What Way Forward for Immigration Reform?

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

Though labor’s unified position against the expansion of guest worker programs marks some progress, support for an employer verification system is a step backward from unions’ previous campaigns to repeal “employer sanctions.”

These sanctions, passed in 1986, made the employer responsible for checking a workers’ immigration status. The result has been more discrimination, and a means for employers to retaliate against workers who stand up for their rights. One of the current systems for verifying work authorization, E-Verify, is full of errors, resulting in discriminatory treatment against persons who have legal status. (See Labor Notes, August 2008)

Trying to manage migration through enforcement-only strategies has failed miserably. It has also treated people horribly and at great cost. The only true beneficiaries have been the private, for-profit detention centers such as Corrections Corporation of America, and military and construction contractors, such as Boeing, GE, and Halliburton.

Labor’s proposal is definitely right on one thing: The key to protecting and raising workplace standards relies on expanding the right to organize, and as the federations’ platform says, “a strong, well-resourced and effective labor standards enforcement initiative.”

This approach must explicitly enforce the rights of all workers—regardless of immigration status—so that any future worker who does not have legal status cannot be used to depress wages or undermine labor standards.

DON’T STOP WITH LEGALIZATION

The litmus test for a pro-worker bill is whether it provides legalization with a path to citizenship. Unlike a guest worker program that creates a caste system in the American workforce, a path to citizenship provides equal footing for foreign workers in low-wage industries to assert their rights with native workers.

A broad legalization would also benefit the economy directly. Though most undocumented workers already contribute to our tax base, legalization would bring workers and employers out of the underground economy and increase tax revenues. Legalization would increase wages and spending, generating increased business investment and job creation that fuels economic recovery.

Border-crossing will carry on even after legalization if the poverty, unemployment, and forced migration bred by U.S. trade policy continue. Immigrant and labor coalitions must escalate our efforts to push the Obama administration to meet its pledge to renegotiate trade agreements alongside the push for immigration reform.

Immigration reform will happen. What will it resemble? That’s up to immigrant-labor coalitions, locally and nationally, whose strength will be critical to create the best climate possible for a legalization bill that benefits all workers.

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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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