Progressives, union members are sharply split on immigration, poll shows
President Barack Obama will host a White House meeting today with progressive immigration advocates and the AFL-CIO’s leader, Richard Trumka, highlighting the deep divide among union leaders, workers and business leaders over immigration policy.
Shortly afterwards, the president is slated to meet with a panel of business leaders eager to import immigrant [illegal alien] workers and customers.
The events are intended to tout Obama’s push for a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws. AFL-CIO bosses say their highest priority in the controversial debate over immigration is to get citizenship for roughly 11 million [to 40 million] illegal immigrants.
But union members are far more concerned about excluding low-wage immigrant [illegal alien] workers, says a Jan. 29-30 poll of 1,000 likely voters by Rasmussen.
Approximately 90 percent of union members said the reduction of illegal immigration was important to them, while only 9 percent thought it was not important.
Unions members also split 51 percent to 47 percent against an amnesty for illegal immigrants, the poll showed...
Industry’s aversion to federal regulations is a potential deal-breaker for the unions, despite their shared interest in amnesty, said Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA, a nonpartisan group that wants to shrink the inflow of immigration workers.
“Even though [union leaders] they say they want this amnesty, I’m not sure they agree with [business-backed proposals] to greatly increase the number of legal worker and the numbers of guest workers,” he said. “I think there’s a decent chance they will end up not supporting this [pending immigration] bill.”...
[The] SEIU union is one of the fastest-growing unions, and has almost 2 million members — many of them immigrants [illegal aliens] — working in health care, government agencies and property maintenance.
The SEIU has strongly pushed for amnesty, and is backing pro-amnesty groups...
The SEIU is not part of the 11-million strong AFL-CIO, but the two groups frequently cooperate.
The AFL-CIO isn’t talking in public about the so-called “Future Flow” or immigrant [illegal alien] workers. Instead, in public, it is only backing amnesty.
‘“Our top priority in the immigration debate is to make sure that all the people who are American — except on official documents* — have a path to citizenship so they can have equality and so they can stand for themselves in the workforce,” AFL-CIO spokesman Jeff Hauser told The Daily Caller...
For 100 years, the unions “has always stood on the principle of tight labor markets because that is was the best way to improve wage and conditions of American workers,” Beck said.
“Now they’re pushing for looser markets“ that reduce workers’ economic and bargaining power, he said...
CAIRCO notes:
* Perversion of terminology is a commonplace tactic of special interests who wish to undermine the rule of law and the principle of citizenship in America. By definition, an American is a United States citizen - either by birth or by naturalization of a legal immigrant.
An illegal alien is someone who snuck into the United States ("entered without inspection") and evaded capture at America's border. Illegal aliens have all kinds of documents; it's just that they are forged or stolen.