AFL-CIO Takes Anti-Worker Stance on Deportations



The AFL-CIO has issued a political statement on the debate over limiting the deportation of illegal aliens. The action agenda they are pushing is aimed at halting deportations from the interior of the country as well giving legal work permits to the aliens. This obviously would empower the illegal aliens to more actively compete for jobs now held by legal workers. This is another example of how the AFL-CIO has ceased to be a defender of American workers.

The action agenda urges “prosecutorial discretion” be used to stop deportations, but it goes beyond that by urging that those spared deportation be given work permits – as the administration did for the DACA youth.

It also calls for, “…ending programs that effectively delegate [enforcement]responsibilities to state and local law enforcement…” It cites the Secure Communities Program that shares arrest records routinely sent to the FBI with the DHS enforcement authorities. This is disinformation, because the Secure Communities Program does not allow local enforcement agencies to prevent the FBI from sharing arrest records with DHS. The AFL-CIO statement also calls for ending other programs in which local governments may work cooperatively with the federal immigration authorities. But it implies that these programs allow local authorities to deport illegal aliens, which is false. Only the federal authorities may deport aliens.

The AFL-CIO also echoes amnesty advocates in calling for an end to deportations without a hearing before a judge. That is a formula for encouraging illegal immigration, because it would swamp the court system and result in extensive periods of presence in the U.S. and the ability to work for illegal aliens waiting for a court hearing date.

This position by the AFL-CIO is understandable only in the context that it has become an organization that represents white-collar educational and governmental employees as well as skilled trade union workers. The former are not as vulnerable to competition from illegal alien workers as lesser skilled, and lower earning U.S. workers.

About Author

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Jack, who joined FAIR’s National Board of Advisors in 2017, is a retired U.S. diplomat with consular experience. He has testified before the U.S. Congress, U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform and has authored studies of immigration issues. His national and international print, TV, and talk radio experience is extensive (including in Spanish).

18 Comments

  1. avatar

    The people who run our corporations, (often transnational corporations,) will not be hindered in their quest for profit by such a homely consideration as the welfare of middle and lower class citizens. Further, there is no room for such things as patriotism and loyalty. The country is run for the benefit of corporations and the rich. Benjamin Franklin said: “He who puts country before commerce is a patriot. He who puts commerce before country is a traitor.” What is a country if not it’s citizens?

  2. avatar

    In the days of slavery, the slave owners clothed their property, medicated, housed them, fed them, and some were given land for their gardens. They owned them, they took care of their needs. Basically illegal invaders are corporate slaves. They give them some money which is wired back home to their families. All their other needs are forced on the tax payers by way of social services. Sure corporations want cheap labor because the rest of their wages is payed by you all!

    The unions want them for their money (dues). The unions will also do their best to get their wages increased as all Americans would expect. But that would reduce the numbers of cheap labor. That means another wave of cheap labor will cross the border and all this crap will start all over again.

  3. avatar
    who's killing us off on

    AFL-CIO is an organization that is suppose to protect American Workers. What the heck is going on.

    ANYONE & EVERYONE that supports the INVASION of our country WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS is the enemy of the CITIZENS of the USA. The revolutionary war was started over much less.

    The civil war was fought to stop southern cheap labor, slaves, from spreading across the country. Northern workers & businesses were threaten by the cheap slave labor.

    Now our own government is conducting the Invasion of our country, themselves, with a New Modern Slave Laborer, willing, 3rd world savages, from 3rd world crap holes they could not build into good places to live themselves. So. California has been almost completely taken over by Mexico/Mexicans. They have been given free birthing by our government. The Mexicans couples are birthing 6 kids for free, filling the streets, schools and jails. We are being invaded and the INVADING FORCE is out birthing us WITH OUR OWN TAX DOLLARS. This is INSANE.

    Our debt $17 trillion. Each year Mexicans are costing us $350 billion + a year. This over a TRILLION DOLLARS in 10 years. WHY DOESN’T THE NEWS MEDIA explain this. WHY DON’T OUR representatives bring this to the attention of the public.

    We are experiencing a New Modern Form of GENOCIDE at the hands of our own government & their corporate overseers. Don’t believe. Just look at SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. The sate with the most beautiful, livable weather in the country. You can no longer go west young man. You can get a job there unless your a foreigner.

    In history wars were fought over much less. But to have our territory taken, our resources drained, our valuable institutions, museums, etc., separated from us is an outrage.

    • avatar

      Neither the government nor the media will tell you how much this is costing you. The money doesn’t just fall out of the sky, it is tacked onto you County property tax bill. A new survey shows that 63% of Americans don’t believe that either political party works in the interests of citizens as both are just flip sides of the same old rotten coin. A “taxpayer revolt” as suggested by one Supreme Court justice would be a waste of time as a complete revolution would clean all the rotten apples out to the core.

    • avatar

      I agree, it does seem that corporations want to keep that cheap illegal labor coming across the border or overstaying their visa’s. This is a win – win for the Chamber of commerce and all other business enterprises that support illegal immigration. Not only do the illegals guarantee that American working wages will continue to fall, but these companies also get the American taxpayer to pick off the other bills like Healthcare, Schooling, food stamps. The only real loser in this scenario is the American worker and taxpayer; the very people the AFL-CIO is suppose to protect!!

      • avatar

        Add me to those questioning the union’s stand. It is with the chambers of congress, most businesses, and Congressmen from Cantor to Guitierrez. It’s time to oust some specific Dems. and Reps. , to clue both parties to whom they represent, U.S. citizens.

  4. avatar
    Charles E. Penrod on

    Further evidence of the sellout of American ethics and values. I’ve already lived the best years of the U.S.A. When Americans no longer care about protecting one another’s position in life it’s over for real Americans. May God help our grandhildren.

  5. avatar
    Larry Boning on

    The labor unions have picked the winner in the illegal immigration debate, and are positioning themselves accordingly. -An ominous development. They want the loyalty of what they perceive as hordes of future wage slaves who will have no one to turn to but the unions. They reason that if they truly help the American worker in this, that the laws of economics will prevail and wages will automatically be protected. –They fear the role of unions in our society will therefore be diminished!!
    They are wrong. They need to look at the example of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. Cesar Chavez, who really did have the welfare of the farm worker at heart, was AGAINST the continuous flooding of the labor market with illegal help. Big agro, ultimately broke the power of the UFW with illegals.
    Why any other union feels it might fair differently by keeping the floodgates of immigration open, (both illegal and legal), is completely mystifying.
    Whatever else they are, illegals are the untimate scabs. And the current immigration “reform” act, which would simply grant amnesty to all the illegals, will do nothing but exacerbate the current problem and ultimately drive every union and its membership into the dirt. You can’t side with the bosses and expect to beat them.

    • avatar

      It has never made much sense when I hear people putting unions down (especially if they have never been in one). Who do they think is going to watch out for them and bargain in their interests? .. The corporations? NOT!!

      • avatar

        I have been a union member, and at that time IMO the union was representing the interests of the workers. It is the responsibility of the union members to hold their union leadership responsible for representing them in the same way that it is the responsibility of the public to hold their elected representatives responsible for representing their interests.

  6. avatar

    If the union officials are so worried about the illegal aliens and giving them our jobs, I say when we kick the illegals back to where they com from,kick the union officials out with them .We don’t need that garbage.

    • avatar

      There is a simple answer to this very sever problem. Anyone caught employing an illegal alien automatically gets 2 years in prison and $500,000 fine. Once there are no jobs or welfare the illegals will go back to where they came from saving the American taxpayer trillions and opening up around 12 million jobs for the 20 million Americans who are currently unemployed or underemployed.

  7. avatar

    just another example showing that those union leaders have a different agenda than standing up for American citizens. Have to follow the money. Have those union leaders formed a pact with obama?

  8. avatar

    Unions have evolved into what is commonly called “Organized Crime”. The steal money from American Workers and support the enemies of Working Class American Citizens. If the were truely an organization for their memebers they would not be supporting the Democratic (Communist) Party and would help their emplyers stay in business and stay in the United States. Illegal invaders should be put to work in chain gangs or deported.

  9. avatar

    The AFL-CIO Has One Purpose in Mind, Evidently

    Collect more dues, no matter how much wages decrease due to the current labor glut in America.

    Ironically, many companies can’t get skilled blue collar or professional workers with the proper training/experience. Perhaps if the companies would have thought ahead, they would have spent more decades ago on mentoring and apprentices instead of waiting for all their skilled folks to retire for hiring replacements. Certainly bringing in foreigners with inadequate English communication skills and lack of cultural understanding is a poor group to even attempt to replace lost American experience skills….especially using the failed product lines this attempt has created in both domestic software, aerospace composites and now “made in America” automotive assembly defects [using foreign engineers].

  10. avatar

    I come from four generations of factory rats. My mother worked for the executive officer of a state labor union, as did my brother. My mother is rolling over in her grave at what the union has become–though probably not all that surprised given that in the stories she told, the union leaders were really no better than employers, and sometimes worse.

  11. avatar

    Samuel Gompers was founder and president of the AFL. He addressed immigration and wrote in 1924 that “corporation employers…prefer a rapidly evolving labor supply at low wages to a regular supply of American wage earners at fair wages.”

    Wonder what he would have to say now about his organization carrying water for those same “corporation employers”.