President Obama intends to push quickly to fix America's broken immigration system, according to The New York Times, including a path to citizenship—the core of the AFL-CIO's immigration reform agenda.

A new study shows that an immigration process with a pathway to citizenship—the centerpiece of the AFL-CIO’s immigration reform campaign—not only increases wages for aspiring citizens, but sows economic benefits throughout the entire economy.

In some year-end reviews of labor in 2012 (here and here), we see an important missed connection that the union movement is committed to building in 2013. While these reviews identify important worker struggles throughout the year, they fail to recognize that all workers—immigrant, public, private, low-wage and middle-class—share values and experiences that unite them in a broad-based union movement. A major theme of many of last year’s important labor struggles was how immigrant workers and the union movement came together in local communities to win justice.

The AFL-CIO and America’s union movement, along with a broad coalition of other groups, is mounting a new campaign to build a common-sense immigration process that includes a road map to citizenship and one that guarantees immigrant workers the same workplace rights and protections all workers deserve.

We know that immigration reform can be a controversial issue among our union members and all workers. But immigration reform with a path to citizenship and workplace rights doesn’t just benefit aspiring citizens and their families, it's good for all workers. Here are 10 reasons why. 

The latest sign of how fast U.S. immigration politics are changing came last week from House Republican leadership.

On Thursday, in her speech nominating John Boehner as speaker, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference, surprised some people when she said that immigration reform would be one of the three top priorities of the House of Representatives.

Immigrant families with a spouse, child or parent who is a U.S. citizen will no longer be torn from each other when a family member who is an aspiring citizen begins the process of obtaining lawful permanent resident status in the United States, under a new federal rule on immigration announced Wednesday. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano says the rule:

Facilitates the legal immigration process and reduces the amount of time that U.S. citizens are separated from their immediate relatives who are in the process of obtaining an immigrant visa.

The time for immigration reform is now, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said to union leaders today. This will be a focus for labor in 2013. Hardworking immigrant families came to this country for the promise of freedom and the opportunity to provide a better life for their children—even if it meant uprooting their families. Working families are all the better for having hardworking new immigrants as contributing members of the communities, with full rights and equal protections. The country needs to create a common-sense immigration process with a road map to citizenship. 

There has been much talk recently of our immigration policy and the possibility of comprehensive immigration reform, but too often these discussions, especially in the halls of Congress, lack a human and family dimension. In the first half of 2011, 46,000 undocumented immigrants were deported from the United States. Depending on which new outlet reports that fact, we may hear a variety of terms used to describe those people, ranging from “illegal aliens,” or “illegal immigrants,” to “undocumented immigrants,” or simply “immigrants.” Rarely do we hear: “46,000 parents  were torn away from their children and deported to another country in the first half of 2011.” A Wish for the Holidays campaign wants to change that.

This weekend, more than 600 youth activists gathered in Kansas City, Mo., to discuss strategies and outline priorities for the United We Dream (UWD) network. UWD is the largest immigrant youth organization in the country with 47 affiliates in 25 states. The National Congress provided an opportunity for participants to celebrate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and their successful "I am a DREAM Voter" get out the vote campaign. 

At more than 15% of the American population, Latinos are being courted by candidates from the presidential race down to state and local races, which is why yesterday the AFL-CIO teamed up with the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and Univision as part of Latino Heritage Month to host a panel discussing what’s at stake in this election for Latino voters.

In case you missed the live webcast yesterday, watch the panel in the post or here: www.aflcio.org/latinovote.