Labor leaders on Tuesday urged their members to back Democrats on the American Dream and Promise Act, the bill to grant a pathway to citizenship for the so-called “Dreamers” who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children.
“It is long past due that all members of Congress work together to immediately pass legislation that will give Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients a pathway to citizenship,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a message to members Tuesday, after Democratic leaders introduced the legislation.
Trumka said it was “vital” to the labor movement that the immigrants have “rights on the job and the freedom to negotiate together for fair pay and working conditions.”
While labor groups now support pro-immigration policies, in the 1970s and ’80s it generally viewed immigrants as unfair competition for domestic workers. That changed as more immigrants became part of unionized industries, particularly service and labor ones.
“For the construction industry, the impacts are particularly dire for as many as a third of TPS holders … work in the industry. The deportation of tens of thousands of skilled workers will only further exacerbate the skilled worker shortages reported by contractors and construction industry associations,” said Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborer’s International Union of North America.
Other labor leaders chimed in with support as well.
“Our union supports The Dream and American Promise Act as it establishes a permanent solution to an economic and human crisis that threatens to tear our nation apart,” said Ron Herrera, international vice president of the Teamsters. National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia called President Trump’s treatment of immigrants covered by the legislation “inhumane, cruel, and contrary to the values that we hold dear as a nation.”
