The AFL-CIO wants President Barack Obama to give “affirmative action” to illegal immigrants who are in the shadows and to go “bold” on executive amnesty.
At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast last week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka reportedly said that he hoped Obama enacts executive amnesty that is “bold enough to be worthwhile.” When he was asked “what the labor movement would consider to be bold action on immigration,” Trumka reportedly answered, “Affirmative action with workers to let them come out of the shadows.”
According to an NBC News report this week, “Labor unions want the president to shield as many immigrants as possible from deportation and to give those who can work the chance to do so legally” because they believe enforcing current immigration laws “chills organizing efforts” by illegal immigrants.
They also want Obama to “protect immigrant workers who join a union or file official complaints about work conditions.” The AFL-CIO reportedly wants any illegal immigrant who is employed “to qualify for any immigration relief Obama may authorize.” The union also wants “protections for immigrants who become authorized to work because of Obama’s actions to prevent them from being fired by employers fearful of enforcement because they employed workers not legally here.”
Labor groups also seek protections for senior workers and temporary work permits for illegal immigrants “in a contentious workplace where immigration is being used to intimidate workers who exercise their rights.” They want to “remove the potential use of intimidation.”
Trumka conceded last week that the labor movement was “still in crisis” and said that only a bold executive amnesty would energize the left.
As Obama considers enacting executive amnesty and granting temporary work permits for possibly five million illegal immigrants, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has repeatedly emphasized the detrimental impact that executive amnesty would have on the American workers the AFL-CIO purportedly represents.
“We have communities throughout America that are barely scraping by. Tens of millions of Americans are on welfare, unemployment, and public assistance,” Sessions recently said. “Yet the White House and their Senate Majority seem more concerned about the economic demands of large corporations, or the citizens of other countries, than about getting our own citizens back to work into stable jobs that can support a family and uplift a community.”