AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement this morning on creating a commonsense immigration process:

Working people, including the 12 million members of the AFL-CIO, would like to remind our elected leaders why there is no higher legislative priority than immigration reform, which must include a certain and inclusive path to citizenship and respect the rights of America’s workers.

As commonsense immigration reform moves through the U.S. Senate, people and groups on the losing side of the debate are making outrageous claims in bogus studies and TV commercials. Let’s take a minute and revisit some of the facts about immigration reform.

Why does America’s union movement support commonsense immigration reform that includes a road map to citizenship? Because of hardworking people like Neidi Dominguez’s mother. Watch this new ad from the AFL-CIO that is appearing on Univision in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas.   

Visit www.aflcio.org/citizenshipnow.

Sebastian Velasquez saw his family for the last time when they were helping him move into his Georgetown University dorm before the start of his first semester. A few months later, he found out that his father, mother and sister were in deportation proceedings. They were eventually deported to Colombia.

Ana Avendaño, assistant to the president and director of immigration and community action at the AFL-CIO, will appear on the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC Saturday morning at 10 a.m. EDT to discuss creating a commonsense immigration process for America's 11 million aspiring citizens. 

Follow the Melissa Harris-Perry show and Avendaño on Twitter.

What’s behind Republicans’ demands that surfaced last week that legislation to create a commonsense immigration process for America's 11 million aspiring citizens institutionalizes poverty wages and drags down workers already in the United States? Bloomberg columnist Margaret Carlson sums it up succinctly.     

Who wants to adversely affect “wages and working conditions” of American workers? Employers, that’s who….Businesses (read: “Republicans”) would like an oversupply of labor to ensure a cheap price.

A bill that creates a commonsense immigration process for America's 11 million aspiring citizens is in jeopardy because of Republican demands for poverty wages.

Key Republican senators in the "Gang of Eight", negotiating on the behalf of the business community, corporations and the extreme right-wing, rejected adding language to the bill that would ensure new W-visas would only be issued when employing foreign workers would not hurt wages and working conditions of workers already in the United States.

This language is already a longstanding law for temporary worker programs including the H-2B and other visa programs. The Chamber of Commerce in negotiations with the AFL-CIO already agreed to including this language.

Jennifer Angarita, national worker center coordinator at the AFL-CIO, sent the following message to working family activists:

I’m going to tell you something very personal: My father finally became a citizen of the United States after almost 30 years of waiting. 

My parents brought me to the United States when I was 13 months old to escape economic hardship and war in Colombia. I grew up in Dallas and my favorite foods were pizza, chocolate chip cookies and empanadas. My parents worked hard to put me through school, and I was proud to be the first person in my family to graduate from college.

Putting the nation’s 11 million aspiring citizens on a path to citizenship is not—as many Republican House lawmakers have characterized—the “extreme” option for immigration reform, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro told a House Judiciary Committee hearing today.

Putting them on a path to citizenship, that’s the best option.

In the current debate over immigration reform in the United States, “some suggest that we take the easy road and 'split the difference' among proposals for reform from lawmakers—to choose political expediency and legalize immigrants without offering any chance for them to earn citizenship,” writes AFL-CIO Director of Immigration and Community Action Ana Avendaño, in a column in The Guardian today.

That's wrong. That's the road to an America of permanent second-class workers, and it's a violation of our basic values.