Labor & Employment Law

Solis and Trumka: Our Future Depends on Immigration Reform

By James Parks

The nation?s immigration system is broken and how we treat immigrants will determine what kind of economic future our country will have, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.

 On a live webcast, Solis and Trumka, both children of immigrants, called for reforms that secure our borders and provide a clear path to citizenship for those immigrants who are already here.

 Both said the nation has benefited and will continue to benefit from the contributions of immigrants. Solis says we must face the fact that millions of undocumented immigrants are working at jobs in the United States and they are part of an underground economy that is not paying taxes and is depriving the nation of badly-needed revenue.

 At the same time, she pointed out, it would be a logistical and humanitarian nightmare to try and deport 11 million immigrants and break up families orphaning children, many of whom were born here and are now U.S. citizens by birth.

In fact, we have green-card soldiers who are serving us in the military, coming home from Afghanistan or Iraq to find their spouse is about to be deported. What kind of civilization allows that?  That just tears apart what we know as our history in America.

In response to a question as to why the AFL-CIO is supporting legalization when so many Americans are out of work, Trumka said: The system is broken and employers are using the broken system to drive down wages for everybody.

As wages go down, there?s less economic growth, less economic consumption, so         we don?t create jobs?The undocumented workers are already performing jobs out there, but they?re doing it at substandard rates. If everybody has to compete by the same rules, everybody will do a little bit better to create more economic activity and we all start to win in the future.

Trumka also warned that working people must look carefully at the members of  Congress who are opposing comprehensive immigration reform. Almost all senators who voted against immigration reform also voted against the Employee Free Choice Act, he said. 

It?s the same people who are against any kind of reform, whether it?s UI [extending unemployment insurance], giving aid to state and local governments so they can prevent the layoff of teachers, firefighters and police officers. All of it ties together. If you?re going to have an economy that works for everybody, you really do have to look at the tax laws so that they start rewarding people for producing here, trade laws so it?s a fair playing field both ways, manufacturing policy so that you make things here and immigration policy so that the workers get the fruits of what they?re doing, pay taxes and create an economic base so everybody wins a little bit.

Solis said the effort to reform immigration should not be a partisan issue:

It should be about helping our economy, about helping us to keep our competitiveness. Many immigrants who do come here contribute so much to our innovation. Many of the businesses that have been created over the last few decades have come because?immigrant populations have started up new businesses.

 Trumka concluded by saying how we treat immigrants will define us as a nation and determine the economic future of every worker, whether you?re union, nonunion, high-wage or low-wage.

 Fixing this [immigration] system is important for our economic future and the standing we have around the world.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on July 19, 2010 (boomark / email).