Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

12/6/01 News Report -- Bloomberg

WASHINGTON -- The AFL-CIO, United States' largest union federation, has renewed its call for the legalization of undocumented U.S. workers.

The nearly 1,000 delegates of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations voted unanimously at a convention in Las Vegas Tuesday to approve a resolution supporting legalizing illegal workers.

"We stand with immigrant workers to demand that they be treated with dignity and fairness, on and off the job," the AFL-CIO said in the resolution.

A push in the U.S. Congress for amnesty for some of the three million illegal Mexican workers lost momentum this year as lawmakers focused on tighter border security and increased scrutiny of immigrants in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Discussions on the proposal are "still moving forward" and could potentially materialize during the next session, said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigration advocacy organization.

Success of the U.S.-Mexico proposal depends on whether the economy improves and there are no additional terrorist attacks, Kelly said. "It's also going to take Congress to act on the weaknesses in our immigration system," she said.

Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar said today in Washington that while the U.S.-Mexico legalization proposal "had to take a back seat during this current crisis," it remains "high on my agenda."

Last year, there were at least seven million illegal immigrants in the U.S., according to 2000 Census data.

The labor federation first called last year for amnesty for undocumented workers after previously opposing it.

In 1986 the AFL-CIO backed the law that now makes it a crime to hire illegal employees. The law requires employers to see proof of citizenship before a worker can be hired. The system fails to punish employers who exploit undocumented workers, the AFL-CIO says.

Pool of recruits

Illegal workers constitute a large pool of recruits for unions. In 1999, union ranks in the U.S. fell to about 14 percent of the labor force, from 20 percent in 1979.

The AFL-CIO, which represents about 13 million employees, also voted Tuesday to seek a repeal or replacement of sanctions for employers who hire illegal workers. The sanctions "neither deter the flow of undocumented immigrants nor protect the rights of any workers or the interests of honest employers," the labor group said.

As part of the resolution, the AFL-CIO also reiterated the need to separate documented and undocumented immigrants who are "working hard, paying taxes and contributing to their communities and the nation" from "foreign-born criminals, who came here to destroy us," the union federation said.

At least 13 of the 19 suspects who hijacked four U.S. aircraft and crashed them Sept. 11 entered the U.S. legally with visas, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Unions also said Tuesday that undocumented workers who were victims of the September terrorist attacks should receive the same benefits and services as U.S. citizens and they renewed their call for improvement, not expansion, of guest worker programs.