So, what would be the harm if nothing passed this week on immigration? After all, it’s only because Bill Frist, the majority leader of the Senate, demanded that a bill pass right now that there is a rush to ram something through. Wouldn’t it be better if we had no bill as opposed to a bad bill?

As you’ve probably read, the compromise being floated right now says, according to reports in the MSM (below is from The New York Times):

¶Those who have lived in the country at least five years would be put on a path toward guaranteed citizenship, provided that they remained employed, paid fines and back taxes, and learned English, a senior Republican aide said. The aide said this group accounted for about 7 million of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be living here.

¶Those who have lived here for two to five years, said to number about three million, would have to leave the country briefly before reporting to an American port of entry, where they would be classified as temporary workers. They would be allowed to apply for citizenship but would have no guarantee of obtaining it. Those who did not would have to leave after participating in the temporary worker program for six years.

¶The remaining one million or so, those who have lived in the country less than two years, would be required to leave. They could apply for temporary worker status but would not be guaranteed it.

I’m instinctively very wary about any law that chops up people into different classes of rights based on some arbitrary and discriminatory criteria like time. Maybe it’s because both my parents were immigrants I’m for letting everyone in.

What’s lacking, and rarely gets discussed, are the important workplace protections that should be put in place for everybody who is working here. That seems to me what unions should be fighting for–anyone here gets exactly the same workplace rights afforded a citizen…of course, those aren’t great shakes either because we still don’t have the real right to have a union.

I go back to the principles developed by The Drum Major Institute that are, I think, a good way of figuring out what’s right and what’s dumb:

1) Immigration policy should bolster—not undermine—the critical contribution that immigrants make to our economy as workers, entrepreneurs, taxpayers and consumers, because:

• On average, immigrants pay more in taxes each year than they use in government services, and these taxes fund programs like Social Security that strengthen and expand the middle class.
• The middle class relies on the goods and services that immigrants produce.

• By increasing consumer demand, immigrants generate economic growth that benefits the middle class: immigration is a major contributor to the expansion of Hispanic and Asian-American consumer markets—an estimated 12 percent of the nation’s 2004 purchasing power.

• Immigrants also stimulate the economy by starting small businesses and attracting investment capital from their countries of origin. Since the American middle class relies on the economic contributions of immigrants, a pro-middle-class immigration policy must not include mass deportation or aim to shut down future immigration.

2) Immigration policy must strengthen the rights of immigrants in the workplace.

• Under current immigration law, immigrant workers compete with their U.S.-born counterparts on an uneven playing field—to the detriment of both groups.

• Because employers threaten undocumented immigrants with deportation, these workers cannot effectively assert their rights in the workplace by, for example, asking for raises, complaining about violations of wage and hour or workplace safety laws, or by supporting union organizing drives.

• As long as this cheaper and more compliant pool of immigrant labor is available, employers are all too willing to take advantage of the situation to keep their labor costs down and are less willing to hire U.S.-born workers if they demand better wages and working conditions.

• U.S.-born workers are left to either accept the same diminished wages and degraded working conditions as immigrants living under threat of deportation or to be shut out of whole industries where employers hire predominantly undocumented immigrants. When immigrants lack rights in the workplace, labor standards are driven down, and all working people have less opportunity to enter or remain part of the middle class. So a pro-middle-class immigration policy must guarantee immigrants full labor rights and make sure that employers cannot use deportation as a coercive tool in the labor market.