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What Way Forward for Immigration Reform?

By Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Labor Notes. Posted June 14, 2009.


Legalization would increase wages and spending, generating increased business investment and job creation.
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This year’s May Day marches, where tens of thousands took to the streets in more than 30 cities, are fading into memory. But their motivation—pushing President Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge to pass immigration reform his first year in office—has lost none of its urgency.

On the campaign trail, candidate Obama promised to create a path to citizenship for the 12 million immigrants trapped in our broken immigration system. He acknowledged the need to renegotiate trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), that have resulted in the forced migration of an additional six million unauthorized workers from Mexico to the U.S.

The spirit of the May 1 marches was hopeful: legislative work groups are being set up this summer to draft legislation, which the president says is a priority. But what kind of bill will emerge, and when? That depends in large part by the strength of coalitions between labor and the immigrant rights movement.

This year’s May Day marchers highlighted the need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and immigration reform as two pillars of the same effort to reduce wage competition and rebuild the labor movement.

EFCA and legalization together can improve workers’ bargaining power. This is particularly true in a weak economy when people are more susceptible to abuse by unscrupulous employers. During the Great Depression a combination of job-creation programs and labor-rights legislation shifted the balance of power between corporations and workers, helping forge higher living standards.

In another significant development, the two labor federations, AFL-CIO and Change to Win, have overcome their division on the question of a guest worker program and unveiled a unified proposal for immigration reform.

The proposal includes five major points:

  • The establishment of an independent commission to continuously assess labor market needs and determine the number of foreign workers admitted to work. Currently Congress produces an arbitrary, rarely updated number of work visas based largely on political compromise.
  • The creation of a new employment verification system that is accurate, provides due process and privacy protections, prevents discrimination, and takes verification out of the hands of employers. Employers that fail to use the system properly would face significant fines and penalties.
  • Border enforcement that respects the dignity and rights of visitors as well as border residents, focuses on criminals, and is enforced by professional border patrol agents, not vigilantes or local law enforcement officials. (Local officials require cooperation from immigrants as victims or witnesses in criminal investigations.)
  • A legalization of the current undocumented population, which would raise working standards and eliminate the underground economy.
  • Improvement, but not expansion, of guest worker programs. The programs would be limited to temporary or seasonal, not permanent, jobs.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

In 2007, the labor federations and many immigrant rights groups were divided on the question of a guest worker program. Existing guest worker programs have either omitted labor rights or failed to enforce them. The reason is simple: employers have more power over workers when they can not only fire them but deport them because employment is tied to a temporary work visa.


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Christine Neumann-Ortiz is the founder and executive director of Voces de la Frontera, a low-wage and immigrant workers center with chapters in Milwaukee and Racine, Wisconsin.

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Could work but
Posted by: johnwinthrop on Jun 14, 2009 10:53 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Assimilation. Not sexy like diversity. But it worked for millions of European immigrants many of whom were despised for a while by the Americans who had arrived from 1600-1850.

Let's discuss assimilation: is it still needed. Is it a reasonable prerrequisite for citizenship? What is assimilation and how far does an immigrant merge into the preexisting majority?

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Tell the real truth, not spawn propaganda?
Posted by: Brittanicus on Jun 14, 2009 12:23 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
They need to tell the absolute truth and lay out the facts about illegal immigration, not distorted propaganda. First we are talking about illegal immigration not--LEGAL--not just anybody who illegally sneaks across a purposely open border. If Americans want to uncover the real truth, they need to go in such websites as NUMBERSUSA, JUDICIALWATCH, CAPSWEB, UNIPAC. To read about the illegal alien criminal activities and ominous news AMERICAN PATROL will open all eyes? You will--NOT--find the honest facts about the illegal immigration invasion in most press releases as its generally hidden from the public. Even our government doesn't inform the American worker of the facts?

For years they have estimated that 11 million are here and taken jobs legal labor won't do. READ ABOUT CHAIN MIGRATION, sponsored families moving here that--YOU--eventually pay for. Learn that the border fence is not the true length, that it's limited because of intentional underfunded and single tier. Learn about the true cost in supporting the legal and illegal immigrants. Learn about the deceptive guest worker programs, engineered by unscrupulous attorneys. Learn about the rampant criminal activities that has been spiraling, that our police cannot control. Read about the politicians who are open border, free traders who want no limit on immigrants of any kind--and should be ejected from public office.

The truth is that illegal immigrants have filtered into white and blue collar jobs. They are managers, roofer's and many jobs that Americans--WILL DO-- and now are numbering around 20 million plus. These anti-illegal immigration, pro-sovereignty, overpopulation organization--ARE NOT--financially backed by the business world, but by ordinary people? Yet pro-illegal immigration, even radical groups are backed with grants, appropriated from you the taxpayer or from private foundations like Ford. Even our own politicians have conspired against the jobless American worker and families, by giving grants to all these anti-sovereignty participants.

Enforce the 1986 Simpson/Mazzoli bill, the Immigration Reform & Control Act as enacted. Offer your support to Rep.Shuler (D-NC) on his website. Phone: 828-252-1651 and Senator Sessions (R-AL) (256) 533-0979
The majority party in office are confederates that include Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Homeland Security Chief Napolitano and a cesspool of legislators have triumphed in reducing the influence of E-Verify, Real ID Act and police enforcement and detainment law (287(g) to arrest illegal aliens and criminals. Senator Sessions and in addition Rep.Shuler, the author of E-Verify and the revised Save Act have a unceasing battle coming.

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Article IV Section 4.
Posted by: Carson on Jun 14, 2009 7:41 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I think they should uphold the rule of law and govern by the rules set forth by the United States Constitution, as they swore they would with their oaths of office.

Back in the sixties the government came into the schools and brainwashed us with the idea we needed to control the population because it was rising so fast. They said the roads would become crowded and we would run out of things like water.

They unleashed abortions, birth control pills, and other forms of Family Planning.

To allow the country to be over run with the criminals in businesses illegal labor while the criminals in the government aid and abet the invasion is a travesty against mankind.

They have seen to it our children were killed to control the population at the same time allowing the world to export their population problems here.

What about our sacrifices, many made against our will?????

P.S. We still haven't recovered from the last time the criminals in business were allowed to bring in their slaves.

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E-Verify Works
Posted by: DAD77 on Jun 15, 2009 2:38 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Westat, an independent researcher, found between April and June of 2008 that E-Verify cleared 96 percent of employees within 5 seconds. Less than one half of 1 percent was not verified because of errors in the Social Security database. (Employers can’t fire them while the mismatch is being contested.) The rest were illegal workers.

Advocates of open borders — both defenders of illegal immigration and cheap-labor businesses — have run a campaign to demonize E-Verify precisely because it does the job. It enables enforcement of the law without scenes of ICE agents hauling away poor foreigners in handcuffs.

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ED Hardy
Posted by: jiji530 on Jul 2, 2009 1:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
thanks for your post.perhaps you will like abercrombie ed hardy mortgage rates tiffanys ed hardy Is not it?

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