The Senate is expected to hold a key vote today on an amended comprehensive immigration reform bill that maintains a road map to citizenship for aspiring Americans, but also contains changes Republicans demanded to move the legislation forward. We will bring you the results of that vote as soon as it occurs. A vote on final passage is expected this week.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued the following statement on the amended Senate bill:
Building a commonsense immigration system that will allow millions of aspiring Americans to become citizens is a top priority for the labor movement in 2013. The Senate immigration bill represents an important step toward building such a system—even though it has become less inclusive, less compassionate and less just since it emerged in April as the Gang of Eight’s bipartisan compromise.
By legalizing millions of people who have been forced to live and work without the ability to exercise fundamental rights, the bill will go a long way toward lifting aspiring Americans out of poverty and raising standards and pay for all workers. But legalization is just the first step: a road map to citizenship is not only about economic fairness, it is also a civil rights issue. At its essence, America is about citizenship: the right to vote, the right to serve in public office and the responsibility to defend America’s values and the Constitution, which guarantees equality, justice, freedom and fairness.
Republicans have extracted a high price for moving this necessary legislation forward. The latest price for Republican support is the establishment of triggers to citizenship that, as Senator Leahy noted, read “like a Christmas wish list for Halliburton” and are clearly designed for one reason, to keep people from becoming citizens. There is no logical connection between achieving maximum militarization of the border and letting people who have spent 10 years in temporary status move closer to citizenship. Indeed, future Republicans afraid of immigrant voters might forestall achievement of triggers in order to deny citizenship to people who have satisfied a variety of conditions, including staying employed, avoiding public benefits and possessing no criminal history.
These triggers are on top of previous compromises of sound policy for Republican support, such as enabling American tech companies to fire local workers in order to bring in less well paid temporary H-1B visa holders. America deserves better.
We expect that we will be better off with the bill than with the continuing, catastrophic deportation crisis that is wrecking workforces, families and communities across our country.
For these reasons, the AFL-CIO urges senators to support this compromise bill—even as we make clear that no further compromise to the road map to citizenship can be tolerated by the labor movement or by our allies. Now it is time for the House to act and deliver a broad and certain path to citizenship.
At the same time, we renew our call to President Obama to ease this crisis by stopping the deportation of those who would qualify for relief under the bill.
This article was originally published in AFL-CIO on June 24, 2013. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Mike Hall is a former West Virginia newspaper reporter, staff writer for the United Mine Workers Journal and managing editor of the Seafarers Log. He came to the AFL-CIO in 1989 and have written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety.
