The AFL-CIO Makes the Right Call This Time

Since its beginning, the AFL-CIO has been the champion of anti-immigrant causes. It has supported legislative initiatives aimed at a virtual closing of the border to immigrants from Mexico. It was the main supporter of what became known as “Operation Wetback,” which resulted in 1954 in the expulsion of more than 1 million undocumented immigrants to Mexico.

The AFL-CIO was the original proponent of sanctions against employers who hired undocumented immigrants. Sanctions became the law of the land in 1986 with the approval of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. In a nutshell, the AFL-CIO was not the best friend of immigrants--or of Mexican causes. The federation was one of the strongest U.S. critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The AFL-CIO, however, took a 180-degree turn Feb. 16, when its executive council agreed unanimously to demand a blanket amnesty for undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

As surprising as it was, this dramatic change of vision on immigrant labor is not without precedents among the unions associated with the AFL-CIO. The Ladies Garment Workers Union became pro-immigrant labor, to the point of suing the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for violations of immigrant workers’ rights more than 20 years ago. There were also the efforts of Cesar Chavez, who defended farm workers’ rights in the United States regardless of their migratory status.

Claudia Smith of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, which supports the AFL-CIO’s new position, said: “We estimate 40% to 50% of the farm workers of California may be undocumented.” This statement is consistent with a study published in 1994 by the U.S. secretary of Labor titled “Migrant Farm Workers: Pursuing Security in an Unstable Labor Market,” which concluded: “In effect, migrant workers, so necessary for the success of the labor-intensive U.S. agricultural system, subsidize that very system with their own and their family’s indigence. The system functions to transfer costs to workers who are left with income so marginal that, for the most part, only newcomers and those with no other options are willing to work on our nation’s farms.”

The AFL-CIO has not been the only one to surprise those who have suggested the militarization of the border with Mexico. In January, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called for “expanding the number of people we allow in” to meet acute U.S. labor shortages.

The new approach to immigration by the AFL-CIO offers scenarios of an internationalization of new organized labor forms, including cooperative agricultural production both in the United States and in Mexico.