Washington, DC - Today, SEIU Vice President Eliseo Medina testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security. At a hearing on the need for passing comprehensive immigration reform in 2009, Medina detailed a unified reform framework that was released earlier this month by Change to Win (which includes SEIU) and AFL-CIO.

"The current broken system has given rise to a three-tier caste worker system in America - citizens, guest workers and undocumented workers," said Medina. "This onerous system depresses wages for all workers because, unfortunately, too many employers seek out the cheapest, most vulnerable workers in order to gain a competitive advantage. This helps no one, not American workers, not immigrants, not businesses that play by the rules and certainly not taxpayers who wind up paying for an ineffective enforcement system focused on arresting nannies, farm workers and gardeners instead of stopping drug smugglers, gang members or other larger threats to our national security.

"Real reform will allow us to focus our resources on our priorities instead of our prejudices. It will solve many problems at one time instead of the current band-aid approach."

Widely regarded as the most powerful voice for immigration reform within the labor movement, Medina has deep roots in the labor and immigrant rights movements. As a 19-year-old grape-picker, Medina participated in the historic United Farm Workers' strike in Delano, California and over the next 13 years, he worked alongside Cesar Chavez--eventually rising to rank of second national vice president. Medina has served as executive vice president of the 2 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) since 1996, when he made history by becoming the first Mexican American elected to a top post.

Medina's full testimony and the Change to Win / AFL-CIO unified immigration reform framework follows.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Eliseo Medina and I am a very proud immigrant today. To address a US Senate subcommittee is a great honor and I thank you for the opportunity. My family and I came to this country in the 50s. We worked in the fields harvesting grapes, oranges and other crops. We worked long days, without breaks, for very low wages and terrible working conditions. To ask for better treatment was asking to be fired on the spot. But, as difficult as the work was, we also knew that if we worked hard we had an opportunity to claim our own little piece of the American Dream. Because of my history, the issue of immigration reform is very personal to me.

Today, I am an executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the largest unions in America. I am honored to be here today to represent the 2 million homecare, janitors, security officers and other SEIU members who live and work throughout the United States, many of them immigrants who came to this country from all over the world.

Regardless of where we came from, we wake up and go to work every day with the same goal - to work hard, contribute to society and achieve our own American Dream. Today, immigrant workers are advocating alongside their coworkers and neighbors in support of economic reform, real healthcare reform and strengthening the rights of workers through passage of legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act.

I believe that to achieve that dream, we also have to address our broken immigration system. The status quo is simply unacceptable and works only to the benefit of those who break the rules.

That is why the two largest workers organizations in the country - the Change to Win federation and the AFL-CIO - have come together around a unified proposal for comprehensive immigration reform that consists of five components, each of which depends on the others for success:

ۢ Rational control of the border;

ۢ A secure and effective worker authorization mechanism;

ۢ Adjustment of status of the current undocumented population;

ۢ Improvement, not expansion of temporary worker programs; and

ۢ An independent commission to assess and manage future flows, based on labor market shortages that are determined on the basis of actual need

This proposal will allow millions of undocumented workers to come out of the shadows, relieving them of the fear of arrest and deportation and of leaving behind their families and dreams. It will stop unscrupulous employers from taking advantage of their lack of legal status to exploit them and violate existing wage and hour and health and safety laws. Guest workers fare no better because they are tied to their sponsoring employer, with no effective redress because to complain is to lose your visa and be deported.

I saw this system firsthand with my father and brother and later as an adult working with sugar cane cutters in Florida under the H2A program. These workers are not treated as "guests" in our country but more like indentured servants.

The current broken system has given rise to a three-tier caste worker system in America - citizens, guest workers and undocumented workers. This onerous system depresses wages for all workers because, unfortunately, too many employers seek out the cheapest, most vulnerable workers in order to gain a competitive advantage. This helps no one, not American workers, not immigrants, not businesses that play by the rules and certainly not taxpayers who wind up paying for an ineffective enforcement system focused on arresting nannies, farm workers and gardeners instead of stopping drug smugglers, gang members or other larger threats to our national security.

Real reform will allow us to focus our resources on our priorities instead of our prejudices. It will solve many problems at one time instead of the current band-aid approach.

Since we unveiled our proposal, the portion that has received the most attention--and been the most misunderstood--has been the independent Commission. The men and women of the labor movement have long believed that our current system for bringing in permanent and temporary workers simply does not work effectively.

The key to designing a sustainable workplace immigration system is that the flow of future workers must be rationally based on the always-evolving labor market needs of the United States.

The Commission would act in two phases. First, it would examine the impact of immigration on the economy, wages, the workforce and business to recommend to Congress a new flexible system for meeting our labor needs and set the number of employment visas. Next, the Commission would set and continuously adjust future numbers based on a congressionally approved method.

We believe our proposal will give all stakeholders a seat at the table to build a system that works for the long term that is based on sound public policy not politics, and will have lasting political support.

We hope you will give it your consideration. Thank you.

Immigration reform is a component of a shared prosperity agenda that focuses on improving productivity and quality; limiting wage competition; strengthening labor standards, especially the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively; and providing social safety nets and high quality lifelong education and training for workers and their families. To achieve this goal, immigration reform must fully protect U. S. workers, reduce the exploitation of immigrant workers, and reduce the employers' incentive to hire undocumented workers rather than U.S. workers. The most effective way to do that is for all workers--immigrant and native-born--to have full and complete access to the protection of labor, health and safety and other laws. Comprehensive immigration reform must complement a strong, well-resourced and effective labor standards enforcement initiative that prioritizes workers' rights and workplace protections. This approach will ensure that immigration does not depress wages and working conditions or encourage marginal low-wage industries that depend heavily on substandard wages, benefits, and working conditions.

This approach to immigration reform has five major interconnected pieces: (1) an independent commission to assess and manage future flows, based on labor market shortages that are determined on the basis of actual need; (2) a secure and effective worker authorization mechanism; (3) rational operational control of the border; (4) adjustment of status for the current undocumented population; and (5) improvement, not expansion, of temporary worker programs, limited to temporary or seasonal, not permanent, jobs.

Family reunification is an important goal of immigration policy and it is the national interest for it to remain that way. First, families strongly influence individual and national welfare. Families have historically facilitated the assimilation of immigrants into American life. Second, the failure to allow family reunification creates strong pressures for unauthorized immigration, as happened with IRCA's amnesty provisions. Third, families are the most basic learning institutions, teaching children values as well as skills to succeed in school, society, and at work. Finally, families are important economic units that provide valuable sources of entrepreneurship, job training, support for members who are unemployed and information and networking for better labor market information.

The long-term solution to uncontrolled immigration is to stop promoting failed globalization policies and encourage just and humane economic integration, which will eliminate the enormous social and economic inequalities at both national and international levels. U.S. immigration policy should consider the effects of immigration reforms on immigrant source countries, especially Mexico. It is in our national interest for Mexico to be a prosperous and democratic country able to provide good jobs for most of its adult population, thereby ameliorating strong pressures for emigration. Much of the emigration from Mexico in recent years resulted from the disruption caused by NAFTA, which displaced millions of Mexicans from subsistence agriculture and enterprises that could not compete in a global market. Thus, an essential component of the long-term solution is a fair trade and globalization model that uplifts all workers, promotes the creation of free trade unions around the world, ensures the enforcement of labor rights, and guarantees all workers core labor protections.

1. Future Flow

One of the great failures of our current employment-based immigration system is that the level of legal work-based immigration is set arbitrarily by Congress as a product of political compromise --without regard to real labor market needs--and it is rarely updated to reflect changing circumstances or conditions. This failure has allowed unscrupulous employers to manipulate the system to the detriment of workers and reputable employers alike. The system for allocating employment visas--both temporary and permanent--should be depoliticized and placed in the hands of an independent commission that can assess labor market needs on an ongoing basis and--based on a methodology approved by Congress-determine the number of foreign workers to be admitted for employment purposes, based on labor market needs. In designing the new system, and establishing the methodology to be used for assessing labor shortages, the Commission will be required to examine the impact of immigration on the economy, wages, the workforce and business.

2. Worker authorization mechanism

The current system of regulating the employment of unauthorized workers is defunct, ineffective and has failed to curtail illegal immigration. A secure and effective worker authorization mechanism is one that determines employment authorization accurately while providing maximum protection for workers, contains sufficient due process and privacy protections, and prevents discrimination. The verification process must be taken out of the hands of employers, and the mechanism must rely on secure identification methodology. Employers who fail to use the system properly must face strict liability including significant fines and penalties regardless of the immigration status of their workers.

3. Rational Operational Control of the Border

A new immigration system must include rational control of our borders. Border security is clearly very important, but not sufficient, since 40 to 45 percent of unauthorized immigrants did not cross the border unlawfully, but overstayed visas. Border controls therefore must be supplemented by effective work authorization and other components of this framework. An "enforcement-only" policy will not work. Practical border controls balance border enforcement with the other components of this framework and with the reality that over 30 million valid visitors cross our borders each year. Enforcement therefore should respect the dignity and rights of our visitors, as well as residents in border communities. In addition, enforcement authorities must understand that they need cooperation from communities along the border. Border enforcement is likely to be most effective when it focuses on criminal elements and engages immigrants and border community residents in the enforcement effort. Similarly, border enforcement is most effective when it is left to trained professional border patrol agents and not vigilantes or local law enforcement officials--who require cooperation from immigrants to enforce state and local laws.

4. Adjustment of Status for the Current Undocumented Population

Immigration reform must include adjustment of status for the current undocumented population. Rounding up and deporting the 12 million or more immigrants who are unlawfully present in the U.S. may make for a good sound bite, but it is not a realistic solution. And if these immigrants are not given adequate incentive to "come out of the shadows" to adjust their status, we will continue to have a large pool of unauthorized workers whom employers will continue to exploit in order to drive down wages and other standards, to the detriment of all workers. Having access to a large undocumented workforce has allowed employers to create an underground economy, without the basic protections afforded to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, and where employers often misclassify workers as independent contractors, thus evading payroll taxes, which deprives federal, state, and local governments of additional revenue. An inclusive, practical and swift adjustment of status program will raise labor standards for all workers. The adjustment process must be rational, reasonable and accessible and it must be designed to ensure that it will not encourage future illegal immigration.

5. Improvement, not Expansion, of Temporary Worker Programs

The United States must improve the administration of existing temporary worker programs, but should not adopt a new "indentured" or "guest worker" initiative. Our country has long recognized that it is not good policy for a democracy to admit large numbers of workers with limited civil and employment rights.

With 2 million members in Canada, the United States and Puerto Rico, SEIU is the fastest-growing union in the Americas. Focused on uniting workers in healthcare, public services and property services, SEIU members are winning better wages, healthcare and more secure jobs for our communities, while uniting their strength with their counterparts around the world to help ensure that workers--not just corporations and CEOs--benefit from today's global economy.

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