Good afternoon. My name is Katie Quan. I am a labor policy specialist at the Center for Labor Research and Education at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Industrial Relations I am also a former garment worker, union organizer, and international vice-president of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees. And community activist.

Today I am here representing LION, the Labor Immigrant Organizing Network a group of union and community organizers of immigrant workers. LION is proud to have authored the convention resolution which sparked debate on immigration policy inside the AFL-CIO, and eventually led to its current position on repealing employer sanctions and calling for amnesty, or legalization, of undocumented immigrants. Would the members of LION who have attended one or more meetings please stand and be acknowledged?

At a conference sponsored by LION last year, one recurring testimony was that one of the biggest barriers in organizing immigrant workers is that the law does not provide reinstatement remedies for undocumented workers who get fired for union activity.

The most exploited group of workers in our society, those who get cheated out of pay because employers think they won’t speak out those who do hard and dangerous work with no insurance or benefits when they finally stand up to protect themselves, to organize a union, they find they have no legal protection.

The employer sanctions provision is part of the of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 which says that it’s illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers, therefore, it’s also illegal to rehire them after having fired them for organizing a union.

For anyone else in America, If an employer breaks the law by firing workers for exercising unionization rights then the law makes provisions to make wrong things right The National Labor Relations Act says that workers fired for union activity have the right to reinstatement. but for undocumented workers, the courts have ruled that IRCA trumps the National Labor Relations Act so that no reinstatement, no protection for union activity is provided.

This means that when the food and commercial workers union organized Fabiola and the workers at Zoria Farms, here in Santa Clara County the boss not only tried to bust the union by calling in Social Security, to say that the social security numbers of 20 out of the 200 workers suddenly did not match, in a blatant violation of the National Labor Relations Act, once the workers were fired, the union did not file unfair labor practice charges to get their jobs back because there was precedent to believe that IRCA and employer sanctions would prevent the workers from getting their jobs back even if it was successfully proved that the boss had violated the National Labor Relations Act.

According to organizer Roger Rivera, Not only was the whole point of winning a union defeated but the workers blamed the union for getting the them fired pointing their fingers at the organizer, saying that he was in fact a "disorganizer." The firing of these union sympathizers also destroyed the unity of spirit and will of the workers to fight hard for a good union contract.

Since IRCA was passed, The numbers of employers who were slapped on the wrist with sanctions for hiring undocumented workers has been very, very minimal. This law has failed to prevent the flow of undocumented workers coming to this country to work for a better life.

On the contrary, the damage that IRCA and employer sanctions has done to bust up or "disorganize" union organizing campaigns has had a widespread chilling effect on workers standing up for their rights that only further terrorizes already victimized the workers. IRCA denies workers the right to organize. The provisions which prevent reinstatement for union activity are grossly unfair, unconscionable, and unjust.

As a labor movement, we fight for workplace fairness and equal opportunity, we cannot tolerate employers pitting one group of workers against another, or exploiting undocumented workers even more than other workers. Furthermore, we cannot allow there to be any group of workers let alone the most exploited group not have the right to organize unions.

Therefore, the AFL-CIO’s new policy on immigrant workers in calling for the repeal of the employer sanctions provisions of IRCA is right on the mark. The new policy also calls for amnesty for undocumented workers. It calls the legalization of our brothers and sisters who now live and work under constant fear of being deported and finally recognizes the value of their contributions to society as well as the dignity of their existence.

Our position on Who will become entitled to be legalized, What kinds of proof will be required, How long the program will last, all these details many of which will also be addressed by other speakers must be worked out in the next few months. And LION intends to insert its voice in this very important upcoming discussion.

*** We in the labor movement and we in the immigrants rights community are poised at the threshold of an unparalleled window of opportunity- the new AFL-CIO policy on immigration finally embraces undocumented workers and in doing so stands with the needs and aspirations of entire communities of immigrants.

We communities of immigrants now have a powerful ally with resources and influence and a huge base of membership that is trained to do battle from the halls of Congress to the streets of Seattle.

Much more education has to be done between and among us to repair decades of mistrust and understand what we are really about in structure, goals, motivation, and action.

Going forward, on local, regional, and national levels, we need to jointly plan how we are going to build a campaign to repeal employer sanctions and how we are going to win the fight for amnesty.

Part of this joint planning will be redefining our goals and plotting a timetable and gaining support within our own constituencies. Without giving away many secrets, this process of joint planning should help the immigrant rights community rebuild a fractured movement and it should help the labor movement build internal unity around its new policy.

There could not be a more perfect time to be waging these campaigns. The employers are crying "labor shortages," saying they don’t have enough workers. Their answer is to press for various forms of a guestworker program which amounts to bonded servitude. But our answer should be: If the Republicans can fight for permanent residency for a six year old child from Cuba then they and we can all fight for permanent residency for 6 million undocumented workers who have been here for years, who have enriched our society through the value of their labor and contributions to our community.

That building of a lasting alliance of labor and immigrant rights communities on current policy issues and on future issues is one opportunity. The other opportunity lies with forging a common framework for future immigration.

As long as I have known, immigrants rights groups and I have been personally involved with some of these groups have been fighting defensively mostly reacting to such right-wing attacks as limiting immigration, limiting political asylum, or limiting benefits to immigrants.

Well, what about the kind of immigration policy that we should ideally like to see and promote? Should we have open borders, If not, what should we have? Should we continue policies of employment-based authorization to work? If not, what should we have? Should we continue policies of hetero-sexually concepted family reunification? If not, what should we have?

In an era of globalization where Filipino domestic workers are working in Saudi Arabia, Turkish laborers are working in Germany, African workers are migrating to Sweden, where fully 20% of the workforce in Japan will be immigrant workers in the next 50 years, what lessons can we learn about the relationship between the global economy and fair immigration policies?

As we are fighting to destroy bad policies, we have the opportunity to propose good new policies This window of opportunity may not last forever, so we in the labor movement must work with us in the immigrant rights movement to forge a common vision and strategy.

*** 100 years ago my grandfather and his brother crossed the Mexican border into California illegally buried in a hay cart At the time the Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882 was in effect, a law of racist character which has bitter memories to Chinese Americans to this day, It barred Chinese, and only Chinese from entering the U.S. because extreme right-wingers claimed that Chinese were stealing everyone’s jobs.

Well, life in Southern China wasn’t so good 100 years ago there were famines and floods and too many mouths to feed so my grandfather and his brother were chosen to take a boat to Mexico and then sneak across the Mexican border My grandmother used to tell me how the border agents poked hayforks through the hay to make sure that there was no one hiding inside the hay and that my grandfather almost got poked to death.

In 1906, my grandfather and untold numbers of other immigrants in San Francisco got unexpected amnesty when City Hall burned down in the great San Francisco fire all records were lost and essentially everyone was became undocumented. While at the same time everyone could claim documentation. Claiming false papers and the selling of them, gave rise to the "paper son movement," where immigrants who were in the U.S. claimed that they had sons in China And in China the entitlement to be a paper son was a sold at a very dear price But it is the way that a very high percentage of Chinese Americans including my mother’s family was able to come to the U.S.

All of us here except perhaps the Native Americans have stories to tell about the incidents of history which brought us to this country.

They are all valuable and should give us pause for reflection on the economic, political, and moral, and bases for those who want to immigrate now.

I stand today as the proud granddaughter of illegal immigrants to commend the AFL-CIO’s policy reversal on immigration and to call for us in both the labor and immigrant communities to build a lasting alliance and forge a common future.