Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on New Immigration Deal

For Immediate Release
Contact: Esmeralda Aguilar (202) 637-5018

Statement by AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney on
New Immigration Deal
May 17, 2007

Unfortunately, the immigration deal announced today does not address the roots of the immigration crisis.  And it abandons long-standing U.S. policy favoring the reunification of families and protecting workers by limiting the size and the scope of guestworker programs which frequently amount to virtual servitude, where workers' fates are tied to their employers and their workplace rights are impossible to exercise.  The proposal unveiled today includes a massive guestworker program that would allow employers to import hundreds of thousands temporary workers every year to perform permanent jobs throughout the economy.

Without a real path to legalization, the program will exclude millions of workers and thus ensure that America will have two classes of workers, only one of which can exercise workplace rights.  As long as this two-tiered system exists, all workers will suffer because employers will have available a ready pool of labor they can exploit to drive down wages, benefits, health and safety protections and other workplace standards.

We intend to work with our allies in Congress and in the immigrant community to pass comprehensive immigration reform that will protect all workers in a humane and just manner.