Friend of Immigrants?
The AFL-CIO: Past and Present
By John Tuason
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In October, tens of thousands of immigrants rallied in Queens, New York, for the final effort of a two-week campaign called the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. Eighteen busloads of immigrants had completed a cross-country tour to decry the hardships experienced by illegal aliens and what they argued is the injustice of their legal status.
The New York event, one of several immigrant-rights rallies that were also held in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and seven other major cities in October, was meant to evoke the memory of the 1961 Freedom Rides, when black Americans protested segregation in Southern bus terminals. But unlike that grassroots protest, October’s rallies were co-sponsored by organized labor and had its financial backing.
“The struggle of immigrant workers is our struggle,” said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. “We believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
In August, the AFL-CIO joined a coalition of unions and other organizations (see chart on page 3) demanding changes in immigration law and policy. The coalition’s statement calls for legalizing undocumented workers and providing increased workplace protections for temporary foreign workers without expanding existing “guest worker” programs.
These efforts are evidence of the AFL-CIO’s strategy for recruiting immigrants as union members: advocate “immigration reform.” This means ending federal sanctions against employers for hiring illegal workers. It means advocating amnesty for undocumented aliens, such as federal legislation to grant legal status to foreign-born high school students and graduates. It means lobbying for a bill to provide temporary legal status to 500,000 seasonal farm workers if they commit to working in the U.S. for a significant amount of time over the next six years.
But this is not what the AFL-CIO once meant when it advocated immigration reform. Indeed, only recently did the labor federation reverse its long history of opposition to immigration. Now the AFL-CIO enthusiastically embraces most immigrants, including those who crossed America’s borders illegally.
What explains the change of policy? Have unions had a change of heart or are they desperate to shore up their declining membership in the private sector? As the AFL-CIO grows more and more vocal in support of immigrant rights, it’s instructive to look at its past positions on immigration.
Can immigrants trust that the policy reversal is genuine? Is it in their interests? And is it in the interests of all Americans?
Read the complete report here.
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