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Unions Split on Immigrant Workers
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"The bells and whistles they are currently adding to the temporary workers programs are bound to fail, they have been proven to fail," she said.
Medina said the SEIU advocates a guest-worker program with visas that would let workers change jobs, join unions and petition for permanent residency.
"Workers that come here would have full protections of our labor rights, including the right to organize, and they would have an independent method of enforcing those rights," Medina said.
SEIU's support of a revamped guest-worker program reflects a desire to create politically tenable immigration reform. Bush has said that his support of immigration reform hangs on the inclusion of a temporary-worker provision.
"Immigrants really want something. There's such desperation for some resolution of this mess," said Ruth Milkman, a professor of industrial sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles.
But SEIU's temporary-worker proposal is nothing like the president's plan to connect "willing employers with willing workers" or the guest-worker provisions floated in Congress, which would not give workers the right to independently petition for permanent residency.
Finding middle ground could be tough. Broad support is needed to change immigration laws, said proponents of increased immigration, who have been pushing to rewrite the laws for years.
"As the process goes along, I think there's a framework for the labor movement to come together," Medina said. "It won't be an easy process, but it can happen."
