Thread: AFL-CIO's Sweeney on guest workers

The solution to the immigration crisis will require a new approach, Sweeney and Alvarado say. First, everyone who is admitted to work must immediately be on a track toward permanent residency or citizenship.

Other key reforms should include:

Employers who can prove that they tried and failed to find U.S. workers should be able to hire foreign workers, but not under abusive conditions that have a negative effect on the wages and working conditions.

Caps on the number of employment-based visas issued each year should be set by the U.S. Department of Labor based on economic indicators that establish the needs of particular industries, not by political compromise.

Employers should not be allowed to recruit abroad, a practice that invites bribes, exorbitant fees and potential abuse. Instead, employers should be required to hire from applications filed by workers in their home countries through a computerized job bank.

Foreign workers should enjoy the same rights and protections as U.S. workers, including freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. E-Mail This Article | Digg it | Comments (0)

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/04/10/expan ... he-nation/

At least he says 'prove' instead of 'attest' but problems still remain. It has become common in my profession to answer an ad that has everything 'me' but my picture, only to be declined an interview. Many games can be played to justify the hiring of foreign workers over Americans, including a fake paper trail.

As it is now, the DOL is sitting on this year's H-1b application database. These are jobs on American soil where the company has already decided not to hire an American. The Programmers Guild has been pressing for the DOL to make these applications public now, before October, so that qualified Americans can see them and apply, but has been consistently refused.

And, which economic indicators? Pro-guestworker advocates will say that the rapid exhaustion of the H-1b visa cap proves a 'need,' but all it really proves is that international consulting companies are fattening up their bench in anticipation of winning more contracts away from US workers.

I see no real safeguards here against resume inflation and fluffery, or any other sort of fraud. All I see is a proposal to bring south of the border guestworkers under the same standing as Asian guestworkers, who have already negatively impacted the professions we were supposed to aspire to when manufacturing went overseas. No thanks.