Immigration Labor Unions

[brainshrub]

I read a great story on buzzflash today about immigrants organizing and protesting. Do regular Unions in the states have a good working relationship with Unions that use immigrant labor? Does anyone have an insight or a web-link that explores the dynamics between the two?

What problems to immigrants have when they get here, that could be addressed by a Union?

From the employer standpoint...is it legal to negotiate with Unions that might have illegal immigrants? Are there other problems that immigrant Unions might face?

Is the car-license flap in California a really labor issue? I mean: we encourage them to come, expect them to work for low wages and then don't want to offer them car licenses to get to work. (This wouldn’t be an issue, except that public transportation in California SUCKS!)

I’d like to encourage people to post links in this thread.

[DBoon]

1. I think the deal with CA is

Neither side is willing (or even able to) to stop immigration.

The most effective weapon on this side of the border is employer sanctions, which no Repub will ever go for.

The only issue on the table is whether illegal immigrants will be treated decently or not.

Conservatives want them treated as a semi-criminal slave class, so they can be an easily initmidated source of slave labor.

Depriving illegals of driver licenses will not make them go away. It just makes them easier to intimidate and exploit.

My own opinion is that illegal immigration has a very corrosive effect on lower income workers and on the poor. African American workers, long the mainstay of blue collar jobs, have been forced out. The only solution I can see is economic change in Mexico, to remove the need for massive emigration north.

[Clete]

2. I agree with economic change being needed in Mexico.

This is essential. Mexicans would rather stay home if they could only make a living. They also need to keep the children in school instead of sending them out to work by the time they are nine or ten years old or even younger creating another generation of stoop labor.

[sweetheart]

3. semi criminal slave class

you know, as an american immigrant in another country, the same is true that you speak... All immigrants in all nations are by default "semi-criminal slave class"... the locals like to feel superior because they paid local taxes longer.

I accept that i am a slave no matter where i am... and if someone chooses to see me not that way, than i call them a friend.

We live in a dark world getting darker... america is not alone being paranoid about outsiders... the whole bloody planet is that way.

[brainshrub]

4. How abut a N. American Living Wage?

Wouldn't that end the problem in one fell swoop?

[DBoon]

5. Wouldn't be enforced

for those workers who have no legal standing to begin with, though I would assume with higher wages in Mexico, there would be far less immigration.

Hmm... instead of a North American Free Trade Agreement, how about a North American Labor Rights Agreement? Instead of promoting the freedom of capital to move, we promote the freedom of workers to stay?

[brainshrub]

6. Exactly