Chicago, IL
Immigration has, and will continue to be, a source of richness for our economy and our culture. However, the AFL-CIO strongly opposes changes to immigration law which are driven by corporate efforts to pit worker against worker and turn the global marketplace into a global race to the bottom. In the expanding global economy, corporate America has relentlessly pursued low-wage labor. Our trade agreements too often facilitate the flight of jobs to low-wage economies, and increasingly our immigration laws are abused in an effort to drive down wages at home. Skilled and unskilled foreign workers are brought to this country to take jobs for which there are qualified American workers and even to take jobs from which American workers are being laid off.
In March 1998, the AFL-CIO Executive Council adopted a statement opposing current Congressional efforts to raise visa limits for H-1B information technology workers without credible evidence of a skill shortage and without including any requirements providing for prior recruitment of American workers, prohibitions against laying off American workers to hire H-1B workers, and assuring training for available American workers. The current Republican leadership agreement does not contain these protections and the President should veto it.
Currently the Avondale shipyard in Louisiana is seeking H-2B visas to hire foreign welders for jobs that should and can be filled by American workers. There is no convincing evidence of a shortage of welders. Avondale’s efforts are a transparent effort to utilize immigration laws to pay substandard wages and are made even more outrageous by the firm’s role as a major Navy contractor.
And now the U.S. Senate has passed legislation to create a new bracero program and replace the current H-2A agricultural guestworker program with a mechanism that would effectively give corporate growers, food processors and other employers unlimited access to foreign agricultural workers while at the same time eliminating the modest protections that workers have under current law.
A December 1997 GAO study concluded that there is a lack of evidence of an agricultural labor shortage and that real wages for agricultural workers have declined. In addition, both the Commission on Agricultural Workers and the Commission on Immigration Reform recommended that no new guestworker program be established.
The Agricultural Job Opportunity and Food Security Act would allow employers to pay less than what is required under the current H-2A program. Protections designed to compensate for the wage depression caused by the importation of guestworkers and undocumented workers are eliminated. The legislation goes so far as to remove the requirement that growers observe prevailing practices and benefits. Employers would no longer be required to provide housing and transportation for guestworkers. And more importantly, the Secretary of Labor would not have the option of pursuing an action in federal court against the employer to protect either guestworkers or domestic workers against violations.
We adamantly oppose congressional efforts to create a new bracero program and reiterate our opposition to modifications to the H-1B program that would increase the number of visas without insuring that domestic workers are protected.