More than 11 million aspiring citizens will have the opportunity to access a road map to citizenship under the terms of a commonsense immigration reform bill that was introduced today.

While immigration reform advocates are still examining the legislation’s 844 pages, here are highlights that address some of the united labor movement’s key immigration principles, including moving forward on creating a road map to citizenship.

Gregory Cendana, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), warns that the national debate around creating a commonsense immigration process “has largely ignored a disturbing trend in businesses: the modern-day indentured servitude of temporary workers.”

Imagine 2050 sends us the following story from its blog.

The AFL-CIO and the SEIU are standing up to Republicans and business groups for fair wages in federal immigration reform. While the group of bipartisan senators, called the “Gang of Eight,” working on the immigration bill say that the bill is 90% done, much contention remains around the "guest" worker provisions in the bill. [In fact, the so-called “guest” worker provisions in the bill are not “guest” worker provisions at all. The AFL-CIO has insisted that any new foreign workers be allowed a road map to citizenship and portability between employers so that they are not indentured to a single employer as a condition of remaining in the United States —as is the case under most existing temporary worker programs.]   

The AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce have been working together to find common ground on comprehensive immigration reform. This morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue released this statement on the groups’ shared immigration reform principles.  

The United States will always be a nation of immigrants who have contributed greatly to the vitality, diversity and creativity of American life. Yet, like the rest of America’s immigration system, the mechanisms for evaluating our labor market needs and admitting foreign workers—as well as recruiting U.S. workers—for temporary and permanent jobs are broken or non-existent. Current immigration policies are rigid, cumbersome and inefficient. What is needed is the creation of a professional bureau in a federal executive agency to inform Congress and the public about these issues together with a system that provides for lesser-skilled visas that respond to employers’ needs while protecting the wages and working conditions of lesser-skilled workers—foreign or domestic. Current efforts at comprehensive immigration reform present a unique and historic opportunity for American workers and businesses to work together to fix this aspect of the badly broken system.

While the AFL-CIO continues to roll out its campaign for citizenship and fair, comprehensive immigration reform for aspiring Americans, lawmakers in Congress are considering a number of potential options for an immigration bill. It is no secret that the union movement and the business community have been discussing the “future flow” of lesser-skilled workers. There is consensus that, like the rest of America’s immigration system, the mechanisms for evaluating our labor market needs and admitting foreign workers (as well as recruiting U.S. workers) for temporary and permanent jobs are broken, or non-existent.

Immigration reform is rapidly becoming a legislative priority in 2013 and policymakers have been outlining the components of a comprehensive package, including the expansion of employment-related visas like the H-2 temporary work visa programs. More than 100,000 workers are recruited from abroad for employment in the United States each year under the H-2 programs, to work in such industries as agriculture, landscaping, forestry and hospitality. Today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the Centro de Los Derechos del Migrante (CDM, Center for Migrant Rights) released a new report, “Recruitment Revealed: Fundamental Flaws in the H-2 Temporary Worker Program and Recommendations for Change,” which exposes substantial defects in the program’s recruitment systems and proposes policy changes that would prevent future exploitation and abuse. The report is the result of an intensive, multisource investigative study that involved more than 220 interviews with recruited workers.

In response to protests by foreign students exploited in a factory subcontracted by the Hershey Company and advocacy by the AFL-CIO and our allies, this week the U.S. State Department announced that it will make major revisions to a guest-worker and cultural exchange visa program and barred participation by a major player in the program, the Council for Educational Travel, USA (CETUSA).

An Arkansas agriculture company has agreed to pay $1.5 million in back wages to 1,500 guest workers in a settlement with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The group filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the workers in 2007.

A courageous group of foreign students in the United States on a cultural exchange program  joined with union members and members of Jobs with Justice last week to expose the U.S. labor market’s dirty little secret: the web of subcontracting that prevents workers from exercising their rights because they don’t know exactly who employs them.

In a historic move, the AFL-CIO today signed new, separate partnership agreements with the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the National Guestworkers’ Alliance. The landmark agreements outline a framework for the groups to partner around issues of organizing, winning rights for excluded workers and building long-term relationships. The new partnership agreements kicked off the three-day Excluded Workers Congress in New York City.