Dear Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Raskin, and Members of the Committee:
On behalf of the AFL-CIO, representing 15 million workers across 63 affiliate unions, I urge you to oppose harmful immigration provisions in the Committee’s reconciliation directive under H.Con.Res. 14, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2025. In addition to misusing taxpayer funds for further escalation of the mass detention and deportation agenda, this bill includes policy and fee changes that would make accessing immigration benefits and work authorization impractical and cost prohibitive for working people. The result would be the removal of millions of people, including members of our unions, from the formal workforce, needlessly interrupting business operations in key industries and causing supply chain disruptions that could further drive up costs for consumers.
The new fees for immigration processing imposed in the bill are unreasonable and entirely out of reach for workers in low wage jobs throughout our economy. Moreover, the bill would limit the duration of work permits to 6 months at a time, causing precarious circumstances for immigrants and their employers. Unions represent tens of thousands of workers with Temporary Protected Status. Currently, TPS holders typically have to pay $605 for an initial application and work authorization that lasts 18 months. Under the proposals in this bill, the fees to apply and maintain work authorization for 18 months would jump to an astonishing $2,755. For someone earning minimum wage, this amounts to more than two months’ gross salary Moreover, workers would have to pay the same amount for any family members in need of TPS protections and work authorization.
These dramatic fee increases for shorter periods of work authorization will result in insecurity both for working families and the companies that employ them. Far from protecting American workers, this bill risks further destabilizing labor markets, decreasing tax revenues, and driving more workers into the underground economy.
The bill also proposes to redirect hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars to pursue the arrest, detention and deportation of working people as part of an increasingly lawless immigration enforcement agenda. Rather than abusing federal funds to deport U.S. citizen children with cancer, the labor movement calls for restoring needed investment in cancer research, Medicaid, public education, and other vital federal programs and services on which working families rely.
We urge you to reject these harmful provisions and instead advance an immigration agenda that expands rights, protections and dignity for working people.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs