5 Things You Need to Know About the Immigration Agreement

[Teamster Jeff]

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It was announced over the weekend the bipartisan Senate "Gang of Eight" came to an agreement in principle on a major aspect of creating a commonsense immigration process that benefits all workers.

This agreement includes a new kind of worker visa program called the W-Visa, which will work for everyone, not just employers.

Here are five things you need to know about this new employer-based visa:

1) The W-Visa is not a temporary visa. Workers will have the ability to self-petition for permanent status after a year and they are not tied to a single employer.

2) Unlike other employer visa programs, this one will be data driven. Data will be compiled by a new bureau called the Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research. The bureau will be a separate and independent component within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

3) W-Visa holders will be paid fairly, meaning their wages will not adversely affect the wages or working conditions of U.S. workers

4) W-Visa workers will be covered by state and federal employment laws to the same extent that other U.S. workers are covered. W-Visas will not be available to employers who have laid off workers within 90 days and will not be available to employers during a strike or lockout.

5) A new visa program is only a small part of the AFL-CIO's campaign to build a commonsense immigration system
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Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said legislation still must be drafted and the group of eight needs to sign off on the specific language, but "we have substantive agreement on all the major pieces now between the eight of us."
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http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/5-Things-You-Need-to-Know-About-the-Immigration-Agreement

[oysterbay]

1. Are low-wage workers being sold out?

I am an unemployed, unskilled, older worker. I see low-wage workers bearing huge costs of low-skill immigration, especially in the form of depressed wages and inflated housing rents.

What would Chuck say to me?

[limpyhobbler]

2. maybe

I'm all for reforming the way we do immigration because we can't have workers living in the shadows, unregulated, working below minimum wage, with no protections, afraid to talk to organizers, fearing their families could be split up around a deportation. What we have now is inhumane.

But it also a legit concern that importing more workers will drive down wages or make jobs harder to find. Sometimes that does get lost in the debate. I wish part of immigration also meant making guarantees to the workers who are already here. I have a hard time believing that there is a shortage of workers in any low skilled job right now. We do immigration reform because we don't want to see a human tragedy. Yet at the same time we also have a human tragedy of mass unemployment here now, and the corporations really don't care about either one of those tragedies, they only want access to cheaper work and that is all they care about.

[oysterbay]

3. A missing component

Have any progressives noticed that the (documented) proletariat is completely absent from the current debate? It's like we don't even exist.