Americans out of work or to work for poverty wages, in competition with illegals who will work for poverty wages.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/immigration-debate-heats-fremont-nebraska/story?id=10972180&nwltr=politics_feature . Let’s hear one for the wobblies?
There are hundreds of legal Americans out of work in my community because illegals from South America are hired by Republican nonunion owners. They are hired cheaply and dare not complain about conditions. That is what your illegals are doing to America. Half the students in our local public schools are on free and reduced lunches because their parents do not earn enough to be above the poverty line. Large industrial plants in the area are full of illegal workers. The nonunion roofing and lawn care jobs are full of illegals who get paid poverty wages and bring down the average wage for legal Americans.
Good lord! He’s at it again!
No, Mr Trumka. The US simply needs to enforce and expand a bit the laws already on the books. To tell people that it is perfectly OK to legalize millions of illegal aliens – 8 million at least with US jobs – and continue to bring in a million more legally a year when unemployment is nearly 10% is completely crazy!
The worst part about this is that it hurts our most vulnerable workers, many of them minorities. In fact, it’s the new Jim Crow. It gives businesses a whole new group of people to hire instead of our own black citizens. Is this “solidarity”?
And it isn’t an issue of “hating” illegal aliens. You don’t have to hate scabs or striker replacements to understand that they are replacing US workers, depressing their wages, and that they are the tools that the employers use to screw you. It’s simple: Deny the employers their tools!
The middle class in general and unions in particular made their greatest gains when immigration was low. This isn’t rocket science. A small number of workers raises wages while a glut deceases wages. It’s elementary economics.
Plus, let’s be real. Suppose we say, as I unwisely did back in 1986, “Sure. I’ll swap you amnesty for x million illegal aliens in exchange for strict enforcement.” Then the x million get their amnesty right away and enforcement is down the road somewhere – waaaaaay down the road, if ever. Can we then go back and repeal the amnesty? No. You can’t repeal people and then we will be told “Get used to it.” As the Jewish Defense League used to say: NEVER AGAIN. Those illegal aliens that we gave amnesty to in 1986 have been bringing their extended families to work in the US for years now.
And I have no idea where earlier posters get the idea that cracking down on the TOOLS of the gangster employers is somehow separate from cracking down on the gangster employers themselves. It is an excellent way to smoke out these employers. Fine them, seize their property, send them to jail. A perp walk by some pillar of the community who hires illegal aliens would put a song in my heart. Attack on both fronts. It works.
Remember, once you give in to the false ‘brotherhood’ and amnesty open borders crowd, there is no guarantee you will get your enforcement.
We want the enforcement we were promised almost a quarter of a century ago and we want it NOW.
As for how the US will fare with an ever increasing amount of cheap foreign labor, we need look no farther than the former ‘Golden State” California. Read it and weep!
http://www.cis.org/california-education
“Tax payments in illegal households are only 28% of other households primarily due to much lower levels in education, which subsequently results in low incomes and even lower tax payments.”
(Center for Immigration Studies).
Seventy-eight percent (78%) of likely voters were opposed to legalizing the status of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. with only 19% supporting it. 88% of African-Americans were opposed to legalization. Pulse Opinion Research, LLC, September, 2009
74% of Americans think the government is not doing enough to keep illegal immigrants from coming into this country, [Washington Post-ABC News poll, April 2009]
73% of U.S. voters believe that a police officer should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when the officer pulls that person over for a traffic violation, [March 2009, Rasmussen Reports]
Have you noticed what issue still generates the most comments on this blog? It’s illegal immigration. The AFL-CIO does not care about the sovereignty of the United States of America, neither do the progressives of both parties. We all better start reading and understanding the founding documents of this country and get back to basics. There are certain core principles that have made this country great and make it the chosen destination for all those who value freedom and liberty.
If we don’t protect our sovereignty by securing our borders at some point in the future there will be no freedom or liberty on the entire planet!
Ask yourself what is more important, your personal freedom to live your life as you choose or some silly union ideology?
I choose freedom at all cost, how about you?
I Pray! Yes I Pray that the Thousands, no, MORE than that! Yes, good
American Jobs, Union and not, that were shoved out into the alley
of hunger by American Companies that HIRED illegal NONunion
people from Mexico & South America and China, are being applauded
by our American Unions? Hell, it was only in the early 70′s as a BA
in Teamsters Local, protecting Women & Men trying to Organize, on
a Picket Line that illegals & Strike Breakers, attacked us, use bike
chains to smash faces sending many to Hospital while illegals took
their jobs! Hooray for Arizona! Pray for those in the 70′s who still
went through life suffering from disfigured faces! AMEN!