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COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM:

LABOR MOVEMENT PERSPECTIVES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, 

CITIZENSHIP, REFUGEES, BORDER SECURITY, 

AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 24, 2007

Serial No. 110–40

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan, Chairman 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

CHRIS CANNON, Utah 

RIC KELLER, Florida 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PERRY APELBAUM, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

JOSEPH GIBSON, Minority Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP, REFUGEES,

BORDER SECURITY, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

ZOE LOFGREN, California, Chairwoman

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas

UR MENDOZA JADDOU, Chief Counsel 

GEORGE FISHMAN, Minority Counsel 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

MAY 24, 2007

Page 

OPENING STATEMENT 

The Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California, and Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, 

Refugees, Border Security, and International Law ........................................... 1

The Honorable Steve King, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Iowa, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, 

Refugees, Border Security, and International Law ........................................... 3

WITNESSES 

Mr. Jonathan Hiatt, General Counsel, American Federation of Labor and 

Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 7

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 10

Mr. Fred Feinstein, Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor, University of Maryland, Representing SEIU and UNITE HERE 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 26

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 27

Mr. Michael J. Wilson, International Vice President and Director, Legislative 

and Political Action Department, United Food and Commercial Workers 

International Union (UFCW) 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 31

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 33

Mr. Bruce Goldstein, Executive Director, Farmworker Justice, on behalf of 

Mr. Marcos Camacho, General Counsel, United Farm Workers of America 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 36

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 38

Mr. Vernon Briggs, Ph.D., Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 40

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 42

Mr. Greg Serbon, State Director, Indiana Federation for Immigration Reform 

and Enforcement 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 48

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 49

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, and Chairwoman, Subcommittee on 

Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International 

Law ........................................................................................................................ 2

Prepared Statement of the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative 

in Congress from the State of Michigan, Chairman, Committee on the 

Judiciary, and Member, Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law ................................................... 5

Page

IV

APPENDIX 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

‘‘The AFL-CIO’s Model for ‘Future Flow’: Foreign Workers Must Have Full 

Rights,’’ submitted by Jonathan Hiatt, General Counsel, American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) ................... 70

‘‘Q&As on AFL-CIO’s Immigration Policy,’’ submitted by Jonathan Hiatt, 

General Counsel, American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial 

Organizations (AFL-CIO) .................................................................................... 73

‘‘AFL-CIO Executive Council Statement: Responsible Reform of Immigration 

Laws Must Protect Working Conditions for all Workers in the U.S.,’’ submitted by Jonathan Hiatt, General Counsel, American Federation of Labor 

& Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) .......................................... 78

‘‘Fundamental Worker Protections in Foreign Temporary Worker Programs’’ 

by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, May 2007 ................................ 82

‘‘Graft Mars the Recruitment of Mexican Guest Workers’’ by Elisabeth 

Malkin, The New York Times, May 24, 2007, page 3 ........................................ 84

‘‘Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States,’’ by Mary 

Bauer, the Southern Poverty Law Center, 2007 ............................................... 87

Prepared Statement of Terence M. O’Sullivan, Laborers’ International Union 

of North America (LIUNA) General President, May 24, 2007 ......................... 137

(1)

COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM: 

LABOR MOVEMENT PERSPECTIVES 

THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP, REFUGEES, BORDER SECURITY, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:15 a.m., in Room 

2142, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Zoe Lofgren 

(Chairwoman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Lofgren, Gutierrez, Berman, Jackson 

Lee, Delahunt, Sa ́nchez, Ellison, Conyers, and Gallegly. 

Staff Present: Ur Mendoza Jaddou, Chief Counsel; J. Traci Hong, 

David Shahoulian, Majority Counsel; George Fishman, Minority 

Counsel; and Benjamin Staub, Professional Staff Member. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The hearing of the Subcommittee on Immigration, 

Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law will 

come to order. 

I would like to welcome the Immigration Subcommittee Members, our witnesses, and members of the public who are here today 

for the subcommittee’s 13th hearing on comprehensive immigration 

reform. 

Our series of hearings on comprehensive immigration reform 

began at Ellis Island where we examined the need for comprehensive immigration reform to secure our borders, to address economic 

and demographic concerns; and there we reviewed our Nation’s rich 

immigrant history. We have studied immigration reform from 1986 

and 1996 in the effort to avoid the mistakes of the past. We have 

considered the problems with and have proposed solutions for our 

current employment and worksite verification system. In light of 

the recent Senate immigration agreement to eliminate family priorities in immigration and replace those priorities with a completely 

new point system, we have studied the contributions of family immigrants to America and various immigration point systems used 

around the world. We have explored the costs of immigration on 

our States and localities, and last week we had two hearings to explore the importance of immigrant integration and the future of 

undocumented immigrant students in the United States. 

This week we have turned our attention to organizations and individuals who represent the vast majority of individuals who will 

be directly affected by comprehensive immigration reform. This 

past Tuesday we heard from faith-based and immigrant communities. And today we will explore the positions and viewpoints of 

2

labor unions, especially in light of the recent action in the Senate 

that yielded an immigration agreement being debated there this 

week. 

The legislative proposals for comprehensive immigration reform 

currently being considered in the Senate would allow for the temporary entry of hundreds of thousands of new foreign workers into 

the U.S. labor force. As such, U.S. workers and labor unions who 

represent those workers have a stake in the debate in which to ensure that any enacted legislation addresses the issue of safeguarding the welfare of U.S. workers. 

The subcommittee has held two hearings, one called by the majority and one by the minority, on the impact of foreign workers on 

the Nation’s economy and workforce. The subcommittee, however, 

has not yet been afforded the opportunity to hear from you. Perhaps more importantly, the subcommittee has not had the opportunity to review the history of temporary worker programs and the 

state of current labor protections within the Immigration and Nationality Act. A better understanding of current labor protections 

and the effect of foreign workers in different industries will help 

the subcommittee in its consideration of comprehensive immigration reform. 

So we thank you, distinguished witnesses, for being here today 

to help us sort through what is a complex and extremely important 

issue. 

I would now like to recognize our Ranking Member, Congressman King, for his opening statement. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Lofgren follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ZOE LOFGREN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, AND CHAIRWOMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON

IMMIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP, REFUGEES, BORDER SECURITY, AND INTERNATIONAL

LAW

I would like to welcome the Immigration Subcommittee Members, our witnesses, 

and members of the public to the Subcommittee’s thirteenth hearing on comprehensive immigration reform. 

Our series of hearings on comprehensive immigration reform began at Ellis Island, where we examined the need for comprehensive immigration reform to secure 

our borders, to address economic and demographic concerns, and there we reviewed 

our nation’s rich immigrant history. We have studied immigration reform from 1986 

and 1996 in an effort to avoid the mistakes of the past. We’ve considered the problems with and proposed solutions for our current employment and worksite 

verification system. In light of the recent Senate immigration agreement to eliminate family priorities in immigration and replace those priorities with a completely 

new and untested point system, we studied the contributions of family immigrants 

to America and various immigration point systems used around the world. We have 

explored the costs of immigration on our states and localities. Last week, we had 

two hearings to explore the importance of immigrant integration and the future of 

undocumented immigrant students in the United States. 

This week we turn our attention to organizations and individuals who represent 

the vast majority of individuals who will be directly affected by comprehensive immigration reform. 

This past Tuesday, we heard from the faith based and immigrant communities. 

Today, we will explore the positions and viewpoints of labor unions, especially in 

light of recent action in the Senate yielding an immigration agreement being debated in the Senate this week. 

The legislative proposal for comprehensive immigration reform that is currently 

being considered in the Senate would allow for the temporary entry of hundreds of 

thousands of new foreign workers into the U.S. labor force. As such, U.S. workers 

and the labor unions that represent those workers have a stake in the debate and 

3

wish to ensure that any enacted legislation addresses the issue of safeguarding the 

welfare of U.S. workers. 

The Subcommittee has held two hearings, one called by the majority and one by 

the minority, on the impact of foreign workers on the nation’s economy and workforce. 

The Subcommittee, however, has not yet been afforded the opportunity to hear 

from labor unions. Perhaps more importantly, the Subcommittee has not had the 

opportunity to review the history of temporary worker programs or the state of current labor protections within the Immigration and Nationality Act. A better understanding of current labor protections and of the effect of foreign workers in different 

industries will help the Subcommittee in its consideration of comprehensive immigration reform. 

Thank you again to our distinguished witnesses for being here today to help us 

sort through what is a complex and very important issue.

Mr. KING. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank you for this 

hearing today. 

I thank the witnesses for appearing before this panel, and I understand, to a significant degree, the hoops that some of you have 

to jump through, from perhaps missing a red-eye flight to getting 

an early wake-up call. And I think the public does not appreciate 

the sacrifice that you all make for an opportunity to be able to 

speak some words into the public record. What we need to do here 

is listen to that input and evaluate it. So let me start off by quoting 

Cornell University Professor Vernon Briggs. 

We do listen when you come here, Professor. 

In one of those statements, it says—this is a quote—‘‘Samuel 

Gompers was chosen as President of the new American Federation 

of Labor in 1886, and with the exception of 1 year, he held that 

office until he died 38 years later, in 1924. Gompers was himself 

a Jewish immigrant from England, as were many of the members 

and leaders of the unions affiliated with the AFL. From his earlier 

days of involvement in his own craft union, the Cigar Makers, 

Gompers became intimately aware of immigrants’ adverse effects 

on its members’ wages and employment opportunities. Indeed, it 

was his own union that in 1872 introduced in San Francisco the 

usage of the union label to distinguish for the consumers the best 

cigars produced by workers employed under a union agreement 

from those manmade by nonunion immigrant workers.’’

That was an original view on where the song came from that Al 

Gore grew up singing, ‘‘look for the union label.’’

‘‘Thus, despite his own immigrant roots, Gompers recognized that 

organized labor’s first responsibility was to protect the economic 

well-being of workers and not immigrants per se, and that is when 

there was a conflict in their respective interests,’’ close quote. 

What a difference 100 years make. In fact, what a difference 20 

or 21 years make. American unions were some of the strongest supporters of employers’ sanctions that were enacted as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Yet now, unions are 

fairly unanimously seeking amnesty for 12 to 20 or more million 

illegal immigrants in America. 

I hope to learn more at this hearing about why America’s labor 

movement has reversed course and no longer believes that mass 

levels of immigration hurt rank-and-file members. We will hear 

from a rank-and-file member about what he thinks about the decisions of union leaders. When there is an excess of supply, of labor, 

employers are able to cut wages. Illegal immigrants and large-scale 

4

temporary worker programs can reduce wages and take jobs from 

both citizens and legal immigrants. The illegal immigration largely 

impacts low-skilled Americans, and guest worker programs can impact higher-skilled Americans, but let us focus on low-skilled Americans who would be most severely impacted by amnesty. 

A study by Harvard economist George Borjas shows that cheap 

immigrant labor has reduced by 7.4 percent the wages of American 

workers performing low-skilled jobs. A report by the Center for Immigration Studies concludes that immigration may reduce the 

wages of the average native in a low-skilled occupation by $1,915 

per year, on average. 

Contrary to the assertion that Americans will not take lowskilled jobs, Americans in fact do these jobs every day. Some claim 

that illegal immigrants are doing jobs that Americans will not do, 

but when an illegal immigrant finds a job here, that does not mean 

that no Americans will take the job. In fact, 79 percent of all service workers are native-born, as are 68 percent of all workers in jobs 

requiring no more than a high school education. Illegal immigrants 

make up only 17 percent of workers in building cleaning and maintenance occupations, 14 percent of private household workers, 13 

percent of accommodation industry workers; they make up only 13 

percent of food manufacturing and industry workers, 12 percent of 

the workers in construction and extraction occupations, and only 11 

percent of workers in food preparation and serving occupations and 

8 percent of workers in production occupations. 

We must put citizens and legal immigrants first. Americans need 

these jobs: 17 million adult citizens do not have a high school degree, 1.3 million are unemployed, and 6.8 million have given up 

looking for jobs. The percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds holding jobs 

in the United States is now at its lowest point since 1948. And of 

those who are simply not in the workforce, of working age, there 

are 69 million Americans to recruit these 7 million to replace the 

illegal workers from. Rather than legalize illegal immigrants, we 

should enforce the laws on the books. That will reduce illegal immigration, increase wages, and make many jobs more attractive to 

American workers. 

The result of a large low-skilled immigrant workforce is that the 

most vulnerable Americans must compete with those illegal immigrants for jobs. Illegal immigrants deprive American citizens and 

legal immigrants of the same American dream. That is wrong and 

regrettable. 

I look forward to some enlightenment on how it is that the 

unions in this country can think that you could suspend the law 

of supply and demand with regard to that most valuable commodity of labor, and flood the marketplace and expect that you can 

keep wages and benefits up for the workers who you are pledged 

to protect. 

With that, Madam Chairman, I would yield back the balance of 

my time. 

The gentleman yields back. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Other Members of the Committee, by unanimous 

consent, will put any opening statements they have in the record, 

and we will reserve the opportunity for the Chairman of the ComVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:35 Sep 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\IMMIG\052407\35605.000 HJUD1 PsN: 35605
5

mittee and for the Ranking Member of the full Committee, when 

they arrive, to deliver their statements. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Conyers follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN CONYERS, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDI- CIARY, AND MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP, REFUGEES, BORDER SECURITY, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

We have heard in two prior hearings about the effect of immigration on U.S. 

workers. Before we proceed, I would like to summarize those hearings. 

Some economists say immigration has a great effect; some say it is minimal. Some 

say that immigration is wonderful, while their opponents seem to claim that every 

immigration program is an amnesty that hurts American workers. Some say that 

immigration reform is necessary because it is in keeping with our Civil Rights traditions, while others doubt that new immigrant communities will ever assimilate, and 

in fact might spell the end for America. 

We have heard some new voices cry out for protection of African-American jobs. 

But those voices are not necessarily ones we hear on other critical issues like full 

employment, education, and the jailing of our young men. It bears repeating: the 

legitimate interest in protecting American workers must not be used illegitimately 

to drive wedges among ethnic groups. We have seem the advertisements and heard 

the example that jobs in one African-American community were now going to immigrants. But which immigrants? Haitians and Jamaicans. I and others have fought 

hard to ensure that immigration policies are fair to Caribbeans and Africans; driving wedges among the various Black communities in the name of derailing immigration reform is not in the spirit of our work or of the Civil Rights movement. 

For those who profess concern about American jobs, you need to be identifying 

pragmatic solutions, not just crying ‘‘amnesty’’ and opposing the hard and necessary 

challenge of immigration reform. We need more serious and innovative proposals 

such as that put forth by Ms. Jackson-Lee to use immigration fees to fund job training programs. This proposal takes us out of the think tanks and into the real world. 

That’s why today’s hearing is so important. Today, we have a chance to hear 

about some of the real-world solutions to the need to protect workers from exploitation and abuse, from the very entities who exist to give workers a voice. I am 

proud to welcome the representatives from organized labor today. 

Much of the debate over immigration has centered on guestworker programs and 

legalization, and I look forward to hearing the panel’s thoughts on these issues. 

First, the undocumented: There are about 7.2 million unauthorized workers, representing about 4.9% of the labor force. In certain industries, there is a higher share 

14% in food manufacturing, 13% of agricultural workers, and 12% of construction 

workers. Thus, many workers in industries represented by our panel are undocumented and unprotected. Bringing them out of the shadows can enable these unions 

to perform their traditional roles of protecting and organizing the workers. We have 

heard that unions were critical players in assimilating immigrants into American 

society. How best can we structure a program that will meet the needs of both the 

economy and the workers? 

And then there is the issue of the guestworker programs. All agree that such programs should not create a permanent underclass. I understand that there is some 

disagreement on how best to avoid that, and I am interested in hearing the various 

viewpoints. 

Some important questions occur when thinking about guestworker programs:

How can we ensure that there are meaningful protections against worker exploitation, including mistreatment all the way to the level of involuntary servitude?

What kind of protections should be put in place to guard against false promises 

or abuse by labor brokers as well as bad apple employers?

What should the role of organized labor be with these workers? We already 

have guestworker programs—how can they be improved?

Does it make sense—whether for the worker, the employer, or our country—to 

have arbitrary rules requiring workers to go home or to skip a year of employment?

Is restricting guestworkers’ ability to come in with family a positive restriction, 

or will it create isolation and even encourage illegal immigration?

Should there be a path toward eventual legal status or citizenship? Should 

there be some credit toward such programs?

6

What kind of safeguards could be built in to ensure that these workers are not 

being used to undercut organizing efforts or to drive down wages?

Again, I welcome the panelists, and look forward to today’s discussion.

Ms. LOFGREN. In the interest of proceeding to our witnesses, I 

am happy to introduce you all. We have a distinguished panel of 

witnesses today. 

I am first pleased to extend our welcome to Jonathan Hiatt, General Counsel of the AFL-CIO. Mr. Hiatt has served in this capacity 

since his appointment in 1995 by the Federation’s President, John 

Sweeney. Prior to his work as General Counsel, Mr. Hiatt served 

for 8 years as the General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union. He directs the AFL-CIO’s lawyers’ coordinating 

committee, and he sits on several boards of directors, including 

those of the National Employment Law Project and the D.C. Employment Justice Center. He earned his bachelor’s degree from 

Harvard College and his law degree in my area, at the University 

of California-Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. 

Next I am pleased to introduce Fred Feinstein, Senior Fellow and 

Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland, today representing SEIU and UNITE HERE. Mr. Feinstein formerly worked 

as a General Counsel at the National Labor Relations Board and 

prior to his work at the Labor Relations Board. Mr. Feinstein 

served as the Chief Labor Counsel and Staff Director of the House’s 

Labor Management Relations Subcommittee for a total of 17 years. 

He was a lead staffer on the Family Medical Leave Act and the 

Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Among his 

many other distinguished teaching posts, he was an elementary 

public school teacher in East Harlem, New York. He earned his 

bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and his law degree 

from Rutgers Law School. 

I would like next to welcome Michael Wilson, the Legislative Political Affairs Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers 

International Union, the UFCW. Mr. Wilson has served in this capacity at the UFCW since 2005, having served as the union’s chief 

lobbyist for 6 years. Within former President Clinton’s administration, he served as the Chief of Staff for the Assistant Secretary of 

Labor of the Employment Standards Administration and as a Senior Legislative Officer in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs at the Labor Department. In the early years of 

his career, he served as a legislative and press assistant for former 

Congressman Charles Hayes of Illinois. 

We have a substitution. Unfortunately, Marcos Camacho, the 

General Counsel for the United Farm Workers of America, had a 

disruption on his flight, and so he did not land at Dulles this morning. Bruce Goldstein, the Executive Director of the Farm Worker 

Justice Group, is here in his stead to submit his statement. Bruce 

Goldstein joined the Farm Worker Justice Group as a staff attorney in 1988, and then he served as co-Executive Director starting 

in September 1995, when he was named Executive Director in July 

of 2005. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1977 from the New 

York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University and his law degree from Washington University in St. 

Louis. He has worked at the National Labor Relations Board; at a 

legal services office in East St. Louis, Illinois; and in private law 

7

practice—concentrating in labor law, personal injury, and civil 

rights. We thank you for your attendance. 

Finally, I would like to welcome our minority party’s witnesses, 

the first of whom is Dr. Vernon Briggs, Emeritus Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell. A prolific university scholar, Dr. Briggs has served as an advisor to a host of Federal agencies, among them the Department of Labor; the Department of 

Health, Education, and Welfare; and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He has served as a board member of the Center for Immigration Studies since 1987. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the 

University of Maryland and his master’s and doctorate degrees 

from Michigan State University. This is Dr. Briggs’ second appearance before this subcommittee on the topic of comprehensive immigration reform. We welcome you back. 

We also have Greg Serbon with us, the State Director of the Indiana Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement. Mr. 

Serbon was a member of the Teamsters Union, Local 738, in Chicago, Illinois from 1981 to 1987. He has been a member of the 

Pipefitters Local 597 in Chicago from 1988 to the present, and 

since 2004 he has directed Indiana’s Federation for Immigration 

Reform and Enforcement. 

As I believe all of you have been advised, your entire statements 

will be made part of our official record. We would ask that you 

summarize your testimony in about 5 minutes. There are little machines on the desk. When the light turns yellow, it means you have 

only 1 minute to go, and when the light turns red, it means you 

have actually used 5 minutes. This always comes as a surprise because the time just runs, but we would ask that you try and wrap 

up when the time is up. 

I am just very pleased to be here. I was thinking, as I was looking at you, that my grandfather, who was an immigrant, was a 

Teamster his whole life, and my father was Recording Secretary of 

his Local 888 in California, and my mom’s dad was a machinist, 

and my grandmother was a machinist. What you talk about today 

means a great deal to me, personally, and I think to the country 

generally. 

So let us begin with you, Mr. Hiatt. 

TESTIMONY OF JONATHAN HIATT, GENERAL COUNSEL, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS (AFL-CIO) 

Mr. HIATT. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman and Members of the Committee. Thank you again for this opportunity. We 

have been invited to share the labor movement’s perspective, so I 

intend to focus on the areas of immigration policy that have the 

greatest impact on workers. 

The AFL-CIO has called on Congress to legalize the status of the 

growing undocumented immigrant workforce, which as long as it 

exists in the shadows is negatively impacting all workers, foreignand U.S.-born. We have also strongly opposed the perpetuation of 

the inherently abusive temporary guest worker programs. We have 

advanced this position both because it is morally just and humane 

and because current policies have brought about a two-tiered workforce consisting of one class of permanent U.S. residents with full 

8

workplace rights and another of undocumented and temporary 

guest workers with few workplace protections of any kind. These 

policies have offered employers a ready pool of exploitable labor in 

this country and depressed wages, benefits, health and safety protections, and other labor standards for everyone else. Let me offer 

you a couple of examples as to how this occurs. 

In 2005, a group of temporary worker program construction 

workers in North Carolina who had been raising health and safety 

concerns received a flyer at work instructing them to attend a mandatory health and safety meeting. The flyer was printed on OSHA 

letterhead, but when they arrived at the meeting, there were no 

OSHA officials present. Instead, ICE officials were waiting. They 

arrested more than 20 workers and placed them into deportation 

proceedings. 

More recently, a group of forestry workers in Virginia who had 

been brought into the country under the H-2B guest worker program, filed a complaint alleging violations of minimum wage and 

overtime laws as well as State claims relating to their housing conditions. They had been forced to live in a warehouse surrounded by 

barbed wire. They were locked into the warehouse at night. They 

had substantial portions of their paychecks deducted to cover for 

this housing. During the plaintiffs’ depositions, the police, together 

with the employer, called the DHS, whose agents arrived at the facility about 2 hours later. Ultimately, the plaintiffs were able to 

convince DHS that this was a labor dispute in which it should not 

be involved, and the agents left. But in both of these examples, you 

can imagine the chilling effect of the employer’s actions that was 

felt by all of the workers. 

These scenarios are not uncommon. Undocumented and guest 

worker status have given employers a powerful tool to use in their 

attempts to repress worker rights. A recent report by Human 

Rights Watch, that we put into the record, that focused on the 

meatpacking industry, shows that employers commonly take advantage of workers’ fear of drawing attention to their status, just 

to keep workers in abusive conditions that violate basic human and 

labor rights. 

So the labor movement recognizes that comprehensive immigration reform is long overdue, but we fear that the legislative proposals that are pending before Congress do not address the root 

problems and would only make matters worse. Instead, we believe 

that the answer to the immigration crisis is to reform immigration 

law in a way that places worker rights at the forefront and would 

remove the economic incentives to exploit immigrant workers that 

are currently driving illegal migration. Our approach has three 

core principles: 

One, the law has to provide a fair and effective mechanism by 

which the roughly 12 million undocumented workers in the country 

today can regularize their status. Two, foreign workers in the future must come into the U.S. with full and equal access to workplace protections through the permanent visa system. Three, enforcement of labor laws must go hand in hand with enforcement of 

immigration laws. 

All three of these principles are addressed at some length in my 

written testimony, as are the fundamental worker protections that 

9

we believe must be built into any temporary worker program, 

whether the existing H programs or any other version. 

So let me just conclude with a brief explanation about our position on future flow, itself. 

We recognize that even with the legalization of the current undocumented population, there will continue to be a need from time 

to time, in discrete sectors and in varying locations, for workers beyond those available and willing to work at prevailing wages and 

working conditions domestically. We do not agree, however, that 

such needs, especially for permanent work as opposed to seasonal 

or short-term jobs, should be met through the guest worker programs or what are now being called by some ‘‘temporary worker 

visa programs.’’

Proponents of these programs claim that we need guest workers 

to do the jobs that Americans will not do. However, the reality is 

that there are no jobs that Americans will not do if the wages and 

working conditions are adequate. Of the BLS’ 473 occupational titles, only four today are even majority foreign-born, and even in 

the low-wage sectors—hospitality, janitorial, landscaping, poultry, 

for example—a great majority of the staffing nationwide is by U.S. 

workers. 

Until now, guest worker programs have been limited to filling 

temporal shortages. The pending bills would represent an enormous policy change, giving the business community an enormous 

windfall—the right for the first time to fill permanent, year-round 

jobs with exploitable temporary workers. The result would be to pit 

foreign workers against U.S. workers, an even further depression 

in wages and working conditions. 

So our solution to the acknowledged need for future flow is to restructure the current permanent employment visa category in a 

way that reflects real market conditions and guarantees full labor 

rights for future workers. Rather than setting an arbitrary cap or 

one based on political compromise, we propose the number be adjusted to reflect real, independently determined employer needs for 

long-term shortages, with workers admitted with a green card and 

with permanent status from the outset, that there is no justification for bringing them in with anything less than the same set of 

workplace rights and protections that apply to all workers. 

Thank you. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Hiatt. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hiatt follows:]

10

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JONATHAN P. HIATT


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Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Feinstein. 

TESTIMONY OF FRED FEINSTEIN, SENIOR FELLOW AND VISITING PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, REPRESENTING SEIU AND UNITE HERE 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. It is a pleasure 

to be here today. 

My name is Fred Feinstein, and I am testifying today on behalf 

of SEIU and UNITE HERE—two unions that together represent 

more than 2.2 million workers, a significant percentage of which 

are immigrants. Along with each of the union witnesses here today, 

SEIU and UNITE HERE believe that our system of immigration is 

fundamentally broken. The status quo is unfair to immigrant workers and unfair to all workers in this country. 

Comprehensive immigration reform is a critical challenge we face 

as our country goes through one of its most rapid economic transformations in its history. As many have said to this Committee, reform has to be comprehensive if it is to succeed. SEIU and UNITE 

HERE support a fair, practical, and tough proposal that will bring 

an estimated 12 million undocumented individuals out of the shadows, reunite families, secure our borders, and create a legal channel for new workers to enter our country and join our civic society. 

Reform must start with a workable plan to legalize the undocumented population. It is in all of our interests to eliminate the vulnerability of this population of workers because it is undermining 

the working conditions of all workers. Provisions that place serious 

barriers to legalization like cumbersome and risky, so-called 

‘‘touch-back requirements,’’ will discourage people from coming forward, and the problems of an undocumented population will continue. 

A workable legalization program is part of what is needed to end 

the flourishing underground economy that is not only exploiting 

workers, both immigrant- and native-born, but is draining resources from our communities across the country. Those who claim 

it would be wrong to provide a means for legalization of the undocumented worker conveniently overlook that it is employers, consumers, homeowners, building owners, and many others who have 

benefited from the hard work of the undocumented worker. The 

people who oppose legalization never acknowledge that, demanding 

stiff sanctions for the immigrant while supporting, quote, ‘‘amnesty’’ for those who have benefited from their hard work. 

Once we address the past failures of our immigration system, we 

have to move forward to implement the program that is fair to all 

workers. It is essential that fundamental labor protections be in 

place if a new worker program is to succeed. While there are some 

differences in some aspects of immigration reform, I believe that all 

unions agree that adequate labor protections are of the utmost importance. In my remaining time, I will describe the labor protections that we believe are essential to the success of immigration reform. 

First, workers lawfully entering this country must be provided 

the opportunity to remain in this country. Some who come here to 

work will want to return home after a period of time, but that 

should be a choice, not a mandate. Workers who know they will be 

27

forbidden to stay do not have the same interests and concerns of 

their coworkers. Their interests are short term and immediate. 

With a temporary status, they do not have the same stake in upholding and enforcing workplace standards. They do not have the 

same motivation or ability to support and build decent workplace 

conditions, and they can do little when unscrupulous employers 

take advantage of them in ways that undermine the broader interests of all workers. History has taught us that temporary worker 

programs create a second-class status for immigrant workers, to 

the detriment of all workers, and all such programs have failed in 

the past. 

A second fundamental labor protection is that immigrant workers have the same rights and mobility as all workers. When they 

do not, it again creates the opportunity for exploitation by the unscrupulous employer at the expense of workers and employers who 

play by the rules. Responsible employers are placed at a competitive disadvantage when competitors can drive down labor costs by 

taking advantage of workers who lack adequate labor protections. 

Likewise, when an employee cannot leave an abusive employer, all 

workers and responsible employers suffer. Immigration law must 

not provide any employer with these kinds of opportunities. 

Another critical element to protecting the rights of all workers is 

assuring that no more workers than needed are authorized to enter 

this country. By developing accurate measures of labor market 

needs, the appropriate number for the future flow of workers 

should be set at a level that first and foremost does not create a 

downward pressure on wages or working conditions. It is a number 

that should not be arbitrary or inflexible but be based on reliable 

assessments that new workers will not undermine the working conditions of both immigrant- and native-born workers. 

Finally, there must be adequate enforcement of labor protections. 

One of the historic problems of our immigration system has been 

the failure to enforce labor protections. Enforcement mechanisms 

and penalties that effectively deter violations are essential in assuring that labor protections are more than hollow promises. 

Thank you for this opportunity. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Feinstein follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF FRED FEINSTEIN

Madam Chairwoman and distinguished members of the Subcommittee: 

My name is Fred Feinstein. I am testifying on behalf of the Service Employees 

International Union and UNITE/HERE. I am also a senior fellow and visiting professor at the University of Maryland. I served as General Counsel of the National 

Labor Relations Board from 1994 through 1999, as well as Chief Counsel of the 

Labor Management Relations Subcommittee in the House of Representatives where 

I worked from 1977 to 1994. 

With 1.8 million members, the Service Employees International Union is America’s largest union of health care workers, property services workers, and the second 

largest union of public services workers. SEIU is also the largest union of immigrants, representing thousands of U.S. immigrants from diverse backgrounds and 

places of origin. Many of these members perform some of our nation’s most needed, 

yet under valued work that is essential to our economy, families and communities. 

UNITE/HERE’s 440,000 members work in the hotel, restaurant, food service, 

laundry, garment and apparel industries. Immigrants make up a large percentage 

of its membership. In 2003 the UNITE/HERE and SEIU sponsored the historic Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, which for the first time knit together labor, immigrant advocates, clergy, and community organizations in the struggle for comVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:35 Sep 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\WORK\IMMIG\052407\35605.000 HJUD1 PsN: 35605
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prehensive immigration reform. These unions lead the dramatic reversal of the 

AFL-CIO policy in 2000 repudiating employer sanction and calling for repeal and 

support of comprehensive immigration reform. 

Comprehensive immigration reform is a critical challenge we face as our economy 

goes through the most rapid transformation in history. To that end, SEIU and 

UNITE/HERE have long advocated for reforms that would fix our broken immigration system so that we may bring order out of chaos, protect America’s working communities, and restore fairness. 

TODAY’S BROKEN IMMIGRATION SYSTEM AND ITS IMPACT ON WORKERS

We have seen first hand how the system is broken. It’s broken because hard working people across the country have to live in the shadows, afraid of what lies around 

the corner. Employers, consumers and numerous others benefit significantly from 

their presence, but they remain vulnerable, exploitable and subject to harsh sanction at any minute. They live with the constant fear that they will be separated 

from families, loved ones, friends, neighbors and the communities they have helped 

to build in many cases for decades. The immigration system is broken because vulnerable immigrant workers are exploited in ways that are not only inhumane and 

unjust but that also undermine the conditions faced by all workers, especially those 

in low wage industries. The status quo is unfair to the immigrant and unfair to all 

workers. 

As Congress debates the nuts and blots of reform legislation, let us not forget the 

real people this debate touches. Ercilia Sandoval, from El Salvador is an active 

member of SEIU and works as a janitor for GCA Services in Houston Texas. Ercilia 

is a mother of two young girls, and came to the U.S. under temporary protected status. She works the night shift so that she can care for her children during the day. 

But, like so many janitors, the $8/ per hour salary is often not enough to make ends 

meet. Life got even harder for Ercilia last year when she found out that she had 

rapidly advancing breast cancer. Without access to health insurance, Ercilia had to 

wait months until she was able to receive chemotherapy treatment. Today, she is 

continuing the fight for her life, for her family, and for her rights. In fact, she is 

leading her local union’s fight for health care access for janitors. Ercilia works hard, 

plays by the rules and wants a better life for her children—as do all workers. 

The two unions have countless success stories of immigrant workers who are 

working hard everyday, paying taxes, and joining with their union brothers and sister to improve the wages, hours and working conditions. Many become union stewards and leaders, helping to ensure workers rights in the workplace, those who become U.S. citizens are leaders in civic life and become active in political campaigns. 

Take, Alba Vasquez, an immigrant from Uruguay, who works as at Madison Square 

Garden in New York City. In addition to her 3p.m. to 11 p.m. shift at Madison 

Square Garden, Alba worked a second job during the day so that she could afford 

to put her four children through Catholic school. Now that her children have grown, 

Alba has embraced her rights as a U.S. citizen and as a voter. She is active in her 

local union’s campaign to fight for economic development that will guarantee god 

jobs, affordable housing, and a leader in the campaign for health care for all. There 

are millions more Alba’s in the U.S. today that are awaiting the opportunity to more 

fully enrich our nation. As they wait, however, their lives are too often driven by 

fear and unnecessary hardship. 

Under today’s current broken system, both native and immigrant workers are 

under attack. Allowing unscrupulous employers hire undocumented workers cheats 

all workers out of fair wages, deny basic labor rights, and fire—or deport—anyone 

who seeks speaks up or asserts their labor rights. The exploitation of undocumented 

workers chips away at hard-earned labor rights, and drives down wages for all U.S. 

workers. At a time when wages for working Americans are stagnant and opportunities to rise up the economic ladder are disappearing, this shadowy culture of exploitation is particularly unacceptable. 

Until we fix the root causes for the broken system, U.S. communities will continue 

to experience disruptive raids, family separation, and unnecessary economic hardship. While enforcement is critical to comprehensive reform and U.S. security, seemingly arbitrary raids on working communities will not achieve our large goals of fixing the broken system. Instead, an increasing number of work place raids like those 

at Swift and New Bedford will create more chaos and family tragedies that hurt 

communities. We need a more workable approach that is inline with reality and 

matches our economic needs and our values. 

29

THE COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTION: 

Last November, voters sent a strong message to elected leaders that Americans 

want Congress to fix our nation’s problems, including our failed immigration system. Candidates who ran on anti-immigrant, anti-immigration, and enforcementonly messages lost their races because voters saw through the political rhetoric, not 

solving the problem. Voters know that deporting 12 million individuals is unrealistic 

and morally repugnant. Americans understand that we need to make our system 

match our Nation’s economic goals, and then we need to make sure it’s fair, sustainable, and enforceable. 

To that end, SEIU and UNITE/HERE support a fair, practical and tough proposal 

that will bring out of the shadows an estimated 12 million undocumented individuals, reunite families, secure our borders and create a legal channel for new workers 

to enter our economy, have workplace protections, and join our civic society. Hard 

working, tax-paying immigrants who are living in this country should be given the 

opportunity to come forward, pay a fine, and earn legal status and a path toward 

citizenship. This will enhance border security and buttress our economy. 

SEIU and UNITE/HERE are committed to the following provisions being included 

in this year’s comprehensive immigration reform legislation: 

Legalization—In order to end illegal immigration as we know it, we must enact 

laws that ensure that every job in this country is held by an individual legally authorized to work in this country. Congress should not be satisfied with a program 

that is less than comprehensive. We must face reality that long-term undocumented 

individuals, but otherwise law-abiding workers will not leave the country voluntarily. 

We must all agree that if legalization is less than comprehensive and includes 

hurdles that are sure to deter people from participating; undocumented workers will 

continue to fuel an underground economy, with negative impacts on all workers, employers, and communities. We must put an end to a system in which employers 

avoid payroll taxes, deprive communities of other revenues and receive an unfair advantage over law-abiding competitors by violating labor laws. All of us as taxpayers 

pick up the tab when our broken immigration system allows employers to cheat our 

communities out of needed revenues. The benefits of a comprehensive and workable 

legalization program are clear: high levels of participation in the legalization program put significant pressure on employer’s to comply with withholding requirements and labor protections as it becomes more difficult for unscrupulous employers 

to prosper in an underground economy. 

Because a goal of any legalization program should be to legalize as many people 

as possible, it is counterproductive to include provisions that would erect permanent 

barriers to people achieving lawful status. Any bill that places serious burdens on 

legalization such as requiring people to leave the county or placing insurmountable 

obstacles on the path to legalization for some people is unworkable. Again, the legalization provisions must be expansive to ensure as many undocumented as possible 

participate, not make ineligible the very people who need to come out of the shadows. 

We are committed to shrinking the undocumented population, so that our law enforcement officials can concentrate their resources on those who would do us harm. 

Rounding up dishwashers, meat cutters, factory workers, mothers and fathers is not 

a good or productive use of our law enforcement resources. 

Those who claim it would be wrong to provide a means for legalization of the undocumented conveniently overlook that it is employers, consumers, homeowners, 

building owners and many others who have benefited from the hard work of undocumented workers. We all benefit when they clean our offices and hotel rooms, care 

for our children, and tend to our family members when they are sick or in need. 

The people who oppose immigration reform never acknowledge that they are demanding stiff sanctions for the immigrant while supporting ‘‘amnesty’’ for those who 

have benefited from their hard work. 

New worker program—SEIU and UNITE/HERE recognize the need for new 

workers in the low-wage sector of our expanding economy. However, any new worker program must include worker protections including: portability of visas so that 

workers can change jobs, the right to join unions and have full labor rights, the 

right of immigrants to bring their families with them, and the ability to self-petition 

for permanent residency and citizenship. Visas should not be tied to employers who 

can threaten workers with deportation if not compliant. We must craft a new worker program that will include accurate mechanisms to determine the labor market 

need for workers. We must transform the current illegal flow into a program with 

legal channels that lead to an increased number of permanent work authorizations. 

Finally, any new worker program should include sufficient enforcement resources to 

30

ensure the effective implementation of labor rights of both U.S. citizens and new 

worker visa holders. 

Looking at the question of labor protections in more detail, there are several kinds 

of labor protections that are needed to assure immigrant workers are not exploited 

and can’t be used to undermine the working conditions of all workers. While we 

have not always agreed on every aspect of what is needed in immigration reform 

legislation, on the question of labor protections the labor movement speaks with one 

voice. 

One of the most important labor protections is that workers lawfully entering this 

country to live and work must be provided the opportunity to remain in the country. 

Workers who know they will only be permitted to remain in the country for a short 

time do not have the same interests and concerns of the rest of the workforce. Their 

interests are short term and immediate and employers can exploit this status in 

ways that undermine the broader interests of all workers. When people are restricted to temporary status, they don’t have the same stake in upholding and enforcing workplace standards as other workers. They don’t have the same motivation 

to support and build the decent workplace conditions, but rather are confined as second-class participants in the workforce. They are more vulnerable to the kinds of 

exploitation that undermine our workforce today. They can fall prey to the unscrupulous employer who can manipulate their tenuous ties to the broader community. 

History has taught us that temporary worker programs create a second-class status 

for immigrant workers that undermines the conditions of all workers and are bound 

to fail. 

We cannot tolerate a repeat of the failed ‘‘guest worker’’ programs that are temporary in nature. If workers are good enough to be brought to our country to do 

our least desirable work, they should be given the option to put down roots and become full participants in our nation and our civic society. If they are good enough 

to care for our children and aged, cut our grass, and clean our toilets, they are good 

enough to be given the option to become permanent residents and eventually citizens. Immigrant workers must also have the same rights under employment laws as 

any other worker. 

When an immigrant worker does not have the same rights under labor law as all 

workers it creates an opportunity for exploitation by the unscrupulous employer at 

the expense workers and employers who play by the rules. Responsible employers 

can be undercut and placed at a competitive disadvantage when unscrupulous competitors drive down labor costs by exploiting vulnerable immigrant workers who 

lack adequate labor protections. Immigration law must not provide the unscrupulous employer this opportunity. 

Another critical element of protecting the rights of workers is assuring the number of workers permitted to enter the country is not greater than what is necessary 

to meet well defined labor market needs. The goal is to set a number at a level that 

first and foremost does not create a downward pressure on wages or working conditions. The number should not be arbitrary or inflexible, but should be based on a 

reliable assessment that new workers will not undermine wage or working conditions. New workers should be admitted to this country if and only if it is determined 

they will not undermines the wages and working conditions of all the workers in 

this country, both immigrant and native born. 

Finally, there must be adequate enforcement of labor protections. One of the historic problems of our immigration laws has been the failure to enforce the labor protections and standards. There must be effective enforcement mechanisms in place 

and adequate penalties to deter violations of the law. Employment law protections 

must be more than hollow promises. 

Other Necessary Requirements for Comprehensive Reform—SEIU and 

UNITE/HERE were instrumental in reversing the labor movement’s position supporting employer sanctions. We did this because the experiment of employer sanctions imposed by the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986 to close 

the job market to illegal aliens backfired and only harmed workers. UNITE/HERE 

and SEIU have had first hand experience when organizing workers of employers 

calling Immigration and Custom Enforcement to break union strikes and organizing 

campaigns. We have worked diligently to craft an alternative to supplement employer sanctions in the negotiations on comprehensive immigration reform. Comprehensive reform must include: 

Vigorous Labor and Civil Rights law enforcement—Employer sanctions must 

be supplemented with vigorous labor law enforcement. All workers—U.S. born and 

immigrant—must have the ability to assert their rights under local, state and federal labor and civil rights laws. They must be able to freely join unions and have 

private right of action to ensure their rights are preserved and protected. ImmigraVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:35 Sep 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\WORK\IMMIG\052407\35605.000 HJUD1 PsN: 35605
31

tion reform legislation must encourage vigorous labor and civil rights enforcement 

provisions by both governmental and non-governmental agencies, with these agencies given the necessary resources to ensure that employers who seek competitive 

advantages by exploiting workers will face significant fines and be barred from future immigrant worker programs. 

Our childcare providers, food servers and dishwashers, home health care aides, 

hotel workers, janitors and thousands of other service sector workers toil hard each 

and every day to feed and make a better life for their families. SEIU and UNITE/

HERE members are working on payrolls and paying taxes through employer withholding. Reform must help ensure that all workers will be paid legally, under local, 

state and federal law, with proper withholding for employment taxes, social security, eligibility for unemployment and worker compensation programs. Employers 

must be required to meet their tax and employment payroll obligations, and not allowed to misclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid payroll obligations, 

Social Security, unemployment compensation, and Medicare taxes. When employers 

are allowed to pay workers in cash, under-the-table, or as ‘‘contractors’’—everyone 

loses—businesses, communities, workers and taxpayers. 

Keeping families together—SEIU and UNITE/HERE strongly support all efforts 

to eliminate the family backlog and increase the number of visas available to reunite families. If our economy demands new workers, those workers should be able 

to bring their families with them, and family members should be work authorized. 

If low-wage workers are to support themselves, they must be allowed to work. When 

workers are temporary and not allowed to bring family members with them they 

can become a drain on their communities. By keeping families, together workers are 

full participants in their communities and workplaces. 

Electronic Employment Verification System—We recognize it is likely that 

Congress will include some form of an EEVS in immigration reform. We believe it 

is important that any EEVS system have sufficient safeguards to protect against 

worker abuse. This would include fixing deficiencies in the Electronic Verification 

pilot program before it is expanded to cover all workers. The system should only 

apply to new hires and there should be stringent protections to guard against using 

the system for discriminatory purposes. There must also be effective guarantees of 

due process rights to protect against erroneous determinations, adequate privacy 

and identity theft protections and workable and fair documentation requirements. 

Due Process Protections—It is critical that enforcement measures do not eviscerate due process protections and civil liberties. Likewise, SEIU and UNITE/HERE 

will not support any legislation that empowers and encourages state and local law 

enforcement officials to enforce civil violations of federal immigration laws. Such 

proposals would irreparably harm the critical relationships law enforcement officials 

have built in order to fight crime and interact with immigrant neighborhoods and 

communities 

CONCLUSION: 

SEIU and UNITE/HERE are committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform, and continues to work in partnership with immigrant advocates, business, religious and labor leaders who recognize the need for a ‘‘break the mold’’ reform package. We have rededicated our efforts and the resources of SEIU and UNITE/HERE 

to make reform a reality.

Ms. LOFREN. Mr. Wilson. 

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL J. WILSON, INTERNATIONAL VICE 

PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR, LEGISLATIVE AND POLITICAL 

ACTION DEPARTMENT, UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL 

WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION (UFCW) 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Madam Chair, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee. 

I am Michael J. Wilson, and I am with the United Food and 

Commercial Workers Union. UFCW is the largest private-sector 

union in North America and is one of the largest unions of immigrant workers of the United States, with more than 200,000 new 

immigrants as members. We are the primary worker representative in industries that are major employers of immigrant workers—

32

meatpacking, food processing and poultry—and we have a 100-year 

history of fighting on behalf of packing and processing workers. 

Without objection, I would like to enter my testimony and highlight an enhanced written statement. 

The workers we represent know——

Ms. LOFGREN. Without objection. 

Mr. WILSON [continuing]. The need for immigration reform. Some 

of them are undocumented, but many more want to bring their 

families here to join them in the ‘‘land of the free and the home 

of the brave.’’

A good first step would be appropriate border enhancements to 

prevent illegal immigration, combined with a fair path to earned legalization for those who are here, employed, are part of the community, and would otherwise obey the law and pay a reasonable fine. 

Unfortunately, if combined with a massive Bracero-like guest worker program with little or no hope for an adjustment of status, it 

would be a bad first step or, as the Sunday New York Times described the Senate compromise, ‘‘awful.’’ the Times’ editorial called 

it—and I quote—‘‘the creation of a system of modern peonage within our borders.’’

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently issued a report entitled, ‘‘Close to Slavery: Guest Worker Programs in the United 

States.’’ It documents the specific situations in the existing H-2 

programs where workers are underpaid, where there are workplace 

injuries without recourse, where there are even cases of workers 

owing money to their employers after having served as guest workers. Here is a specific example: 

Sam Kane Beef, one of the country’s largest independently owned 

beef slaughter plants, located about 5 miles northwest of Corpus 

Christi, employs about 600 people; at one time, 121 were Mexican 

guest workers. They were told that the pay would be good. They 

were led to believe that the working conditions would not be overly 

difficult. They were also assured that they would have, quote, ‘‘the 

same rights as American workers.’’

Yet, when a UFCW representative spoke with these workers 

after they had been on the job for less than 3 weeks, they related 

that they had been misled. Injuries were a major concern. They 

claimed that there was no medical personnel on the plant premises. 

The workers had no health insurance. If a worker became injured, 

he had to go to the management in person to request a day off 

without pay. The workers were forced to live in substandard company housing. They were docked hours and denied benefits even 

after working 11 to 12 hours a day. 

These workers were paid $6.65 an hour, approximately half the 

industry wage for the same work. When the President says that 

these are the jobs that Americans will not do, this is exactly what 

we mean when we say that these are jobs that Americans will not 

do for those wages, nor should anyone. 

It is peonage; it is close to slavery. These are strong words but 

are the real world of lives of guest workers in America. The fact 

is that guest worker programs have created an underclass of workers who are afforded neither full rights on the job, full participation 

in the community, nor full protection at the workplace. This creates 

a culture in which people believe that a person’s race or national 

33

1 ‘‘Comprehensive Migration Policy Reform in North America: The Key to Sustainable and Equitable Economic Integration,’’ (University of California, Los Angeles), August 29, 2001. 2 American Immigration Law Foundation, Spring 2002. 

origin relegates him to a life of low-paying/no future jobs. It also 

discourages domestic workers from those lines of work; thus segregating the workforce. 

Finally, when guest workers choose to exert workplace rights—

the right to a safe workplace or the right to form a union—they 

risk losing their jobs or being deported. They face the same challenges that any worker who speaks up confronts, with the notable 

difference that they are temporary guest workers. This amounts to 

compulsory consent to exploitation, and it lowers working standards for all working people. 

The sad fact is that our Nation is currently incapable of enforcing our Nation’s most basic labor laws and workplace protections. 

Our union regularly witnesses employers who fire and discipline 

workers, whether they are immigrant-, native-born, or guest workers because they were injured on the job or they dared support 

union representation. Every time one of these firings takes place—

and they take place frequently—the employer violates Federal law 

with little or no consequence for doing so. To suggest that a new 

guest worker program can be constructed with adequate workplace 

protections is disingenuous and flies in the face of history and current practices. 

Just as it is entirely appropriate for Congress to insist that enhanced border protection be in place prior to finalizing the legalization component of immigration reform, the Congress should insist 

that prior to new and expanded guest worker programs, there must 

be reform of the current programs. Comprehensive immigration reform should be based on our Nation’s values of equal opportunity, 

responsibility, and justice. A new guest worker program, without 

significant reform of existing programs, undermines any reform effort before we even get started. 

That concludes my statement, and I would be glad to answer any 

questions. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Wilson. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilson follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHAEL J. WILSON

Good morning. My name is Michael J. Wilson and I am representing the United 

Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). UFCW is the largest 

private sector union in North America—and it is one of the largest unions of new 

immigrant workers in the United States with more than 200,000 new immigrants 

as members. I am an International Vice President of the union and Director of the 

Legislative and Political Action Department. 

We are the primary worker representative in industries that are major employers 

of immigrant workers—meatpacking, food processing, and poultry—and have a hundred-year history of fighting for safe working conditions and good wages on behalf 

of packing and processing workers. 

Immigrants and their families come to this country prepared to work, pay taxes, 

and to abide by our laws and rules. They contribute more than $300 billion to our 

economy annually.(American Immigration Law Foundation, Spring 2002; UCLA, 

2001.1 In fact, each new immigrant contributes roughly $1,200.2 They play a vital 

role in our economy and are tighly woven into our nation’s social fabric. 

Roughly 25 million immigrants, from nearly every country in the world, are living 

and working in the U.S., yet our country effectively has no immigration policy. In 

fact, our current approach is geared more to 19th and early 20th century immigraVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:35 Sep 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\WORK\IMMIG\052407\35605.000 HJUD1 PsN: 35605
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3Scott, Robert E and David Ratner. (2005, July 25). ‘‘NAFTA’s cautionary tale: Recent history 

suggests CAFTA could lead to further U.S. job displacement.’’ The Economic Policy Institute. 

<http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/ib214> 4Passel, Jeffrey S. (2006, March 7). ‘‘Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant 

Population in the U.S.’’ The Pew Hispanic Center. < http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=61> 5 ‘‘Changes Could Improve Services to Employers and Better Protect Workers.’’ GAO/HEHS 

98–20, pp 60–61. 

tion patterns than to the realities of the 21st century, fostering rampant abuse and 

exploitation of both immigrants and U.S. citizens. 

Unscrupulous companies take advantage of the lack of a consistent system to recruit and lure immigrant workers across borders with little or no regard for federal 

law or workplace regulations. The employment verification system is inaccurate, inefficient, and easily manipulated by employers eager to take advantage of cheap foreign labor. 

The mass and random enforcement activities that occur as a result—such as those 

which took place in the Swift & Company meat processing plants in December—

lead to the disruption of families, the economy, and our communities. During the 

raids, ICE agents violated the agency’s own policies and procedures. The raids were 

designed and executed as political theatre—which is all they could be, given that 

the U.S. has no systematic or effective immigration system. In the process, more 

than 10,000 workers, both immigrant and non-immigrant, were criminalized simply 

for showing up to do their job, and subjected to gross violations of their human and 

civil rights. Worksite raids, family disruption, and the criminalization of work—do 

not constitute an effective immigration system. 

In some economic sectors, American businesses need immigrant workers. But despite the various provisions for the free flow of capital and goods that are built into 

U.S. International Trade Policy, insufficient consideration has been given to the 

transnational flow of people that has become part and parcel of the 21st century 

global economy. 

For example, 13 years of NAFTA have resulted in the loss of millions of domestic 

jobs for American workers. At the same time, in Mexico, real wages have declined 

significantly, millions of farmers have been dislocated, and millions more consigned 

to poverty, fueling the labor flight into the U.S.3

The result of our outdated immigration system—exacerbated by trade policies 

that are effectively devoid of enforceable labor protections—is an unauthorized U.S. 

population of an estimated 11.5 to 12 million as of March 2006.4 As a result, immigrants and native-born American workers in underpaid economic sectors are experiencing workplace abuse and the erosion of wages and working conditions. Our country’s archaic immigration policy—incapable of dealing with 21st century immigration patterns and economic realities—is undermining the very ideals and values our 

country was built on, and serving neither business nor workers. 

Some have suggested that a new guestworker visa program would be the legislative solution to satisfy the international supply and national demand for labor without letting workers ‘‘sneak in.’’ Some have described these programs as ‘‘break the 

mold’’ or ‘‘different’’ than prior efforts. Such proposals fail to acknowledge the disastrous effects of past and present guestworker programs and the obstacles that would 

impede the creation of new and improved temporary worker plans. 

The post-World War II Bracero program was synonymous with worker abuse. 

Modern versions of the same—such as the H2-B—have had similar negative effects. 

In 1997 the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that modern H-2A 

workers ‘‘are unlikely to complain about worker protection violations, such as the 

three-quarter guarantee, fearing they will lose their jobs or will not be accepted by 

the employer or association for future employment.’’ 5 The Southern Poverty Law 

Center has said that our existing guestworker programs ‘‘can be viewed as a modern-day system of indentured servitude.’’ Even Ways and Means Chairman Rangel 

recently described our country’s experience with guestworker programs as ‘‘. . . the 

closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.’’

Guestworkers, especially in low-wage economic sectors, face exploitation at nearly 

every step from securing visas to working in sweatshop conditions. We’ve seen the 

effects of today’s guestworker programs in our own industries—meatpacking and 

food processing—sectors that new guestworker legislation will likely effect. 

For example, Sam Kane is one of the country’s largest independently owned beef 

slaughter and processing plants. It is located about five miles northwest of downtown Corpus Christi and employs approximately 600 people—121 of whom at one 

time were Mexican guestworkers. They were told that the pay would be ‘‘good’’ and 

were led to believe that the working conditions would not be overly difficult. They 

35

6 ‘‘Trends in Wage and Hour Enforcement by the U.S. Department of Labor, 1975–2004.’’ 

Brennan Center for Justice, Economic Policy Brief, No. 3, September 2005. 

were also assured that they would have the ‘‘same rights as American workers.’’ Yet 

when a UFCW representative spoke with some of these ‘‘guests’’ after they’d been 

on the job for less than three weeks, they related that they had been misled and 

their promised rights severely curtailed. 

Injuries became of major concern for the workers. They claimed that there was 

no nurse or clinic on the plant premises, and they had no health insurance. If a 

worker became sick, he or she had to go to the plant in person to request a day 

off without pay. Forced to live in substandard company housing, the workers were 

docked hours and denied benefits even after working 11–12 hours a day. 

This kind of gross inhumanity and abuse in sectors where guestworkers are employed is thoroughly documented in a recent report by the Southern Poverty Law 

Center landmark report, ‘‘Close to Slavery; Guestworker Programs in the United 

States. 

These workers were paid $6.65 an hour approximately half of the industry wage 

for the same work. When the President says that these are jobs that Americans 

won’t do, this is exactly what we mean when we say that these are jobs that Americans won’t do at these wages. In 2007, no one should do this work at these wages, 

and the government should not help employers keep wages down. 

The facts are incontrovertible: guestworker programs create an underclass of 

workers and engender racial and other discriminatory attitudes toward individuals 

who are afforded neither full rights on the job, full participation at the workplace, 

or full connection to the community. This creates a culture in which people believe 

that a person’s race, color, or national origin relegates them to a life of low-paying, 

no-future jobs. It also discourages domestic workers from those lines of work, segregating the workforce. Finally, when guestworkers choose to exert workplace rights—

the right to a safe and healthy workplace or the right to form a union—they risk 

losing their jobs or being deported. They face the same employment dangers that 

any worker who speaks up confronts—you or I or any of your constituents, with a 

notable difference—they are temporary guestworkers. In effect, this amounts to 

compulsory consent to abuse and exploitation, and lowers working standards for all 

working people. 

In 2005 the Brennan Center for Justice reported that there has been a ‘‘significant reduction in the government’s capacity to ensure that employers are complying 

with the most basic workplace laws.’’ 6

The sad fact is that our nation is currently incapable of enforcing our country’s 

most basic labor laws and workplace protections. The United Food and Commercial 

Workers International Union has regularly witnessed employers who fire and discipline workers—whether immigrant, native-born, or a ‘‘guest’’—because they were 

injured on the job; or they spoke out in support of union representation; or they 

sought the correction of a workplace safety and health hazard. Every time one of 

these of firings take place—and they take place frequently—the employer violates 

federal law with little or no consequence for doing so. 

It is more than naive to suggest that a new guestworker program can be constructed with adequate workplace protections—it is disingenuous. The outcome is 

sadly foreseeable: no matter how many abstract protections get written into a 

guestworker program, the approach will inherently provide employers with the opportunity to abuse and exploit workers, especially in low-wage jobs. A notable exception is AgJobs, which was negotiated between the employers and the union representing the workers, and will be enshrined in law. 

American democracy works because it is inclusive. But all guestworker programs 

permanently exclude individuals who contribute to our economic well-being from 

participating in our democratic process. America’s immigration system requires comprehensive reform that serves everyone who lives and works in America. 

The following are the UFCW immigration reform principles which we believe are 

necessary to protect workers:

• A Path to Citizenship: Nearly 12 million immigrants provide their labor 

and talent to American employers. They make significant contributions to 

their communities, but are afforded neither labor rights nor due process protections. We must create a real pathway to citizenship for immigrant workers 

who have established themselves in the community, who are employed, and 

who have otherwise not broken the law.

• End Worksite Immigration Enforcement: Worksite programs like ‘‘Basic 

Pilot’’ and the ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers 

(IMAGE) are riddled with problems, fail to adequately protect workers from 

36

discrimination, exploitation, and harassment, and fail as a substitute for a 

systematic approach to a fair and orderly immigration process.

• Meaningful Employer Punishments for Immigration and Labor Law 

Violations: Too often, when companies cannot export jobs in search of cheap 

wages and weak labor laws, they import workers to create a domestic pool 

of exploitable labor. The law must criminalize employers who recruit undocumented workers from abroad or otherwise circumvent immigration policies, 

and provide meaningful, enforceable penalties for companies that violate 

health, safety, and labor laws.

• No New Guestworker or Temporary Worker Programs: Guestworker 

programs allow employers to turn permanent, full-time, family-supporting 

jobs into temporary, go-nowhere jobs that exploit immigrants and native-born 

workers alike. When guestworkers choose to exert workplace rights, they risk 

losing their jobs or being deported. Guestworker programs create an 

underclass of workers and engender racial and other discriminatory attitudes 

toward individuals who are afforded neither full rights on the job nor participation in our society. In addition, existing guestworker programs should be 

reformed so that they include real worker protections—including the right to 

self-petition for legalization and the freedom to change jobs—and penalties for 

employers who break the law. Reform of existing programs should be a requisite prior to the creation of broad new programs. Anything less will inevitably lead to the kinds of problems and scandals which will shame us all.

• Revise the Permanent Employment-Based Visa System: Instead of 

short-term ‘‘guestworker’’ visas, labor shortages should be filled with workers 

with full rights, a path to permanent residence, and, if they choose, citizenship. The number of visas available should respond to actual, demonstrated 

labor shortages. U.S. employers should be required to hire U.S. workers first, 

and wage rate requirements should be high enough to make jobs attractive 

to U.S. workers.

• Wage and Working Condition Protection for All Workers: All workers, 

including future immigrant workers, should have the same workplace protections as U.S. citizens, including fair wages, a safe workplace, and the right 

to join a union. Immigrant workers who report employer violations should be 

ensured whistleblower protections with special protections that include extending their immigration status and work authorization during the complaint process.

The interests and lives of America’s working families cannot be compromised. A 

single-minded immigration policy that disregards legal, labor, and workplace protections and only serves to provide employers with workers will inevitably result in 

economic and social calamity. Workers need to be at the heart of an effective and 

comprehensive reform of our immigration laws. Meaningful immigration reform 

should begin with the enforcement of basic workplace protections already on the 

books. Anything less, especially the enactment of a massive new guestworker program will exacerbate the systemic problems of our current system hurting all workers, their families, and their communities and robbing America of its fundamental 

values of inclusion and justice.

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Goldstein. 

TESTIMONY OF BRUCE GOLDSTEIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

FARMWORKER JUSTICE, ON BEHALF OF MR. MARCOS 

CAMACHO, GENERAL COUNSEL, UNITED FARM WORKERS OF 

AMERICA 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you to the Chair and to the Members of 

this Committee for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the 

United Farm Workers regarding the labor movement and immigration policy. 

Agricultural workers have confronted difficulties in immigration 

policy since the founding of this Nation. Our government policies 

and enforcement efforts have often contributed to an imbalance in 

power that has subjected farm workers to poor wages and working 

conditions. The Bracero program became known for its abusive 

treatment of Mexican workers, despite the existence of protections 

37

for wages and benefits, and was finally ended in 1964. When the 

farm workers became free to demand better treatment, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers provided a vehicle to dramatically improve the status and treatment of farm workers in this 

country. 

Now we have the H-2A guest worker program, which was created 

at the same time as the Bracero program, and it is quite similar 

to it. Generally, our guest worker programs have tied workers to 

a particular employer. If the job ends, the worker may not look for 

another job and must leave the United States immediately. The 

guest worker who wishes for a visa the next year must hope that 

the employer will request one because the employers control access 

to visas. Such workers are often fearful of deportation or of not 

being hired in the following year, and are therefore reluctant to demand improvements. They work very hard for low wages. U.S. 

workers often recognize that they are not wanted by employers who 

use the guest worker system. Currently, there are about 50,000 H2A jobs approved annually out of an agricultural workforce of about 

2.5 million. 

There are many abuses under the H-2A program, ranging from 

very minor to very serious trafficking in human beings. Unfortunately, our government has rarely enforced the protections in the 

H-2A program. Today, on page 3 of The New York Times, there is 

a report about the visas and the H-2A program, including the murder of an organizer of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFLCIO, while organizing in Mexico. 

In recent years, the United Farm Workers Union and the Farm 

Labor Organizing Committee have been asked by guest workers 

from several nations to help them improve conditions at their jobs 

in Washington State, Hawaii, and North Carolina. We believe that 

unionization is the best hope that guest workers have for better 

treatment and the best hope that the government has of removing 

the H-2A program’s reputation for abuse. 

Today, we have reached a situation in agriculture that demands 

urgent action. Between 53 and 70 percent of farm workers are undocumented. In some crops, it is 80 percent. Many employers now 

hire farm labor contractors in the hope that they can shield themselves from liability for hiring undocumented workers in violation 

of the immigration law and from liability for labor law violations. 

In many cases, due to inadequate enforcement of labor laws, employers take advantage of undocumented workers by subjecting 

them to illegal wages and working conditions. 

When the majority of workers in an economic sector are living in 

the shadows of society, something must be done. The current situation is not good for farm workers who want to be able to work legally and earn a decent living to support their families. It is not 

good for employers who want to hire people without worrying that 

they will be raided by the Immigration Service at the peak of their 

harvest of their perishable fruits and vegetables. It is not good for 

the government either. 

The United Farm Workers Union recognized several years ago 

that the status quo needed to be remedied. We prevented legislation from being passed that would have transformed agriculture 

into a harsh guest worker program with no path to citizenship, but 

38

we were unable to pass the kind of legislation that we preferred. 

With the help of Representative Berman and other Members of 

Congress, we entered into arduous negotiations with key leaders of 

agricultural employers in the United States and other Members of 

the Congress. The result was AgJOBS. The ‘‘AgJOBS,’’ the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act, would provide 

agricultural employers and the Nation with a legal, stable, productive workforce while ensuring that basic labor protections would 

apply to farm workers. AgJOBS has two parts. 

First, AgJOBS would create an earned adjustment program, allowing many undocumented farm workers to obtain temporary resident status based on past work experience with the possibility of 

becoming permanent residents through continued agricultural 

work. Second, it would revise the existing H-2A program. The 

Earned Legalization program certainly should not be called ‘‘amnesty.’’ This is a tough program. Farm work is dangerous, difficult, 

seasonal, and low-paid. This truly will be an earned legalization. 

Applicants will have to work 3 to 5 additional more years in agriculture to earn their green cards. 

To conclude, we recommend the following: We encourage you to 

pass AgJOBS. Congress and the Administration should also be 

vigilant about abuses under guest worker programs. Strong enforcement of labor protections is needed. Congress also needs to 

adopt protections against abuses associated with foreign labor contracting. The U.S. Government should be looking to the recruitment systems abroad that bring workers into the United States. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Camacho follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARCOS CAMACHO

Thank you to the Chair and the Members of this Committee for the opportunity 

to testify on behalf of the United Farm Workers regarding the labor movement and 

immigration policy. I am Marcos Camacho, an attorney in Bakersfield, California, 

and the General Counsel of the United Farm Workers, the labor union founded by 

Cesar Chavez. 

Agricultural workers have confronted difficulties in immigration policy since the 

founding of this nation. Our government policies and enforcement efforts have often 

contributed to an imbalance in power that has subjected farmworkers to poor wages 

and working conditions. 

The Bracero guestworker program became known for its abusive treatment of 

Mexican workers, despite the existence of protections for wages and benefits, and 

was finally ended in 1964. When, the farmworkers finally became free to demand 

better treatment, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers provided a vehicle 

to dramatically improve the status and treatment of farmworkers in this country. 

More recently, the H-2A guestworker program often has provided agricultural employers with workers whose restricted, nonimmigrant status ensures that they will 

not challenge unfair or illegal conduct. Generally, our guestworker programs have 

tied workers to a particular employer; if the job ends, the worker may not look for 

another job and must leave the United States immediately. The guestworker who 

wishes for a visa in the next year must hope that the employer will request one, 

because the employers control access to visas. Such workers are often fearful of deportation or not being hired in the following year, and are therefore reluctant to demand improvements. They work very hard for low wages. U.S. workers often recognize that they are not wanted by the employers who use the guestworker system. 

Currently, there are about 50,000 H-2A jobs approved annually, out of an agricultural work force of 2.5 million. 

There are many abuses under the H-2A program ranging from minor to very serious trafficking in human beings. Unfortunately, our government has rarely enforced 

the protections in the H-2A program. In recent years, the United Farm Workers and 

39

the Farm Labor Organizing Committee have been asked by guestworkers from several nationsto help them improve conditions at their jobs in Washington State, Hawaii and North Carolina. We believe that unionization is the best hope that 

guestworkers have for better treatment and the best hope the government has of 

removing the H-2A program’s reputation for abuse. 

Today, we have reached a situation in agriculture that demands urgent action. 

There are about 2.5 million farmworkers in this country, not including their family 

members. More than 80% of them are foreign-born, mostly but not all from Mexico. 

Virtually all of the newest entrants to the farm labor force lack authorized immigration status. The helpful reports from the National Agricultural Workers Survey by 

the U.S. Department of Labor state that about 53% of farmworkers are undocumented. But most observers believe the figure is 60% or 70%, and much higher in 

specific locations. Many employers now hire farm labor contractors in the hope that 

they can shield themselves from liability for hiring undocumented workers in violation of our immigration law and from liability for labor law violations. The labor 

contractors compete against one another by offering to do a job for less money, and 

the cut-throat competition means that the workers must take lower wages. When 

one labor contractor is prosecuted for violating labor laws, he is easily replaced. Our 

current immigration system is causing employers to attempt to evade responsibility 

for their employees, while undocumented workers are too fearful of being deported 

to demand changes. In many cases, due to inadequate enforcement of labor laws, 

employers take advantage of undocumented workers by subjecting them to illegal 

wages and working conditions. 

When the majority of workers in an economic sector are living in the shadows of 

society something must be done. The current situation is not good for farmworkers 

who want to be able to work legally and earn a decent living to support their families. It is not good for employers who want to hire people without worrying that they 

will be raided by the immigration service at the peak of the harvest of their perishable fruits and vegetables. It is not good for the government, which needs to know 

who is working in our economy and living among us. But it is no answer to say we 

will deport them and start again. The growers need these experienced workers to 

cultivate and harvest their crops. In fact, many growers contend that there are labor 

shortages in some areas because undocumented workers are too fearful of immigration raids to come to the open fields. 

The United Farm Workers recognized several years ago that the status quo needed to be remedied. We also recognized that some of our long-held beliefs would need 

to be modified if we were to achieve any sort of reform. During the late 1990’s, we 

strenuously and successfully opposed efforts in the House and Senate by agricultural employers to weaken H-2A protections and procedures and transform most 

farmworkers into vulnerable guestworkers with no path to citizenship. Our successful opposition led to a stalemate since we did not have the legislative support needed to enact our ideas about immigration and labor reform. 

With the help of our good friend, Rep. Howard Berman, and other members of 

Congress, we entered into arduous negotiations with key leaders of the agricultural 

employers in the United States and other members of Congress, particularly Senator Larry Craig, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Rep. Chris Cannon. In 2000, we 

reached agreement on the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security 

Act, or ‘‘AgJOBS.’’ AgJOBS has undergone several revisions over the years to build 

greater support for passage. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is now a strong supporter of 

AgJOBS. We remain strong partners with agricultural employers to win passage of 

this important legislation despite many other differences between us. In 2006, the 

Senate included AgJOBS in the comprehensive immigration reform it passed. We 

are now seeking to pass AgJOBS as part of comprehensive immigration reform in 

2007. We have been working with the White House and several Senators to bring 

AgJOBS to a conclusion. 

AgJOBS would provide agricultural employers and the nation with a legal, stable, 

productive workforce while ensuring that basic labor protections would apply to 

farmworkers. AgJOBS has two parts. First AgJOBS would create an ‘‘earned adjustment’’ program, allowing many undocumented farmworkers to obtain temporary 

resident status based on past work experience with the possibility of becoming permanent residents through continued agricultural work. Second, it would revise the 

existing H-2A agricultural guestworker program. 

The earned legalization program certainly should not be called ‘‘amnesty.’’ It is 

a difficult two-step process. The applicants for earned legalization will have to show 

that they have worked at least 150 days in U.S. agriculture during the past two 

years, and then must work at least 150 days per year in each of three years or at 

least 100 days per year in each of five years. Farmworkers will also have to show 

40

that they have not been convicted of a felony or serious misdemeanors. Spouses and 

minor children of the farmworkers will be eligible for a temporary status, too. 

If they fulfill their obligations, they will be granted a green card for permanent 

resident status. They will have to pay substantial fees and fines at both steps. 

(Under the compromise worked out with the White House, farmworkers also will 

have to learn English, demonstrate that they have paid taxes during their prospective work period, return to their homeland to file the application for a green card 

with a U.S. consulate in their home country, and wait for the green card for 3 to 

5 more years until backlogs in immigration applications have been cleared.). We expect that roughly 800,000 farmworkers will be eligible for this program, although 

such predictions are mere guesses. Through this multiyear process, the United 

States will have a stable, legal farm labor force that is highly productive. 

This is a tough program. Farm work is dangerous, difficult, seasonal and lowpaid. This truly will be an earned legalization. 

AgJOBS also would revise the H-2A guestworker program. We feel that we made 

painful concessions to achieve this compromise. The program’s application process 

will be streamlined to become a ‘‘labor attestation’’ program similar to the H-1B program, rather than the current ‘‘labor certification’’ program. This change reduces paperwork for employers and limits the government’s oversight of the employer’s application. AgJOBS would retain both the ‘‘prevailing wage’’ and ‘‘adverse effect wage 

rates,’’ but would effectively lower the H-2A wage rates by about $1.00 per year (to 

the 2003 adverse effect wage rates, which are issued by state), and freeze them for 

three years. The Government Accountability Office and a special commission would 

make recommendations to Congress about the wage rates within 3 years. If Congress has not acted within 3 years, then the wage rates will be adjusted by the previous years’ inflation rate. In addition, for the first time, farmworkers would have 

a right to file a federal lawsuit to enforce their H-2A job terms. AgJOBS also would 

allow some flexibility in the minimum wages and benefits when the workers at an 

H-2A employer are represented by a bona fide labor union under a collective bargaining agreement. 

We believe that AgJOBS is a reasonable compromise under the circumstances. To 

conclude, we recommend the following: (1) We encourage you to pass AgJOBS. (2) 

Congress and the Administration should be vigilant about abuses under 

guestworker programs. Strong enforcement of the labor protections for guestworkers 

will prevent guestworkers from being exploited, prevent the wages and working conditions of United States workers from being undermined, and will take away the 

incentive that employers have to hire guestworkers rather than U.S. workers, including those who would earn legal immigration status under the AgJOBS earned 

legalization program. (3) Congress needs to adopt protections against abuses associated with foreign labor contracting. The U.S. Government is refusing to look at the 

abuses that occur during the recruitment of guestworkers in the foreign country. 

Yet, those abuses abroad, including payment of high recruitment fees, result in mistreatment of guestworkers on the job in the U.S., because the guestworkers must 

work to the limits of human endurance and avoid deportation at all costs to pay 

back those fees. The labor contractors’ interest in such recruitment fees may have 

led to the murder earlier this year in Monterrey, Mexico, of Santiago Rafael Cruz, 

who was helping Mexican citizens employed as guestworker for North Carolina 

growers under a collective bargaining agreement with the Farm Labor Organizing 

Committee, AFL-CIO. (4) We also ask you to recognize that the best protection 

workers—both U.S. and foreign—have at an employer that participates in a 

guestworker program is a labor union. Government policy should promote collective 

bargaining to reduce abuses under guestworker programs and give workers a meaningful voice at work. 

Thank you for this opportunity to testify before the Committee on these important 

and timely issues.

Ms. LOFGREN. That is just notifying us that we are going into 

session in 15 minutes, not that we have votes now. Thank goodness. 

Dr. Briggs. 

TESTIMONY OF VERNON BRIGGS, Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF 

INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS, CORNELL UNIVERSITY 

Mr. BRIGGS. Thank you very much. 

With the revival of mass immigration since 1965 and with Congress seemingly poised to move the Nation into an era of massive 

41

immigration, the impact of immigration policy on the labor market 

has once again become of critical importance to the Nation’s labor 

movement. Immigration affects the size, the skill distribution, the 

composition, and the geographic distribution of the Nation’s labor 

force. Therefore it impacts local wages and incomes and employment in local, regional, and national labor markets. 

The labor movement must have a voice in immigration policy, a 

big voice. It is a dilemma. It can either favor restrictions and tight 

enforcement of immigration laws, and in doing so it risks alienating the growing immigrant population and component of the 

labor force. If it supports expansionary policies, and lax enforcement, it risks harming the American labor force that is its actual 

base. And when I use ‘‘American labor force,’’ I mean the nativeborn; I mean the permanent resident aliens; and I mean the naturalized citizens; the whole labor force, that is, the American labor 

force. It cannot be supportive of both. You cannot have it both 

ways. 

Prior to 1990, organized labor always sided with the best interests of the American labor force, even though it was founded by immigrants. Most importantly, many of the leaders were immigrants. 

From 1860 until 1990, labor supported every effort to regulate immigration in the Nation’s history. Every law that was passed had 

the fingerprint of labor on it. 

Samuel Gompers, the first President of the American Federation 

of Labor in America, the movement’s greatest labor leader, said in 

his autobiography that organized labor was the first group in 1892 

to recognize the importance of regulating immigration in the best 

interests of American workers, and acted to do accordingly. Also in 

his autobiography he says immigration, in all of its most fundamental aspects, is a labor issue. Fundamentally, it is a labor issue 

because all of them, no matter how they are coming in, will work, 

and so will most of their relatives, and so it is a labor issue. 

Even the famous labor leader A. Philip Randolph, a labor leader 

and civil rights leader who led the march in Washington here in 

1963, stated in the 1920’s that the Nation was suffering from ‘‘immigration indigestion.’’ It needed restrictive immigration policies. 

He supported it. He even advocated zero immigration. 

All of the research on the labor market has shown that those positions of labor in the past years were justified. The eras of mass 

immigration did depress wages. They did spread poverty. They 

were a cause of unemployment, of overcrowding in cities and of all 

the rest of it, mass unemployment. 

Well, since 1990, there has been a shift in the organized labor 

position. It has begun to favor amnesty. Some strong parts of the 

labor movement have supported either reform or expansion of guest 

worker programs. It has accepted a ‘‘chain migration’’ agenda and 

has picked up the immigrant agenda, the immigrant rhetoric, and 

has demonized critics of those policies. It has taken to ignoring research findings about the adverse impacts of immigration on lowwage workers. 

The real imperative of immigration reform should get illegal immigrants out of the labor force. Then there would not be a dilemma 

for organized labor, and if government were to do its job and actually enforce the laws, we would not even be here today discussing 

42

this issue. Until then, a choice must be made. I feel it has been a 

mistake for the organized labor to abandon its pre-1990’s role 

where it supported the policies which were in the best interests of 

American worker are always first, always first, and you have to 

make a choice. Always first, as it did before the 1990’s. Why? 

Because if mass immigration continues to be unregulated, it will 

be impossible for unions to improve wages and hours and working 

conditions for working people and especially, low-skilled workers. 

The labor market will continue to be flooded. Unions cannot defy 

market pressures. Workers will pay dues, but they will not get 

much out of their union participation. 

Secondly, support for an immigrant agenda will alienate large 

portions of the labor force who are adversely affected by labor’s revised stance and who are adversely affected by the presence of the 

massive infusion of illegal immigrants, amnesty recipients, chain 

migration, guest workers, and all the rest of it that now organized 

labor, in part, seems to be supporting. They will not support labor. 

The people who will be hurt will be justified in that conclusion. 

Finally, it raises the question that the labor movement will lose 

the moral support of the general public. And I quote John Mitchell’s, from the United Mine Workers, famous statement to this effect that labor has always benefited from the idea that, whether or 

not people belong to unions or not, they always knew the labor 

movement had in its heart the best interest of American workers, 

first and foremost. That is the real danger. 

So, consequently, I would conclude by simply saying that what 

is bad economics for working people cannot be good politics. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Dr. Briggs. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Briggs follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF VERNON M. BRIGGS JR. 

Over its long history, few issues have caused the caused the American labor movement more agony than has the issue of immigration. It is ironic this is the case 

since most adult immigrants directly join the labor force as do eventually most of 

their immediate family members. But precisely because immigration affects the size, 

skill composition and geographical distribution of the nation’s labor force, it also influences local, regional and national labor market conditions. Hence, organized labor 

can never ignore the public policies that determine immigration trends. 

In the process, however, organized labor is confronted with a dilemma. If it seeks 

to place restrictions on immigration as well as to press for serious enforcement of 

its terms, the labor movement risks alienating itself from those immigrants who do 

enter (legally or illegally) and do find jobs which may make it difficult to organize 

them. If, on the other hand, they support permissive or expansionary immigration 

admission policies and/or lax enforcement against violators of their terms, the labor 

force is inflated and the ensuing market conditions make it more difficult for unions 

to win economic gains for their existing membership and to organize the unorganized. The main reason most workers join unions in the United States is, after all, 

is because they believe unions can improve and protect their economic well-being 

(i.e., their wages, hours of work, and working conditions). It also is implied that if 

organized labor were to become an advocate for immigrant causes (e.g., support for 

guest worker programs; the non-enforcement of employer sanctions against hiring 

illegal immigrant workers; or favoring mass amnesties that reward those who have 

illegally entered the country and are illegally employed), such positions would be adverse to the best economic interests of the vast majority of American workers who 

are legally eligible to work but who do not belong to unions. These legal American 

workers (i.e., the native born citizens, naturalized foreign born workers, permanent 

resident aliens, and those foreign born nationals given non-immigrant visas that 

permit them to work temporarily in the United States) would face the increased 

competition for jobs as well as wage suppression from such pro-immigrant policies. 

43

Hence, immigration has always been a ‘‘no-win’’ issue for the American labor movement. 

Nonetheless, a choice must be made. At every juncture and with no exception 

prior to the late 1980s, the labor movement either directly instigated or strongly 

supported every legislative initiative enacted by Congress to restrict immigration 

and to enforce its policy provisions. Labor leaders intuitively sensed that union 

membership levels were inversely related to prevailing trends in immigration levels. 

When the percentage of the population who were foreign born increased, the percentage of the labor force who belonged to unions tended to fall; conversely when 

the percentage of the population who were foreign born declined, the percentage of 

the labor force who belonged to unions tended to rise. History has validated those 

perceptions. To this end, the policy pursuits of the labor movement over these many 

years were congruent with the economic interests of American workers in general—

whether or not they were union members (and most were not). 

But by the early 1990s, some in the leadership ranks of organized labor began 

to waffle on the issue. This was despite the fact that the nation was in the midst 

of the largest wave of mass immigration in its history while the percentage of the 

labor force who belonged to unions was plummeting. In February 2000 the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor—Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) announced it was changing its historic position. It would now support expanded immigration, lenient enforcement of immigration laws and the legislative agenda of immigrant advocacy groups. Subsequently, AFL-CIO officials publicly explained that the organization was now ‘‘championing immigrant rights as a 

strategic move to make immigrants more enthusiastic about joining unions.’’

In mid-2005, four unions who had belonged to the AFL-CIO disaffiliated and 

formed a new federation—Change-to-Win (CTW). The largest of these to disaffiliate 

was the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). While there were other 

issues involved in this split-up, SEIU had been the leading voice for the efforts to 

change labor’s historic role on the subject of immigration within the AFL-CIO. It 

continues to be in its new role in CTW. 

But the key point is that hitherto the labor movement had been the nation’s most 

effective advocate for the economic advancement of all American workers eligible to 

legally work. With these position changes, the issue is open to question. Working 

people—especially those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder—can no longer 

be assured that the most effective champion they have ever had is still there for 

them. The potential loss of public support for organized labor among the general 

populace may in the long run prove to be more costly than any short run tactical 

gains achieved by this shift in its advocacy position. 

A BRIEF REVIEW OF LABOR’S PRE-1990 POSITION

Although efforts of working people to band together to form organizations to represent their collective interests date back to the earliest days of the Republic, it was 

not until the1850s that several craft unions were able to establish organizations 

that could survive business cycle fluctuations, anti-labor court rulings, and employer 

opposition to their existence. By this time, immigration had already become a controversial subject among the populace. Immigrants were used as strikebreakers and 

as an alternative source of workers that could be used to forestall union organizing. 

Already unions were contending that rising immigration levels were making it difficult to secure wage increases and improvements in working conditions. But the 

federal government had yet to formulate any specific policies to regulate the flow. 

With the coming of the Civil War in 1861, labor shortages quickly developed in 

the industrialized North. As a consequence the first statutory immigration law was 

adopted in 1864 by Congress. The Contract Labor Act, as it became known as, allowed employers to recruit foreign workers, pay their transportation costs, and obligate them to work for them for a period of time for no wages until they could repay 

the transportation and often their subsistence costs during this period of virtual servitude. The program continued after the war ended. Free labor, quickly deduced 

that they could not compete with such workers who could not quit and who were 

not paid. The National Labor Union (NLU), the principle labor organization at the 

time, viewed the Contract Labor Act as an artificial method to stimulate immigration and to suppress wages for all workers. They sought repeal of the authorizing 

legislation and were successful in doing so in 1868. But the practice itself was not 

banned and it continued to flourish as a private sector recruiting device. 

The NLU then shifted it attention to the large-scale immigration of unskilled Chinese workers who were also largely recruited through the use of contract labor. Employers consistently paid Chinese workers less than white workers (which is often 

done today with illegal immigrant workers). Naturally, the belief that Chinese workVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:35 Sep 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\WORK\IMMIG\052407\35605.000 HJUD1 PsN: 35605
44

ers would work for considerably less than they would raised the ire of the white 

workers. Chinese workers were also used as strikebreakers. As the practice of hiring 

Chinese workers for low pay spread to the East from the West Coast, the NLU responded to the pleas of workers to end such practices. The NLU sought repeal of 

the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 with China that allowed Chinese immigrants to 

enter the country on the same terms as immigrants from other countries (although 

they could not become naturalized citizens). 

By 1872, however, the NLU had passed away after as it unsuccessfully tried to 

become a political party. A new national labor organization, the Knights of Labor, 

had been formed by this time. It picked up the baton of trying to reform the nation’s 

quiescent immigration system. Concluding that the revival of mass immigration was 

serving to depress wages for working people and to provide employers with ample 

supplies of strikebreakers that hampered union organizing, it too sought repeal of 

the Burlingame treaty and for legislation to end the practice of contract labor. They 

were unable to have the Treaty revoked but they did succeed in getting it amended 

to allow the United States to ‘‘suspend’’ the entry of unskilled Chinese immigrants. 

This was done in 1882 with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act that suspended Chinese immigration for ten year (and the practice continued until the law 

was repealed in 1943 and China was given a small quota). The Knights then successfully lobbied for passage of the Alien Contract Act of 1885 (and strengthening 

amendments in 1887 and 1888). This legislation forbade all recruitment of foreign 

labor by American employers under contractual terms. This ban remained in effect 

until 1952 when, unfortunately, it was repealed and this practice is today once more 

becoming a mounting concern for both organized labor and American labor in general (i.e., the H1-B visa issue, etc.). 

Despite these successes by the Knights, by the 1880s their organizing appeal (that 

emphasized long run political reforms) had lost its following. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) came into being during this decade. Its member unions tended 

to focus on the achievement of short run economic gains in ‘‘the here and now.’’

Samuel Gompers was instrumental in the formation of the AFL. He was its president for all but one year between 1886 and 1924 and is generally recognized as 

being the most influential labor leader in American history. Gompers was himself 

an immigrant (as were many of the nation’s union leaders during the movements 

formative years). Nevertheless, when the Supreme Court finally confirmed in 1892 

that the federal government has sole responsibility for the formulation and enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws, the opportunity for organized labor to press 

national political leaders to adopt finally an immigration policy that set limits, 

screens applicants, and that could be held accountable for its employment and wage 

consequences. In his autobiography, Gompers boasted that ‘‘the labor movement was 

among the first organizations to urge such policies.’’ For as he famously stated: ‘‘we 

immediately realized that immigration is, in its fundamental aspects, a labor problem.’’ For no matter how immigrants are admitted legally or enter illegally, they 

must work to support themselves. Hence, the labor market consequences should be 

paramount when designing the terms of the nation’s immigration policy. 

In 1896, the AFL leadership first addressed directly the issue of limiting immigration. Gompers at the AFL convention that year proclaimed ‘‘immigration is working 

an great injury to the people of our country.’’ At its convention the following year, 

the AFL adopted a formal resolution calling on the federal government to impose 

a literacy test for all would-be immigrants in their native languages. As the preponderance of immigrants at the time were illiterate in their native tongues, the implicit goal of the requirement was to to reduce the level of unskilled worker immigration into the country. It renewed this effort in 1905 and did so at every subsequent convention until such legislation did become the law of the land in 1917. 

When the Immigration Commission (i.e., the Dillingham Commission) issued its 

famous report in 1911 on the impact of the immigration on the U.S. economy and 

society, its findings confirmed the AFL beliefs that mass immigration was depressing wages, causing unemployment, spreading poverty and impairing the organizational abilities of unions. In the wake of the release of this historic report, the Immigration Act of 1917 was passed. It enacted a literacy test for would-be immigrants 

and it also contained the Asiatic Barred Zone provision that banned virtually all immigration from Asian countries. In 1921, the prospect of the renewal on mass immigration from Europe led to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1921 (a temporary 

step) and then the Immigration Act of 1924 (a permanent step). These laws imposed 

the first ceiling on immigration from Eastern Hemisphere nations in the country’s 

history at about 154,000 visas a year. Within the overall cap, the law also called 

for differential country quotas based on national ethnicity that were overtly discriminatory. National origins became the basis for admission or exclusion under this 

adopted immigration system. 

45

The AFL and most national labor leaders strongly supported all of these legislative initiatives. For instance, A. Philip Randolph, who would soon become president 

of an AFL affiliated union and who would later become a national leader of the civil 

rights movement in the 1940s-1960s era, wrote in strong favor of the adoption of 

these restrictive laws. He claimed the nation was suffering from ‘‘immigration indigestion.’’ Mass immigration, he claimed was imperiling union organizing and was 

especially harmful to the economic welfare of African American workers who were 

just beginning to migrate out of the South in significant numbers. He even suggested that the appropriate immigration level should be ‘‘zero.’’

With the passage of these immigration laws as well as the onset of the depression 

in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s, immigration levels fell dramatically 

while union membership levels soared to unprecedented heights. In the immediate 

postwar years, the AFL did support efforts to admit a limited number of refugees. 

But it also reaffirmed its belief that there was no need to increase the level of immigration or to change any of the existing immigration statutes. The AFL did strongly 

criticize the continuation of the Mexican Labor Program (popularly known as the 

‘‘bracero program’’) that had been introduced as a temporary guest worker program 

during the war years but had remained operational after the end of the war because 

it was popular with agricultural employers. Organized labor, supported by emerging 

research findings, contended that employers regularly undermined the worker protections and wage requirements so that Mexican workers were exploited while 

American workers were discouraged from being employed in this industry. In the 

process, unionization efforts were thwarted. The AFL lobbied hard for its termination—which finally happened at the end of 1964. 

After the AFL merged with the CIO in 1955, both new combined federation did 

join efforts launched by the Kennedy Administration and completed by the Johnson 

Administration in 1965 to eliminate the overtly discriminatory features of the prevailing immigration laws. Organized labor concurred with other reform advocates 

that the discriminatory features of these laws were hampering efforts by the country 

to even reach the low immigration ceiling that was in effect. Nations with high 

quotas could not fill them while nations with low quotas had massive backlogs. Organized labor supported efforts to find a new admission selection system that was 

not discriminatory. But organized labor agreed with the other reform groups of that 

time that there should not be any increase in the low level of overall immigration. 

The politicians that crafted the new legislation assured labor and the nation that 

passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 would not lead to a return to mass immigration. But it did—and it continues to do so. 

In 1965 the foreign-born population was only 4.4 percent of the total population 

(the lowest percentage in all of American history). Union membership, however, was 

near its all time high—30.1 percent of the employed non-agricultural labor force 

were union members in 1965. But both trends were about to be sharply reversed. 

The new legislation introduced family reunification as the basis for almost threequarters of the available visas. The number of immediate family members whose 

numbers were not limited rose far faster than were anticipated. Furthermore, there 

were no enforcement teeth included in the new law—which gave implicit sanction 

to illegal entry. There were no penalties for those employers who hired them. Illegal 

entries quickly soared—especially in the Southwest where former ‘‘bracero’’ workers 

just kept coming—albeit illegally—after the program was terminated on December 

31, 1964. A new admission category for refugees was quickly overwhelmed by political decisions to admit vast numbers of persons well beyond what was specified in 

the law. Thus, because there were so many unexpected consequences from the legislation adopted in 1965, immigration reform was back on the table by the mid-1970s. 

The Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SCIRP)(also known 

as the Hesburgh Commission) was created by Congress in 1978 in response to a 

package of legislative proposals by the Carter Administration to address the immigration policy crisis. SCIRP’s findings led to the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980 

and set the basis for the terms of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) 

that was adopted in 1986. The key provision of IRCA was the enactment of a system 

of sanctions that made it illegal for employers to hire illegal immigrants. It also provided for what was believed at the time to be a ‘‘one-time’’ amnesty for those who 

had entered the country while the law was ambiguous. Once more, organized labor 

strongly supported these endeavors and it lobbied hard for their adoption. They also 

pressed for ‘‘an eligibility verification system that is secure and non-forgeable’’ and 

expressed strong opposition to ‘‘any new guest worker program’’ at the 1985 AFLCIO convention. Following the passage of IRCA, the 1987 AFL-CIO convention 

adopted another resolution calling IRCA ‘‘the most important and far reaching immigration in 30 years’’ and ‘‘applauded the inclusion in that law of employer sanctions and a far-reaching legalization program.’’

46

A BRIEF REVIEW OF LABOR’S POST-1990 POSITION

When Congress turned to reform of the nation’s legal immigration system in the 

late 1980s, organized labor opted not to take an active role in the legislative debates 

for the first time in its history. The AFL-CIO did not specify any changes it wanted 

but it did indicate what it opposed. At its 1989 convention, it stated its opposition 

to any efforts to reduce the number of immigrants admitted on the basis of family 

reunification; it opposed any suggestion to increase the number of employmentbased immigrants—favoring greater investment in the nation’s education and job 

training efforts to meet any skilled labor needs. It did seek a cap on the number 

of non-immigrant work visas issued to foreign performing talent and their traveling 

crews. 

When the Immigration Act of 1990 did pass, it slightly increased the number of 

available family-based immigrant visas; it more than doubled the number of employment-based visas; it added a new ‘‘diversity admission’’ category for 55,000 immigrants admitted on a lottery basis from countries that had had low number of immigrants in the preceding 5 years. The cap on the number of nonimmigrant visas for 

performing talent was included. 

At its 1993 Convention, the AFL-CIO drastically reversed itself from it past 

course. It passed a resolution that praised the role that immigrants have played ‘‘in 

building the nation.’’ It proceeded to demonize unidentified critics of immigration reform—especially critics of illegal immigration (which by this time was a national 

issue again despite IRCA). It then called upon local unions to develop programs to 

‘‘address the special needs of immigrant members and potential members.’’ Clearly, 

a new immigration position was emerging within the leadership of the AFLCIO. 

At the same time, the Commission on Immigration Reform (CIR) (also known as 

the Jordan Commission) had been created by Congress and had begun its task of 

assessing the effectiveness of the existing immigration system. It issued a series of 

interim reports, to which the AFL-CIO leadership seemed to be responding. When 

its final report was issued, it concluded that ‘‘our current system must undergo 

major reform.’’ It recommended a 35 percent reduction in the annual level of legal 

immigration admissions; elimination of a number of extended family admission categories; no unskilled workers be admitted under the employment-based admission 

categories; elimination of the diversity admission category; inclusion of a fixed number of refugee admissions within the annual admission ceiling; no new guest worker 

programs; and a crackdown on illegal immigration. 

The AFL-CIO responded by rejecting virtually all of these recommendations. It 

even denied that illegal immigrants were to adversely affecting the economic wellbeing of low skilled American workers. When Congress responded to the interim reports of CIR by introducing legislation in 1996 that sought to codify most of CIR 

recommendations, the AFL-CIO joined with a coalition of business, agri-business, 

Christian conservatives and libertarians to separate all of the proposed legal immigration reforms from the proposed comprehensive bill and then kill them. They 

them stripped-away the key provisions requiring employers to verify the Social Security numbers of new hires as a way to combat illegal immigration as well the proposal to limit refugee admissions. Thus, organized labor’s leadership abandoned the 

efforts to improve the economic circumstances of low skilled workers in the country 

by reducing their competition with illegal immigrants. Their explanation was that 

their organizing efforts in many urban areas had led to more contact with concentrations of immigrants—many of whom were illegal immigrants. Hence, they 

concluded that they needed to take a more accommodative stance on these key 

issues that many immigrants cared about. 

When the Clinton Administration announced in 1999 that it was essentially abandoning worksite enforcement of employer sanctions (and the subsequent Bush Administration followed suit), organized labor concluded that, as a matter of self-defense, it needed to become an advocate for the immigrant community in general and 

illegal immigrants in particular. The labor movement was increasingly finding that 

employers were violating the immigration laws with impunity. Unions do not hire 

employees; employers do—and more and more of them were hiring illegal immigrants for low skilled jobs in particular. Under these circumstances, unions were either going to have to abandon organizing significant sectors of certain industries or 

they were going to have to become supporters of immigrant causes in order to ingratiate themselves to those they were seeking to organize. They believed that if unions 

gave up organizing workers who were illegal immigrants, employers would have 

even more incentive to hire illegal immigrants. Thus, organizing illegal immigrants 

is not a matter of principle, it is a matter of necessity. Advocating for their protection, they concluded, was simply part of the organizing reality they confront. 

47

At the October 1999 AFL-CIO convention, the pro-immigrant element made its 

move from the convention floor. Unions representing janitors, garment workers, 

hotel workers and restaurant workers argued that the labor movement needed to 

abandon its past and embrace immigrant causes if it is to survive. They sought to 

end the use of employer sanctions and they sought to enact another mass amnesty 

for those who had entered illegally since the last general amnesty in 1986. To avoid 

a public confrontation, the issue was deferred until the AFL-CIO Executive Council 

could take up the issue in February 2000. It did so and following that meeting it 

announced that it would seek to have the employer sanctions provision of IRCA repealed and that it would fight for another general amnesty for most of the millions 

of illegal immigrants in the country at the time. At the leadership level, at least, 

organized labor chose to become a supporter of the immigrant agenda—even if that 

agenda imperiled the economic well-being of vast numbers of the American work 

force. 

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

By 2006, the foreign born population has swollen to 12.1 percent of the population 

and almost 15 percent of the labor force. Union membership in 2006 had continued 

the decline that had begun following the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965—

falling to only 12 percent of the employed nonagricultural labor force. The revival 

of the phenomenon of mass immigration is, of course, not the only explanation for 

the decline in union membership. There are multiple factors—all of which are beyond the scope of this testimony. But mass immigration is one of the key factors—

especially because of the large component of the total flow are illegal immigrants 

(estimated in 2006 to number close to 12 million persons, of whom an estimated 7.4 

million are illegal immigrant workers). 

As the findings of two national Commissions as well as the bulk of credible research on the impact of immigration on the nation’s work force, immigration laws 

need to be strengthen—not weakened. Employer sanctions set the moral tone for the 

rationale for existence of immigration policy as a worksite issue. One has to be eligible to work in the United States, not simply want to work in the United States. 

If that is the case, there has to be some way to restrict access to employment only 

to those who are permitted by existing law to work. Employer sanctions are designed to accomplish this feat. But to be meaningful, they have to be enforced at 

the worksite. Such inspections must become routine. Furthermore, the identity loophole of the use counterfeit documents must also be closed. There can be no more 

amnesties (no matter what euphemism is used). There has been no ambiguity in the 

law since 1986. Persons who have brazenly violated the law against their employment not only should not be at the worksite, they should not even be in the country. 

Certainly there is no reason to legalize their status so that they can continue to 

complete with American workers for whom the workplace is supposedly reserved. If 

illegal immigrants can be kept out of the workplace, there would no longer be any 

dilemma for organized labor to confront. The real onus is on government to get illegal immigrants out of the labor force. 

Until that time, however, organized labor seems convinced that it has no choice 

but to abandon its traditional role of the past when it sought to monitor the impact 

of immigration on the well-being of the working people of the country. But in the 

process of becoming an advocate for the pro-immigrant political agenda, there is a 

heavy cost. 

First, it means that it is unlikely that any organizing success of immigrant workers will be able to translate in to any real ability to improve the wages and benefits 

of such workers. None of the basic parameters have changed. As long as the labor 

market continues to be flooded with low-skilled immigrant workers (many of whom 

are illegal immigrants), unions will not be able to defy market forces that will serve 

to suppress wages and to stifle any opportunity to improve working conditions. New 

recruits will pay dues but they cannot expect to see much in the way of material 

gain form becoming union members. 

Secondly, organized labor will run the risk of alienating itself from the millions 

of low skilled American workers who must compete with the waves of unskilled immigrant workers now in the labor market and the many more who will continue to 

seek access to the jobs it has to offer. The more organized labor speaks on behalf 

of illegal immigrants the sooner more American workers are going to realize that 

the labor movement does not really have their real interests at heart. Indeed, it 

would be harming them. 

Third and last, the greatest danger that this shift in position raises is the prospect that the broader public itself will lose faith in the moral credibility of the labor 

movement. Is it actually a voice that speaks for the best interests of all working 

48

people (members or not) which it often claims to be—or is it just another selfish interest group willing to sacrifice the national interest for selfish gain? The entire nation has a stake in the struggle to develop a viable and enforceable immigration policy. Future generation will be impacted by decisions made today. For this reason 

it would be wise if the leadership of organized labor today would reflect on the 

words of a labor leader of the past, John Mitchell, the influential President of the 

United Mine Workers, who in 1903 stated:

Trade unions are strong, but they are not invincible nor omnipotent. And it 

is well that they are not so, for the wisdom that they have shown has been largely due to the ever present necessity of appealing to the public for sympathy and 

support. In the long run the success or failure of trade unions will depend on 

the intelligent judgment of the American people.

If the labor movement is to prosper, it should reflect on the wisdom of Mitchell’s 

words when it comes to the design of immigration policy. In seeking to ally itself 

in the post-1990s with other societal groups that have wider political agendas, the 

leadership of organized labor is now supporting policies that are patently harmful 

to the well-being of the nation’s labor force. What is bad economics for working people can never be good politics for unions. The ‘‘American people’’ know this.

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Serbon. 

TESTIMONY OF GREG SERBON, STATE DIRECTOR, INDIANA 

FEDERATION FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM AND ENFORCEMENT 

Mr. SERBON. Thank you. 

First off, I would like to state that I do not represent my local 

or the National Union. This is my view on immigration as State 

Director for the Indiana Federation for Immigration Reform and 

Enforcement and also as a union member. Being a union construction worker and an immigration activist, I am in a unique position 

because I travel to many different job sites and have the opportunity to speak with coworkers about immigration, both legal and 

illegal. 

Union workers have set wages for different trades. Since the influx of legal immigrant and illegal alien workers in our trade, I 

have witnessed the wage an illegal alien receives as significantly 

lower than that of what union scales are. Because illegal aliens are 

willing to work for lower wages than an American and a legal immigrant who is doing the same job, employers are willing to hire 

an illegal alien over an American citizen and a legal immigrant. If 

an illegal alien is competing for the job available, an American citizen and a legal immigrant will not get the job. This is just one of 

many problems I see with the current state of legal and illegal immigration in America at the present time. 

The language barrier on a job site is a serious safety hazard with 

many illegal aliens not being able to understand even simple 

English. The problem will continue and may become worse because 

Senate bill 1348 does not adequately address the requirement to 

speak English in the current version. 

I have witnessed immigrants taking chances no American would 

take to complete a job; for example, someone using a broken piece 

of equipment or not using personal protective equipment when 

using power tools that could result in an eye or a hearing injury. 

Some of the problems I have mentioned have led to higher accident 

rates among illegal alien construction workers. I believe that any 

law you pass increasing foreign workers will only make this problem worse. 

49

Lately I have been asking my coworkers how they feel about this 

Senate immigration bill 1348 and its provisions to increase the 

amount of foreign workers into the country. Congressmen, I have 

never heard so many angry responses from my coworkers in all of 

the years I have been involved in the immigration reform movement. Congress cannot bring hundreds of thousands of uneducated, 

non-English-speaking people into America and expect our work environment and living standards to remain the same. 

The single biggest complaint from my coworkers is about the amnesty or granted earned citizenship for people with no respect for 

the rule of law and a slap in the face to those of us who abide by 

the laws you pass. Lawmakers should never be in the position of 

advocating rewarding law-breaking. Our current immigration law 

does not exempt anyone illegally in America from deportation simply because they are hard workers. 

The founder of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, wrote a letter to Congress in 1924 concerning immigration. He stated ‘‘America must 

not be overwhelmed. Every effort to enact good immigration reform 

legislation must expect to meet a number of hostile forces.’’

Currently, there are two hostile forces of considerable strength. 

One of these is composed of corporate employers who desire to employ physical strength at the lowest possible wage. They prefer a 

rapidly revolving labor supply at low wages to a regular supply of 

American wage earners at a fair and livable wage. 

The other is composed of organizations, some radical, who benefit 

from illegal aliens. They oppose all restrictive legislation, suggesting that the immigration policy of the United States should be 

based in the best interests of immigrants, not the best interests of 

the United States and its citizenry. 

America can not sustain mass immigration it is currently being 

asked to receive. We are on the undisputable path to a bleak future 

of limited air quality, limited water resources and poor living conditions, failing public education, and any resemblance of the American dream. What if so many people receive the American dream, 

and 1 day it were depleted? 

Congressmen, history is repeating itself as this hearing is taking 

place. Self-interest groups are at the table, including the U.S. 

Chamber of Commerce, La Raza, big Corporate America, none of 

which have the best intentions for the American worker. 

My whole reason for being a union member and an immigration 

reform activist is to support the rights of the American worker to 

be first in the job market and require a safe workplace with a fair, 

livable wage. In my opinion, large-scale increases in workers you 

plan to legalize and import will be a serious problem to my fellow 

American workers and to their quality of life. 

Thank you. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Serbon. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Serbon follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GREG SERBON

Congressmen I want to thank you for inviting me to testify before the committee 

and allowing me to share with you my thoughts and views on America’s immigration problem. 

50

Being a union construction worker and an immigration activist I’m in a unique 

position because I travel to many different jobsites and have the opportunity to 

speak with co-workers about immigration. 

Union workers have set wages for the different trades. Since the influx of legal 

immigrants and illegal alien workers into our trade, I have witnessed the wage an 

illegal alien receives is significantly lower than what union scales are. 

Because illegal aliens are willing to work for lower wages than an American and 

legal immigrant who is doing the same job, employers are willing to hire an illegal 

alien over an American citizens and legal immigrant. If an illegal alien is competing 

for the job available, the American citizen and the legal immigrant will not get the 

job. This is just one of many problems I see with the current state of legal and illegal immigration in America at the present time. 

The language barrier on the job site is a serious safety hazard with many illegal 

aliens not being unable to understand even simple English. This problem will continue and may become worse because Senate Bill 1348 doesn’t adequately address 

the requirement to speak English, in the current version. 

I’ve witnessed immigrants taking chances no American would take to complete a 

job. For example someone using a broken piece of equipment or not using personal 

protective equipment when using power tools that could result in eye or hearing injury. 

Some of the problems I’ve mentioned have led to higher accident and death rates 

among illegal alien construction workers. I believe any law you pass increasing foreign workers, will only make these problems worse. 

Lately I’ve been asking my co-workers how they feel about the Senate’s immigration bill 1348 and its provision to increase the amount of foreign workers into our 

country. Congressmen, I have never heard so many angry responses from my coworkers in all the years that I’ve been involved in the immigration reform movement. 

Congress cannot bring in hundreds of thousands of uneducated, non-English 

speaking people into America and expect that our work environment and living 

standards will remain the same. 

The single biggest complaint from my co-workers is about the amnesty. Granting 

a path to earned citizenship for people who have no respect for the rule of law, is 

a slap in the face to those of us who abide by the laws you pass! Lawmakers should 

never be in the position of advocating and rewarding law breaking. Our current immigration law does not exempt anyone illegally in America from deportation simply 

because they are hard workers! 

The founder of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, wrote a letter to congress in 1924 concerning immigration. He stated America must not be overwhelmed! Every effort to 

enact good immigration reform legislation must expect to meet a number of hostile 

forces. Currently there are two hostile forces of considerable strength. 

One of these is composed of corporate employers who desire to employ physical 

strength (broad backs) at the lowest possible wage. They prefer a rapidly revolving 

labor supply at low wages, to a regular supply of American wage earners at a fair 

and livable wage. 

The other is comprised of organizations, some radical, who benefit from illegal 

aliens. They oppose all restrictive legislation suggesting that the immigration policy 

of the United States should be based on the best interest of immigrants, not the 

best interest of the United States and it’s citizenry. America cannot sustain the 

mass immigration it is currently being asked to receive. We are on an undisputable 

path to a bleak future of limited air quality, limited water resource, poor living conditions, failing public education and any resemblance of the American Dream. What 

if . . . so many people received the American Dream . . . one day it was depleted? 

Congressmen history is repeating itself as this hearing is taking place. The self 

interest groups are at the table, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, La Raza 

(which means ‘‘the race’’) who primarily represent people who are Mexican, Big Corporate America, none of which have the best of intentions for the American worker. 

My whole reason for being a union member and an immigration reform activist 

is to support the rights of the American worker to be first in the job market and 

require a safe work place with a fair, livable wage. In my opinion the large scale 

increase in workers you plan to legalize and import, be a serious problem to my fellow American workers and their quality of life. 

Thank you

Ms. LOFGREN. Thanks to all of you for your testimony. 

We will now begin our series of questions. Each of us is allotted 

5 minutes, and I will begin. 

51

I think that in listening to our labor witnesses, you have been 

actually very clear as to the outlines of what you think is required 

for any future immigration program, and although people sometimes say there are divisions in labor, I think there are certainly 

variations on a theme; but really, you have been clear and remarkably coherent, consistent, and together on that, and so that is very 

helpful to me as we move forward, knowing not only what the point 

of view is but why. 

One of the things that is being debated in the Senate bill—and 

I am wondering if you have an opinion on it—is this point system. 

It troubles me in a sense because, just as with the temporary worker program where working people are sort of fungible units instead 

of individuals, for the future full of workers—and they would not 

just be Ph.Ds. Obviously, they would be people with skillsets and 

the like—they are sort of fungible units. 

How do you think that would work in your union environment? 

If the four union representatives could address that. 

Mr. HIATT. Congresswoman, I do not think that there is anything 

wrong with the concept of a system that actually measures the economic need for future flow. In fact, that is something that we advocate. I cannot pass judgment on the specific formula that has been 

suggested in the Senate or on the specific allocation of points. 

There are some very troubling aspects to it, among which include 

the fact that whatever that formula is would be set in stone for a 

very lengthy period of time and it has no flexibility. 

Ms. LOFGREN. So it needs to be reality-based. 

Mr. HIATT. It has to be reality-based. And I think that if you 

have a reality-based system that truly looks not just by employer 

attestations and employers’ saying we need workers because we 

can bring in more vulnerable, exploitable labor that way, and you 

have a truly independent economic analysis of what is needed, in 

what sectors and when, that cannot be satisfied at prevailing 

wages domestically, then it is fine to have——

Ms. LOFGREN. You really need to test the market. 

Mr. HIATT. That makes sense much more than an arbitrary cap 

or a political compromise. So I like the concept, itself, but I think 

it has to remain flexible and it has to be geared toward the economic realities in any given sector at any given time. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Five minutes goes so quickly. 

Since you are here, Mr. Wilson, I have a question, and we have 

not really had a chance to ask this. 

We had, at an earlier hearing, Swift & Company testify about 

the ICE raids, and they were a basic pilot company, and they testified that they lost $30 million as a consequence of the ICE raid, 

even though they testified that they had tried to comply by using 

the basic pilot. They were not really able to testify about the impact of that raid on the individual workers, and I think most of 

those employees were represented by UFCW. 

Can you talk about the impact on those workers, both legal and 

undocumented? 

Mr. WILSON. Well, it is hard to do it in the time frame we have 

here, but let me say, I think the biggest problem from our perspective with the ICE raids is that you have law enforcement officers 

who essentially scoop workers up and sort them out; and so people 

52

who were scooped up and taken as part of these raids were both 

legal immigrants and native-born Americans. You know, they divided people by the way they looked, and they decided you go over 

here, and you go over here, and we need to see your documents. 

It was a very chilling—a very chilling situation that happened 

inside those plants. We had people who were taken hundreds of 

miles away from home simply because they did not have their documents with them. When they could prove that they were legal, 

they were left hundreds of miles from home and told, ‘‘Okay. You 

are free. You can go now.’’ They were provided no transportation 

home. 

You have heard about the breakup of families where there were 

kids left at schools or at daycare centers, and nobody knew who 

was going to get them or when. But a lot of those communities are 

still facing, you know, real tragedies about what happened in the 

ICE raids, and it is a human disaster. It really is. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you for that. 

I just want to ask—and maybe I can ask Mr. Feinstein, since I 

have not directed a question to you. 

As to the idea of separating the families from the employees on 

these temporary worker programs in the Senate, does eliminating 

the families provide you protection for the workers, that you can 

see? 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. No, absolutely not, and we are strongly opposed 

to those provisions. Workers coming to this country have to be afforded fair and humane conditions, and that certainly does not 

qualify as one. 

Ms. LOFGREN. My time is up, and I am going to try to set a good 

example of living within the time frame. 

We have reserved the opening statement of the Chairman of the 

Committee for his arrival. 

Would you wish to give your opening statement now, Mr. Conyers, or continue to reserve? 

Mr. CONYERS. I would rather wait. 

Ms. LOFGREN. All right then. 

We will then turn to the Ranking Member, Mr. King, for his 5 

minutes of questioning. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Again, I thank the witnesses for being here today. I am just 

going to start out by being—I am going to attempt to be succinct 

here. 

When you grant a legalized status to 12 or 20 or more million 

people—and by the way, no one is talking about this as the amnesty to end all amnesties. That has already gone by the wayside. 

It is a presumption that this is an amnesty along the way to many 

more amnesties in the future. 

This is a destruction of the rule of law, the most essential pillar 

of American exceptionalism. That is what is at stake here with this 

Senate bill and with what we are discussing here in the House, 

even though we do not have a bill before us. It is a destruction of 

the rule of law. It is a destruction of the middle class, and it is a 

suspension of the law of supply and demand. And I have heard it 

here in this testimony, and so I am not going to take care of what 

I think might be the end result for the Republican Party because 

53

I do not know that there is a majority among the witnesses that 

might be able to speak to that. But I would then just submit my 

first question to Mr. Feinstein, and that would be—no. Let me 

make another presumption. 

I am going to presume that because this law of supply and demand has been suspended from the logic calculus of the union leadership, I can only come to one conclusion. And if you try to be rational about it, it comes to this conclusion: which is, I believe, that 

the leadership in the unions have made a political calculus, and 

that political calculus is we are going to have to suspend an increase in wages and benefits for our rank-and-file members for a 

temporary period of time so we can get tens of millions of enough 

people in here who will give us the political power to eventually get 

what we really want. 

So my question then to Mr. Feinstein, first, is: If one were to go 

through your testimony and redact everything that grants political 

power and leverage and influence to the unions, what would be left 

that you are advocating for for the general public that Dr. Briggs 

addressed? 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. Well, I am not sure I completely follow the question, but——

Mr. KING. My question simply is, if you take out the political influence, the political power and those things, what is left? What 

does the general public look at? Because Dr. Briggs testified that 

he is concerned that the general support for unions will be eroded 

by this new position within the last 10 years or so. So what is left? 

What is the general public going to see that comes out of here that 

is really good for the average American citizen? 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. Well, our position is that we need to fix a broken 

system, and the impetus, the goal, the objective of the reform that 

is needed is precisely to eliminate the downward pressures on the 

wages and working conditions of American workers. 

Mr. KING. But you have to suspend the laws of supply and demand to do that. 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. Quite to the contrary. 

We feel that the status quo—what is happening now with people 

having to function in the shadows with an underground economy 

that is flourishing, is that there needs to be a fix in——

Mr. KING. Then why does your position so dramatically disagree 

with and oppose the philosophies of Gompers, see Cesar Chavez, 

the labor workers for centuries—not centuries, but generations in 

this country; why have you come to this new realization of this new 

position that supply and demand, that border enforcement, employer enforcement, keeping a tight labor supply; keeping a tight 

labor supply is good for workers in America, organized and not organized, merit shop and union shop employees? How can you come 

to this new conclusion here without some new basis for the economy? 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. I would respectfully disagree with the analysis 

that this is a new and different, fundamentally different approach. 

I think that the labor movement has always stood for protecting 

the wages and working conditions of all American workers, and we 

believe that today in this climate that we are faced with now requires the kinds of solutions that we have proposed——

54

Mr. KING. My clock is ticking. I wish I had the opportunity to 

complete. I want to quickly say that wages in the packing plants 

in my area used to be matched that of teachers 20 years ago. Today 

they are half that of teachers, Worthington, Minnesota, the list 

goes on. But, Dr. Briggs, can you give me some light on this subject 

matter of how this law of supply and demand can be suspended in 

the minds of the leadership. 

Mr. BRIGGS. It is hard to understand how you can favor amnesty 

programs that would essentially legitimize the presence of illegal 

immigrants, plus the massive chain migration that will come within the next 20 years, a massive infusion of people poorly educated, 

poorly skilled coming into the labor market without having awful 

adverse effects on the bottom of the labor market particularly and 

especially those people in the segment of the labor market where 

the impact of illegal immigration is so massive. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman’s time has expired. I would turn 

now to Mr. Gutierrez. 

Mr. GUTIERREZ. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has 

come from the panel. I would just like to ask Mr. Hiatt, the AFLCIO, John Sweeney in particular, representing the AFL-CIO when 

Senator Kennedy and I introduced the SOLVE Act stood with us 

here outside this very building—it had a temporary worker program—could you explain to us what has changed since the SOLVE 

Act? 

Mr. HIATT. As with AgJOBS, as with all these different bills we 

have to look at all of the elements of the bill and the context in 

which they occur. Even the SOLVE Act had all kinds of worker 

protections which have not existed in any of the bills that have 

been introduced then, several of which we would strongly urge be 

put back into existing bills. But I think that what has changed, we 

look at the trends that have existed over the past several years 

whereby both the undocumented immigration, illegal immigration, 

and guest workers have such a depressive effect on wages, on 

standards. 

Mr. GUTIERREZ. Just because we are allies, they are not going to 

give me more than 5 minutes to have this conversation. I wish with 

friends they would give more time. I share with you concerns about 

the temporary worker program. The difference that I find and I 

would like you to respond to this is when I got here in 1993, the 

labor movement gave me a response to NAFTA. The labor movement said this is what we believe in, and the labor movement gave 

me particular parameters that helped us work together. 

Have you submitted to anyone your new worker program to the 

Congress and just what it would look like and the parameters or 

are you just against any new worker program as part of comprehensive immigration? 

Mr. HIATT. Not at all. In fact, you have one of the documents we 

have submitted to the record is our model for foreign workers coming in instead of temporary worker programs. Because we do see 

that there is a difference between the foreign worker programs on 

the one hand and illegal immigration on the other. It is clearly better to have workers here on status, but we do believe there is a 

much better alternative, not that there isn’t going to be need for 

temporary worker and permanent worker programs. 

55

So we do have an affirmative alternative and that is in the 

record, and I alluded to it in my remarks here. It is expanded upon 

in the written testimony. But for permanent jobs, which is so much 

of what you are trying to address in this new legislation as opposed 

to seasonal agricultural short-term work, we suggest people come 

in——

Mr. GUTIERREZ. Do you support the AgJOBS proposal? 

Mr. HIATT. We supported it because the two farm worker unions, 

the UFW and FLOC, have both agreed as much of a political compromise as anything else that in order to address these problems 

unique to the agricultural sector that——

Mr. GUTIERREZ. So when it comes to the agricultural sector you 

do support the AgJOBS proposal. I just want to make sure since 

the AgJOBS proposal is similar, if not identical in many of its aspects, to how we would treat, number one, future flow of workers. 

As a matter of fact, future flow of workers under the STRIVE Act 

would come to this country and, number one, would get a 3-year 

visa renewable for 3 years, be able to come with their spouses and 

family members to the United States. After 6 years, they would be 

able to self-petition. That visa that they could would be portable. 

They would have all of the labor rights that any other American 

worker. 

We included after the SOLVE Act, which the AFL-CIO did support, which did have a temporary worker program, we included recruitment of American workers as a required creation of a commission. New workers may not be employed, same working conditions, 

new workers cannot undermine labor organizing, independent contractors could not be allowed. I mean, we included many more provisions, I assure you, to protect workers. 

And let me just end with this, I think that we have had—I have 

had, anyway, and I know Members of this panel have had a very 

rich experience with members of the AFL-CIO and organized labor, 

and I just want to make sure that as we negotiate, as you negotiate 

a contract for your members, as we negotiate something for the undocumented in this country and for future flows and our immigrant 

class in this country, that we take into consideration the same political realities that you shared with us, Mr. Hiatt, as it referenced 

the AgJOBS bill when we look at the totality of the issue. 

I want to continue to strengthen because I know that we have 

common goals. Thank you so much. 

Mr. HIATT. We appreciate that, Congressman. We are working 

with your staff and look forward to it. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentlelady 

from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me thank the Chairwoman, and as always, the Ranking Member. We have had a marathon series of 

hearings which I think provide the grounding for a large, challenging journey to comport or to find some reconciliation with the 

Senate bill, and certainly now I think we are going to be called the 

cleanup batters, frankly, because America’s eyes are now turning 

to the House of Representatives. 

Might I just make the comment as it relates to labor, because 

your base is diverse. When you go out beyond the Beltway, even 

though leadership has taken a very progressive, if you will, 

56

proactive response to the immigration issue, when you leave and 

go into your district there is a great deal of questioning among 

working people, among your union members. I think you are well 

aware of that. 

So might I thank you ahead of time for the heavy lifting that is 

going to be required and as well, to extend a hand of friendship on 

how we work together to get the most effective people that solves 

the Nation’s problems and really reinforces America’s values, which 

is a Nation that provides opportunity, a Nation that builds upon 

her diversity, and is strengthened by her diversity. 

So I have a series of questions, and I think you have indicated 

previously in your testimony that, as I understand it, that you 

raise some concerns about the temporary worker structure, whether it is called temporary worker or guest worker, and frankly, that 

is, I think, one of the glaring lines that most people don’t understand. 

They are welcoming, and I think 78 percent of the people believe 

that we should have earned access to citizenship. Their neighbors 

who are working, paying taxes, buying homes, going to school. 

They almost ask why not. And if you look at it from a security perspective, wouldn’t you want to know who is in your neighborhood? 

But help me, I will raise these two questions if the four representatives from the union movement would answer these. One, 

what do we do about the temporary worker need from the business 

community perspective and the way it is now structured. Number 

two, in some of our communities, the question is raised I am unemployed, I am not a union member, why can’t I be employed? That 

is particularly a large question in the African American communities, in the underemployed communities, in rural communities. 

And so a number of us have been working on this concept of a 

training, work-related, work retention, hire America first, some of 

that language is in there; recruiting of America workers, et cetera, 

so that more people can become stakeholders of fixing the broken 

immigration system. And I would welcome your thoughts on how 

that approach could be utilized as we move forward on a comprehensive immigration reform and, Mr. Hiatt, would you start, 

please? 

Mr. HIATT. Thank you, Congresswoman. Let me try to combine 

the two, an answer to the two questions in one. One of the biggest 

problems under the current system is how easy it is for employers 

to recruit foreign workers without giving a chance to domestic 

workers who would be willing to do that same work at decent 

wages and with decent working conditions. 

They know that they can—they can use labor recruiters who will 

shed all liability from the employer themselves, take on all the liability from the employers themselves, to bring in workers that can 

discriminate once they cross the border and the recruiters can recruit workers based on age, based on gender, based on race or ethnicity without coming under the reach of U.S. discrimination laws. 

The employers, under most of our temporary work programs 

today, simply have to attest they have tried looking for domestic 

workers at prevailing wages, can’t get them, and they have a need, 

and they are home scott free. 

57

So we believe that the protections, whether you are talking about 

short-term temporary work where there needs to be a temporary 

worker program, or the incredible expansion that the proposals 

today would look to in expanding so-called temporary worker programs to permanent jobs, has to protect the workers in your district, U.S. workers in your district by ensuring that not only where 

there is a legitimate need because there truly are no workers in the 

local labor market, but any of the other labor markets in this country who are willing to do those jobs at decent wages and working 

conditions. 

Then and only then can you bring in workers. And when you do, 

you bring them in at the same rates at the same conditions as domestic workers with permanency so that you don’t have two tiers, 

two classes of workers. 

When Congressman King was asking why has the labor movement changed on this, on favoring one group of immigrant workers 

over our U.S. born workers, that simply is not the case. We believe 

that we are working on behalf of both sets of workers here because 

we are trying to avoid a two-tiered system. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. I would recognize the gentlelady from California Ms. Sa ́nchez. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank all the 

witnesses for being here today and testifying. I have several questions that I want to run through and have a limited amount of 

time, so I ask you all to be brief. The first question is a yes-or-no 

question for all the panelists. Do you generally believe the U.S. has 

done a good job of enforcing labor laws respecting wage and hour, 

workplace safety, and rights to organize? 

Mr. HIATT. No, it has not. 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. No. 

Mr. WILSON. Absolutely not. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. No. 

Mr. BRIGGS. An awful job. 

Mr. SERBON. No. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Thank you. The second yes-or-no question for the 

entire panel. Would increased enforcement of these laws in conjunction with a worker program help improve wages, safety and 

labor rights? 

Mr. HIATT. Absolutely yes. 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. Absolutely. 

Mr. WILSON. Yes. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes. 

Mr. BRIGGS. Of course. 

Mr. SERBON. Maybe. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Let the record reflect I almost got unanimity on 

two questions that I asked. My third question is for Mr. Feinstein. 

So long as the employer controls the visa process, can we hope to 

raise workplace standards? 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. No, I don’t believe we can. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Thank you. Mr. Hiatt, the new temporary worker 

program in the bill currently being debated by the Senate would 

force workers who have worked in the U.S. for 2 years to leave the 

U.S. For 1 year before they could come back for another 2-year 

stint. These workers would be forced to leave no matter how valuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:35 Sep 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\IMMIG\052407\35605.000 HJUD1 PsN: 35605
58

able they had become to their employers or their coworkers; for example, if they were working in an organizing drive. And I am concerned about the fact that the bill seems to treat workers as fungible units rather than the hard working individuals they are, that 

contribute value to businesses and to their communities. What impact do you think such a schedule would have on labor unions 

working to organize these workers and their U.S. coworkers? 

Mr. HIATT. We completely share your concern, and just as with 

so many other aspects of these temporary worker programs that 

keep the workers from feeling an investment in their communities, 

investments in their unions, investment with their coworkers, it 

would make it much more difficult. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Thank you. When we talk about future flow worker programs one of the things that we tend to hear a lot about is 

whether there are enough U.S. workers to do the jobs that are 

needed for our economy, and I agree that there are jobs that U.S. 

workers would take if the wages and the benefits were high 

enough. I don’t completely agree with you, Mr. Wilson, that every 

single job is a job that a U.S. worker would take if the pay and 

benefits were high enough, because I think that our economy has 

moved in a different direction in terms of information and technology, and it continues to move that way, and so I think there 

comes a balancing point at which you can’t pay somebody $75 and 

hour to do certain jobs because then the products that result from 

that, people won’t pay the increased cost. 

I think in most cases, you are correct, but I don’t agree 100 percent with that statement that you made. 

But one thing that does trouble me is this definition of need in 

terms of sectors where they say they need workers because I think 

that there are U.S. workers that would fill some of those jobs, 

again, if the wages an benefits were high enough. I am wondering, 

Mr. Wilson or Mr. Camacho, perhaps if you have any ideas as to 

how we would ascertain whether there was, in fact, a labor need 

or how you would define need for employers who are looking to 

bring workers from other countries to fill those jobs. Any ideas? If 

you could respond in writing at a later date. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I am filling in for Mr. Camacho of the United 

Farm Workers, I am Bruce Goldstein with Farmworker Justice. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. My apologies. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. We believe that employers in agriculture need to 

improve wages and working conditions to attract farm workers and 

retain farm workers and reduce turnover in these jobs. Our hope 

is that if we can pass AgJOBS and legalize most of the farm labor 

force, that the employers in various ways will be required both economically and legally to improve conditions to stop the high turnover that leads to more migration. We intend, through union organizing, to achieve that goal, but we will need assistance from Congress in a variety of ways and the Administration to promote union 

organization and also to enforce labor laws to take away the incentive that employers have to bring in undocumented workers. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. I think there are ways we can ascertain whether 

there is a need, but I say the way you cannot do that is simply by 

59

an employer attestation. An employer attestation alone will not do 

that. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. I appreciate your answer. Finally, Mr. Hiatt, in 

the few seconds that remain, if we can eliminate the underground 

economy through a permanent visa program or the right kind 

worker program, how much healthier would our economy be in 

terms of wages, workplace safety, and tax revenue to this country? 

Mr. HIATT. I think it would be significantly healthier, Congresswoman. I am not sure I can answer that in numerical terms, but 

there are many studies in addition to all the anecdotal evidence 

about the depressive effect that the current policies are having. I 

don’t think there is any question it would be a lot healthier. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Thank you. I yield back. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. Mr. Ellison, the 

gentleman from Minnesota is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ELLISON. Let me thank all of the panelists and not just 

thank you for coming today, but for the work you have done over 

the years. I really appreciate it for working people. I want to ask 

a question that is on topic, but a little slightly—it is an issue I 

haven’t heard enough about. You may not be prepared to discuss 

what I will ask you, but I ask you for your best if you could. 

How has our trade policy impacted immigration? I know all of 

you are concerned about trade policy, it is something that you are 

focused on. I want to talk about whether American trade policy and 

how it has driven immigration, and I wonder if any of you would 

be willing to offer a viewpoint on the topic. Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. I would like to touch on that a minute. We believe 

that the enactment and subsequent reaction to NAFTA has had a 

tremendous impact on immigration. That when—I am not an economist, but I pretend to be one sometimes, and I would say when 

you drive down the price of corn in Mexico the way we have, and 

you drive people off the farms, people are going to look for ways 

to sustain themselves and take care of their families. Part of the 

reaction to that has been how people have migrated from places 

where they couldn’t support themselves, to doing what they need 

to do to come to a place where they can support themselves. That 

has driven a lot of the immigration from Mexico to the United 

States. 

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Wilson have you or any or your colleagues on 

the panel, do you have any documentary evidence, I am not asking 

for evidence of causation, because that is tough, but just even correlation. I mean we had one level of immigration pre-NAFTA, we 

got it, an then what happened to the rates after that? 

Mr. WILSON. I don’t have anything at hand. I am sure there are 

studies out there. We can try to provide that for the record. 

Mr. ELLISON. Dr. Briggs. 

Mr. BRIGGS. The mistake, I think, was not including immigration 

as part of NAFTA. I opposed NAFTA because it didn’t have any 

labor standards. I think most of our trade policy has been a disaster for working people. It has not had any labor standards imposed on countries that are being able to produce products abroad 

and bring them into the United States at lower cost simply because 

there are no labor standards those countries. Firms in this country 

have gone there to produce. So I think they are linked. 

60

Mr. ELLISON. Right now there are two front burner hot topics in 

Congress, one is immigration, the other one is trade. And I would 

love to hear them talked about together much more because my intuition tells me they are tightly linked together. Does anybody on 

the panel have any information on statistical information, any kind 

of regression analysis in terms of what impacts and what drives 

immigration and what impact trade has on it. Do you have information on that. Does anybody have any information on that. Does 

anybody know where I can find information on that? 

Mr. HIATT. We will get you some, Congressman. 

Mr. ELLISON. Let me ask you this, what does your intuition tell 

you, and I thank you, Mr. Wilson, for jumping out there and giving 

me your views, what does your intuition tell me about how important trade policy is on the conversation we are having today? 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. I would concur with Mr. Wilson’s remarks that 

there clearly is a correlation, an important correlation, and often 

overlooked correlation. 

Mr. ELLISON. Why is it so overlooked? It seems like, I mean, the 

common narrative is America is this great job magnet and people 

are coming here just to work, and that sounds like that has some 

level of plausibility. But I also believe that people in Mexico probably like their families, their communities, and probably don’t want 

to leave them unless they have to, yet many of them are. So it can’t 

just be the attraction of work here, it must be something going on 

there, and maybe it is related to how—Mr. Hiatt. 

Mr. HIATT. I was going to say I think it is overlooked for much 

the same reason, that the assumptions about globalization, when 

people talk about the benefits of globalization growing the world 

economy, unfortunately much too often they are talking about for 

a relatively small slice of the world’s population and ignoring the 

impact, the negative impacts that we are seeing with the widening 

income gap not only in this country, but around the world. 

The potential globalization is fantastic but the realities are very 

much underplayed by the media, by policy makers, and, as you say, 

are not getting enough attention. 

Mr. ELLISON. If we accept Mr. Wilson’s premise that dumping 

cheap corn and grains in Mexico is wiping out small farmers, which 

is making them have to leave their home to come find work, how 

high—I mean can we ever build a wall high enough to address that 

problem? 

Mr. HIATT. Not at all. 

But the answer is that you can not separate the enforcement of 

labor and employment laws from the enforcement of immigration 

laws. If you don’t do something so that you have adequately funded 

and vigorous enforcement of our labor and workplace protections, 

then no wall is going to deal with these immigration problems. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, would I be able to submit the documentation that I hope to get for the record? 

Ms. LOFGREN. Certainly. That is correct. The gentleman from 

California, Mr. Berman, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BERMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair. I apologize for missing 

some of the questions, but very interesting testimony. I agree with 

the Chairwoman about what you said, the Ranking Member, just 

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as I was leaving seemed to be making a point about unions’ support for any status adjustment for the millions of people who are 

now in this country without documents, without status, call them 

what you want, undocumented workers, illegal immigrants, that 

that was—he didn’t put it quite that way, but I heard it that way, 

a crass decision to lower, to suppress wages and dilute benefits and 

working conditions in order to sign up more members. 

Now one of us, one of us is not in the real world. Those people 

are here. They are having that effect now. And why something 

which under different kinds of conditions that for me make it very 

different than what is referred to as an amnesty, but give them a 

way in which they can legalize their status in addition to the tremendous benefits to our country in dealing with that problem, 

gives them more freedom to fight for their rights, why that is an 

action to depress, further depress wages, I don’t understand. I just 

wanted to take exception. 

This is not about some new wave, this is about people who are 

here and working now in the situation where they can be readily 

and are, in many cases, exploited, and it is an effort to correct that 

situation. I don’t think it is a crass decision to sign up members. 

It is to give these people an ability if they want to feel like they 

can engage in collective bargaining and the benefits of that process 

in order to keep their wages and the wages of other workers from 

being depressed. 

What I would be curious, if the panel, different members of the 

panel could just react to that notion. Mr. Hiatt, if I recall correctly, 

you talked about—there is a distinction here that I think you made 

between the notion of seasonal workers and the way we are now 

talking about temporary workers. When I hear people talk about 

temporary workers, and it is in the context of demographics, we are 

going to have jobs that the existing American workforce will not be 

able to fill. 

They are really—no jobs are permanent in one sense, but in the 

context in which we think about this, they are really permanent 

jobs but we are, and to some extent, the Senate bill does this, we 

have designated the people who will fill those jobs as temporary 

workers. They will be year-round jobs, they will continue to exist, 

but we will funnel workers in those jobs and then out of those jobs 

because temporary means temporary. 

So we deem these permanent new jobs to be temporary jobs by 

calling the workers who will fill them temporary workers. And that 

is different than a seasonal kind of work where there may be a 

greater justification for having temporary workers fill, perform that 

work, leave, come back the next season, leave. They are also sort 

of permanent jobs but they aren’t full-time jobs, and perhaps there 

are particular difficulties in recruiting U.S. workers for those kind 

of jobs because it requires either being employed a large part of the 

year or leaving another presumably permanent job or stringing together a series of the right kinds of seasonal jobs that may not be 

very practical. 

I just realize I have talked my time, right. I guess I won’t even 

pretend to ask a question. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Berman. But it was very interesting to listen to. 

62

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Can I answer? Earlier, Mr. Gutierrez raised the 

question about that very issue and it does need to be understood 

that AgJOBS is about the H2-A provisions of the guest worker program, it is about seasonal jobs that by definition last 10 months 

or less. That is not a model for year round permanent jobs. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The point that Mr. Berman made very eloquently. 

Mr. WILSON. If I could add to that briefly. In the case that I 

talked about, the Sam Kane Beef Company, the Bush administration Labor Department approved those temporary workers for what 

they described as the ‘‘11-month meat cutting season,’’ something 

which we are completely unfamiliar with. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The point is 

well taken. 

Mr. BERMAN. It is the Lent month without meat. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman from Massachusetts is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DELAHUNT. I will be very brief. I thank Professor Berman for 

his customary illumination. I think it is difficult—I think the whole 

immigration issue has to be put into the context of the 

globalization of the economy, if you will, and I think it is Mr. Hiatt 

that talked about the benefits of globalization seeming to get stuck 

with a very small slither of the population, whether it be domestically or internationally. 

We talk about the flow of labor back and forth over national 

boundaries. I found it interesting that President Fox from Mexico 

felt comfortable making the statement by the year 2020, there will 

be no immigration into the United States because the Mexican 

economy will absorb; will have need for a much more expanded 

workforce. I would be interested in your comments on that particular statement. But at the same time, and I pose this to those 

of you in the labor movement, what is happening in terms of the 

globalization of the union movement. 

There was an interesting piece by Harold Meyerson back about 

a month ago talking about unions for a global economy and the 

mergers going on between two British unions, and I think it is the 

steel workers. If the benefits of trade, of the global economy are 

going to be allocated and diffused throughout societies, isn’t it 

going to be necessary for the organized labor movement to go global, and when is it going to happen? Are there any visionaries left 

in the organized—within the labor movement to proceed in that direction? 

Mr. HIATT. Congressman, there is a lot of interesting work going 

on in terms of the globalization of the labor movement. The example you mentioned, there was a long article about it a couple of 

weeks ago in The Financial Times about the steel workers and a 

couple of those British unions. Even in less formal ways, there is 

collaboration going on between unions and the labor movements in 

the various countries on trade, on world migration, and on a lot of 

these other issues, how to deal with multinational companies. 

I think the point that you made is very good, and the point that 

several of you have made about the tie into trade is critical because 

until we have raised the labor standards in all these countries, 

which is at the heart of our trade policy and our brother and sister 

trade union movements’ trade policies, then there will be a magnet 

63

effect in the immigration policies of different countries where employers will have it easy exploring labor. That is the connection. 

Mr. DELAHUNT. Let me see if I can reframe it. I hear from those 

that are most concerned about immigration and the hordes of immigrants that are invading the country that they would be wise to 

advocate for trade agreements that incorporate labor standards and 

advocate on behalf of the globalization, if you will, of labor movements. It would be, I think, an interesting effort if we could work 

together in terms of pushing that agenda forward. It will be interesting to see as we proceed with this how ardent they are in terms 

of helping workers in other countries so that we don’t find ourselves in this particular conundrum. 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. If I can add, I certainly agree with that, as Mr. 

Hiatt said, the labor movement is certainly cognizant of what you 

are saying and waking up to the fact that employers are global employers, and right now the president of the service employees union 

is in China, and I hear recently in the last week, another officer 

of the union was in Mexico. I think there is an increasing recognition that it is absolutely critical that the labor movement itself 

globalize. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Just very briefly, The New York Times today, 

page 3 has an article about the Farm Labor Organizing Committee 

organizing in Mexico, and a terrible price being paid for it, but it 

is necessary to be done. 

Mr. DELAHUNT. I look forward to the Ranking Member and others in the minority on this Committee advocating in the future for 

labor standards in trade agreements. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Chairman 

of our Committee, Mr. Conyers, we had reserved time for your 

opening statement, if you wish to give one and you also have your 

opportunity to ask questions, Mr. Conyers, should you wish to do 

so now. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. It seems like, among the Democrats 

and the Congress, the biggest problem is guest workers. It seems 

like among the Republicans the biggest problem is how do we deal 

with the 12 million that are here. And I would like to look at the 

guest worker problem with you because that is the one that is troubling to me. 

Before I do that, I wanted Dr. Briggs to know I received his letter and his article. I have glanced at the letter and not read the 

article, but I will be back in touch with you and we will continue 

our discussion. You shocked me by saying that you were against 

NAFTA because they didn’t include labor immigrant—immigration 

issues. I was against it for that reason and many more. So there 

may be points in this discussion that may be more common between us than meets the eye. 

Mr. BRIGGS. Sure. 

Mr. CONYERS. A hypocritical term, a guest worker, no rights. It 

is almost involuntary servitude. It is an embarrassment to the Nation. And here is a nearly evenly divided Congress trying to work 

out the perfect solution which obviously, if and when I write a bill, 

it might contain a lot of things that are just not reasonably do-able. 

But give me a brief take on the guest worker provisions with my 

friends of labor, would you please. 

64

Mr. HIATT. Congressman, we completely agree with you, it is a 

hypocritical concept and especially when, as Congressman Berman 

was saying, we are talking about coming in for work that is not 

just for a brief guest period, but a long-term period, and that is 

what is so much now of the legislation being considered would be. 

We believe that it is a concept that is contrary to everything this 

country stands for, both in terms of the workplace, and in terms 

of the community as well, the notion that people would be expected 

to come in and not put down roots in their communities. 

In our proposal, we appreciate the notion that there need to be 

alternatives to the magnet of illegal immigration. So I think that 

the motivation among many people is fine, but I think that you can 

fix it in a much better way. In the case of permanent work, we 

should look at the green card program that exists now, the permanent visa program. If there are permanent jobs in certain industries where there really is a need and not just a question of trying 

to attract workers in to work for substandard wages and benefits, 

then bring them in but bring them in on a permanent basis with 

all of the rights of permanency from the beginning. It doesn’t do 

any good to say there with will be a path for permanency 3 years 

down the road or 6 years. That may be fine for that individual at 

some point, but for the system, it doesn’t a do any good because 

the employers are still able to game the system and drive down 

standards during that period of time. That is the problem with the 

guest worker concept. 

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Feinstein. 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. I think we essentially agree with what was just 

said. SCIU and UNITE HERE do not favor a guest worker program; they are strongly opposed to it. They recognize the need for 

future workers in this country, and that system has to be based on 

certain fundamental principles. They are quite consistent with 

what was just said. 

Workers coming to this country in the future must be able to 

stay. They must have that option. There must be labor protections 

that are the equivalent to every other American worker. There 

must be mobility. Future workers have to be able to move from one 

employer to the next. And there must be an accurate way of determining what is the appropriate number and level of people who 

should be awarded the opportunity to come to this country. Those 

are all critical elements in any kind of program of new workers. 

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. I agree with what my colleagues have said, I think 

the problem, and I think you hit the nail on the head, is that existing programs are shameful. They are a scandal that if anyone 

would look at, it would make all of us ashamed. But I think the 

problem is that despite writing strong enforcement provisions into 

the law, the truth of the matter is they are not enforced and what 

happens in the real world is people are abused and exploited. 

In spite of the best intentions of the things that Congress has 

done, and there is a real disconnect between what we would like 

to have happen for the future and the way people are really treated 

in the workplace. 

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Goldstein. 

65

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, guest worker programs have obviously 

been extraordinarily problematic. In agriculture, they are kind of 

exhibit A for this country, farm workers are exhibit A on how guest 

worker programs tend to operate. There needs to be a lot more protections, and they are not in a lot of these proposals. I do think 

that the United Farm Workers Union, for years, has—well, some 

of us farm workers advocates, we prefer to abolish guest worker 

programs altogether, but there is a certain reality that sometimes 

you have to face, some people disagree with that proposal, and so 

the United Farm Workers Union has reached a reasonable compromise on agriculture jobs. 

Mr. CONYERS. Dr. Briggs. 

Mr. BRIGGS. I believe the guest worker program is fatally flawed 

and I gave testimony before the Senate 3 years ago on this precise 

issue. I will send you a copy of that, too. Every immigration commission has said no more guest worker programs and listed all the 

reasons why these programs cannot be made to work. If there is 

one thing that the research is overwhelming on, it is no guest 

worker programs. With the past experiences, these things cannot 

be made to work. I would urge you to go back to the Jordan Commission, that is the best study ever done on immigration, and the 

research done to back up their recommendations. All of them overwhelmingly said no guest worker programs. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. Mr. Serbon. 

Mr. SERBON. Thank you. In my opinion, what reason would an 

American employer employ American citizens when they can constantly get a flow of cheap labor, if you want to call it that. These 

people will be exploited. You get 2 years and you are gone. They 

can constantly turn over their workforce. I have gone to jobs where 

the whole workforce was immigrants, illegal or legal, whatever, but 

if they can constantly get new workers every 2 years and get rid 

of the old ones, you are not getting any benefits, when you are 

here, you leave, and it is just abuse in my eyes, and I don’t like 

to see anybody abused and I believe this system would be abused, 

and also I believe that it seems like H1-B is a program that every 

time you turn around they are trying to increase the numbers and 

this is what will happen with this program in my eyes. 

Mr. CONYERS. I can’t believe my ears that all of you almost 

agreed with each other. That is an amazing situation. Of course, 

you know the pragmatic problem is that we need a zillion people 

to do the seasonal work, and isn’t that, Mr. Goldstein, the real 

thing that keeps us from all doing what we all agree ought to be 

done? Is that just about it? When you come—I mean, the agriculture people would hemorrhage if they heard this testimony and 

that we had enough people in Congress to really put this program 

in jeopardy. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Right. Of the 21⁄2 million farm workers, 1.4 million of them are undocumented. So if you deport every one of them, 

I don’t know what agribusiness is going to do, create a guest worker program to provide them foreign labor so we can produce our 

fruits and vegetables? I don’t know. To me, it seems likes AgJOBS 

is a realistic response to a situation: you offer people who are here 

on undocumented status working in agriculture and can prove it 

and are not criminals, give them the chance to learn illegal immiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:35 Sep 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\IMMIG\052407\35605.000 HJUD1 PsN: 35605
66

gration status by working 3 to 5 years in agriculture. It is good for 

employees, its good for the country, it is good for workers. 

Mr. BRIGGS. The problem is if you keep giving agriculture a 

source of extra labor. As the Voss Commission pointed out, the fundamental program in agricultural labor, is the people can’t earn a 

decent income. The people that work in the industry are kept at 

poverty levels. If you add more workers into that industry, even 

seasonally, you simply reduce the opportunities for overtime, you 

keep no pressure for wages ever too go up, and you make it a selffulfilling prophecy that American workers won’t do this work. If we 

had to rely on the market, wages would go up. Farm labor costs 

are an incidental, minor part of final products costs——

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman’s time has expired. I think we have 

concluded but there is a unanimous consent request that Mr. Berman, the author of the AgJOBS bill, be allowed to ask one question. Without objection, that request is granted. 

Mr. BERMAN. Could I extend that the unanimous consent request 

just to make a parenthetical comment? 

Ms. LOFGREN. If you make it part of your question, yes. 

Mr. BERMAN. The reason AgJOBS—there is only one reason that 

I was involved with a bill that didn’t repeal the H2-A program, it 

is because I couldn’t have passed such a bill. And my question really for—and the union went through a tortuous problem of accepting 

certain things that are an anathema to them in order to get something that was more important. 

My question to Mr. Hiatt, Mr. Feinstein and Mr. Wilson is in our 

search to try—if the five of us and Ms. Sa ́nchez and Mr. Delahunt 

had the power to write this bill, so much of what you said I agree 

with completely, we would do it. If the consequence of—I want you 

to deal with the consequences of what is going on right now in the 

effort to bring up the wages of low paid workers and hold certain 

industries in the United States, in the world, we are dealing with 

in this Congress, with this Administration in our pursuit of the 

most sensible, rational logical approach to achieve our values and 

goals, we end up with nothing happening, and what does that 

mean for working people in this country and the country? 

Mr. HIATT. Congressman, I think if we were talking only about 

agricultural jobs——

Mr. BERMAN. I am talking about the whole. 

Mr. HIATT. I understand. A political compromise that had to include the continuation of temporary guest worker programs, and 

we could try to get as many of the protections that, for example, 

we have all agreed to with the immigrant rights groups, all the 

labor movement that has been submitted today through the leadership conference on civil rights, there may be a compromise there 

that we could live with, but what is so different here that you 

pointed out, Bruce Goldstein pointed out a few moments ago, and 

I wish I had responded to Mr. Gutierrez about is how the political 

compromise that is under discussion now extends the guest worker 

concept to permanent jobs, not just to seasonal and short-term 

ones. 

So our answer to your question would be that leaving people 

worse off today, leaving our U.S.-born workers and immigrant 

workers worse off today under that type of compromise, would be 

67

worse than with no bill at all. We would rather wait and fight next 

year, or in 2009, for a bill that does not move us backwards. 

Mr. FEINSTEIN. If I could say that the question you pose is obviously an enormously important one. The status quo is simply not 

acceptable. It is unacceptable in all the many ways in which have 

been described today, and it is a condition that needs to be 

changed. 

As to whether or not there is sufficient space in this political environment to make the kind of changes that are necessary, that is 

the question of the moment. What is going on in the Senate, the 

debate in the Senate gives us all enormous concern. But I would 

say this, that the fact that the leadership of this Committee, the 

Members of this Committee are in the middle of this process gives 

some encouragement and hope that if anybody could do it, we are 

certainly hopeful that you can. 

Mr. WILSON. The challenges of how to do a political compromise 

on immigration are enormous. They always have been. And I think 

the main problem with the compromise that is out there now is it 

really is a question of whether we are better off with this or better 

off without this. The challenge we face is at every step along the 

way is to offer the kinds of suggestions that can improve it, hoping 

that it will get better and fearing that it might not. 

I don’t have an answer for you, but the most critical part I would 

say that we would have to include is to make sure that there is 

the kind of enforcement that really happens, not just from the government, but give people a private right of action. You have got to 

do that because the existing regime, not just the existing Administration, but the existing regime, is not going to make it happen. We 

are going to have more scandals in guest worker programs in the 

future just as we do today. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman’s time has again expired. Actually, 

all time has expired. I would like to thank all of the witnesses for 

their testimony today. Without objection Members will have 5 legislative days to submit any additional written questions for you 

which we will forward, and we ask that you answer as promptly 

as you can so that those questions can be made part of the record. 

Without objection, the record will remain open for 5 legislative 

days for the submission of any additional materials. I think this 

hearing today has helped a great deal to illuminate the issues that 

we have before us. It is actually extremely interesting that in many 

points, the Democratic and the Republican witnesses see this in the 

same way, and our challenge will be to move forward with a comprehensive immigration reform bill that addresses these very important issues successfully. So we do thank you for your testimony 

and your time and this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 10:57 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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‘‘THE AFL-CIO’S MODEL FOR ‘FUTURE FLOW’: FOREIGN WORKERS MUST HAVE FULL

RIGHTS,’’ SUBMITTED BY JONATHAN HIATT, GENERAL COUNSEL, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR & CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS (AFL-CIO)


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‘‘Q&AS ON AFL-CIO’S IMMIGRATION POLICY,’’ SUBMITTED BY JONATHAN HIATT, GENERAL COUNSEL, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR & CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS (AFL-CIO)


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‘‘AFL-CIO EXECUTIVE COUNCIL STATEMENT: RESPONSIBLE REFORM OF IMMIGRATION

LAWS MUST PROTECT WORKING CONDITIONS FOR ALL WORKERS IN THE U.S.,’’ SUBMITTED BY JONATHAN HIATT, GENERAL COUNSEL, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF

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‘‘FUNDAMENTAL WORKER PROTECTIONS IN FOREIGN TEMPORARY WORKER PROGRAMS’’ 

BY THE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL RIGHTS, MAY 2007


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‘‘GRAFT MARS THE RECRUITMENT OF MEXICAN GUEST WORKERS’’ BY ELISABETH

MALKIN, THE NEW YORK TIMES, MAY 24, 2007, PAGE 3


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‘‘CLOSE TO SLAVERY: GUESTWORKER PROGRAMS IN THE UNITED STATES,’’ BY MARY

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF TERENCE M. O’SULLIVAN, LABORERS’ INTERNATIONAL

UNION OF NORTH AMERICA (LIUNA) GENERAL PRESIDENT, MAY 24, 2007


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