Principles on Immigration
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| Millions have rallied across the country in support of comprehensive immigration reform. |
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and its predecessor unions have been fighting for more than a hundred years to organize, represent, and improve wages and working conditions for immigrant workers, particularly in the meatpacking and food processing industries. A hundred years ago, Polish, Italian, and Southern European immigrants worked in our nation’s packing plants. Today, immigrants from Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa work the processing lines of the packing, poultry, food processing, and other manufacturing sectors, as well as working in the retail and retail food sectors.
Our Union is responsible for representing and protecting UFCW members and is committed to ensuring that all working people—immigrant and native-born—are able to improve their lives and realize the American dream.
Root Causes
We acknowledge that economic globalization and harmful U.S. trade policies are at the root of our failed immigration system. U.S. trade policies have consequences for workers around the world. Thirteen years of NAFTA have resulted in the loss of millions of American jobs. In Mexico, real wages have declined by 20 percent, millions of farmers have been dislocated, and millions more consigned to poverty, fueling the labor flight into the U.S.
Our lawmakers must choose to revise harmful policies on trade, to craft meaningful international labor standards, and to work with unions, corporations, and community organizations around the globe to promote better jobs, living standards, and stable communities everywhere, otherwise the pressure for illegal immigration will persist.
We can craft trade policies in an era of globalization while respecting the rights and dignity of working people and their families throughout the world. To ignore these big picture issues and disregard wages, benefits, working conditions, and democratic values throughout the world, is to betray all working people.
U.S. immigration policy must be reformed to end the cycle of exploitation that exists in today’s workplaces—exploitation that drags down wages, benefits, and working conditions for all workers.
Broken System
America’s immigration system requires comprehensive reform that serves everyone who lives and works in America.
Our country’s outdated immigration policy is incapable of dealing with the 21st century immigration patterns or economic realities. In effect, it undermines the very ideals and values our country was built on, and serves neither business nor workers.
The employment verification process is an abject failure.
Enforcement activities—such as the raids conducted by Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents at the Swift & Company meat processing plants in December 2006—disrupt families, workplaces, the economy, and communities. Such raids, as well as other ill-advised enforcement actions, simply force immigrant workers deeper into the shadows and harm the government’s reputation to execute appropriate immigration enforcement.
Each year, approximately 500,000 immigrants—the majority without authorization status—are absorbed into the U.S. labor force. These numbers will continue to burgeon until U.S. immigration laws are reformed to adequately address the global economic realities of the 21st century.
The militarization of our borders has cost taxpayers millions of dollars and escalated discrimination, hatred, and violence. Border security must be made effective through a realistic, enforceable process to regulate movement in and out of the country.
UFCW Vision for Constructive Immigration Reform
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A Path to Citizenship and Legalization
Currently, an estimated 12 million immigrants provide their labor and talent to American employers. They make significant contributions to their communities, but are afforded neither labor nor due process protections.
We must bring these workers out of the shadows and create a real pathway to legalization for the 12 million undocumented workers in the U.S. today. Immigrant workers who have established themselves in the community, who are employed, and who have otherwise not broken the law should be able to earn legal status and citizenship if they work, pay taxes, and undergo background checks.
A path to legalization is not arbitrary amnesty. It can and should specify certain legal, language, culture, and community service requirements for candidates to fulfill.
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End Worksite Immigration Enforcement
Worksite programs like “Basic Pilot” and ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers (IMAGE) are riddled with problems, fail to adequately protect workers from discrimination, exploitation, and harassment, and fail as a substitute for a systematic approach to a fair and orderly immigration process.
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Meaningful Employer Punishments for Immigration and Labor Law Violations
Too often, when companies can’t export jobs in search of cheap wages and weak labor laws, they import workers to create a domestic pool of exploitable labor, effectively importing the labor standards of developing nations into the United States.
The law must criminalize employers who recruit undocumented workers from abroad or otherwise circumvent immigration policies.
Immigration reform must provide meaningful and enforceable penalties for companies that violate health, safety, and labor laws, regardless of the status of their workforce or members of their workforce.
The resources and investigative authority of the U.S. Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration should be expanded to allow for the consistent, coordinated, and adequate enforcement of health, safety and labor laws.
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No New Guest Worker or Temporary Worker Programs
Guest or temporary worker programs create an underclass of workers and engender racial and other discriminatory attitudes toward individuals who are afforded neither full rights on the job nor participation in our society. This creates a culture in which people believe that a person’s race, color, or national origin relegates them to a life of low-paying, no-future jobs.
No matter how many protections get written into a temporary worker program, the approach inherently provides employers with the opportunity to abuse and exploit workers, especially in low-wage jobs.
Guest worker programs allow employers to turn permanent, full-time, family supporting jobs into temporary, go-nowhere jobs that exploit immigrants and native-born workers alike.
When guest workers choose to exert workplace rights—the right to a safe and healthy workplace or the right to form a union—they risk losing their jobs or being deported. In effect, this amounts to compulsory consent to abuse and exploitation, and leads to lower working standards for all working people.
The post-World War II Bracero program was synonymous with worker abuse. Modern versions of the same—such as the H2-A and the H2-B—have had similar negative effects.
American democracy works because it is inclusive. But temporary worker programs permanently exclude individuals who contribute to our economic well-being from participating in our democratic process. Guest worker programs are bad public policy—bad for responsible employers, bad for native-born and immigrant workers, bad for communities, and bad for our country.
Existing guest worker programs should be reformed so that they include real worker protections—including the right to self-petition for legalization and the freedom to change jobs—and penalties for employers who break the law.
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Revise the Permanent Employment-Based Visa System
Instead of short-term “guest worker” visas, labor shortages should be filled with workers with full rights, a path to permanent residence, and, if they choose, citizenship. The U.S. Congress has arbitrarily set the number of employment-based admissions for permanent visas (commonly known as “green cards”) at 140,000 visas annually. This number falls far short of satisfying the actual need for visas based on the U.S. demand for labor and family reunification.
The number of visas available should respond to actual, demonstrated labor shortages. The new visa program must ensure that U.S. workers are the first ones to be considered for available jobs and that the economic incentives are in place for U.S. employers to hire U.S. workers first. Businesses should be required to search widely for workers already in the U.S. and wage rate requirements should be high enough to make jobs attractive to U.S. workers. Access to the program should be frozen in areas with high unemployment, and the employer application fees for hiring new foreign workers under the program should be significant.
This approach would satisfy employers’ needs for workers. More importantly, it would prevent the creation of an underclass of workers since immigrants would have full employment rights and access to a permanent future in the American community, economy, and democracy.
Additionally, under the current visa program, families often have to wait five to ten years to be reunited with their family members. The visa limits and structural delays must be revamped to end the separation of families and reduce the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country.
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Wage and Working Conditions Protection for All Workers
In order to fully protect U.S. workers, reduce the unlawful exploitation of immigrant workers, and reduce the incentive of some employers to hire undocumented workers rather than U.S. workers, all workers, immigrant and native-born, must have full and complete access to the protection of labor, health, and safety laws. This is the most rational and the only realistic approach to protect the interests of U.S. workers while at the same time protecting immigrant workers from exploitation in the labor market.
Immigration law should complement, rather than undercut, the enforcement of labor and employment laws. Immigrant workers should have full workplace rights, including the right to organize free from retaliation or intimidation. Immigrant workers should have the right to fair and prevailing wages and to receive back pay for being illegally fired. The due process rights of all working people should be restored, respected, and observed.
If these labor rights are not protected, then wages, benefits, working conditions, and labor rights of all workers will deteriorate.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Serves All Workers
Our immigration system is broken and it needs to be fixed. The current system has real human costs. Its primary victims are workers, both native-born and immigrant. All workers make hard choices and tremendous sacrifices in order to support their families and build a better future. It is the interests and lives of these working people that should be at the heart of any reform of our immigration laws.
Click here to read News Articles on immigration and reform.
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