Placentia Yorba Linda California School Employees Association

IMMIGRATION REFORM is a component of a shared prosperity agenda that focuses on improving productivity and quality; limiting wage competition; strengthening labor standards, especially the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively; and providing social safety nets and high-quality lifelong education and training for workers and their families. To achieve this goal, immigration reform must fully protect U.S. workers, reduce the exploitation of immigrant workers and reduce employers’ incentive to hire undocumented workers rather than U.S. workers. The most effective way to do that is for all workers—immigrant and native-born—to have full and complete access to the protection of labor, health and safety and other laws. Comprehensive immigration reform must complement a strong, well resourced and effective labor standards enforcement initiative that prioritizes workers’ rights and workplace protections. This approach will ensure that immigration does not depress wages and working conditions or encourage marginal low-wage industries that depend heavily on substandard wages, benefits and working conditions.

This approach to immigration reform has five major interconnected pieces: 1. An independent commission to assess and manage future flows, based on labor market shortages that are determined on the basis of actual need; 2. A secure and effective worker authorization mechanism; 3. Rational operational control of the border; 4. Adjustment of status for the current undocumented population; and 5. Improvement, not expansion, of temporary worker programs, limited to temporary or seasonal, not permanent, jobs.

Improvement, not Expansion, of Temporary Worker Programs The United States must improve the administration of existing temporary worker programs, but should not adopt a new “indentured” or “guest worker” initiative. Our country has long recognized that it is not good policy for a democracy to admit large numbers of workers with limited civil and employment rights.

The U.S. immigration system is broken—and U.S.-born workers as well as aspiring citizens are paying a heavy price. America needs to create an immigration process that works for working people—not a system that benefits corporate employers at the expense of everyone else.

Current U.S. immigration policy is a blueprint for employer manipulation and abuse, and both new American immigrants and American-born workers are suffering the consequences.

We say, “¡Basta Ya!” or “Enough Already!” That’s why the AFL-CIO supports a comprehensive, worker-centered approach as part of a common-sense immigration process.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 15th, 2013 at 6:43 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.