Dear Senator,
On behalf of the 65 affiliates of the AFL-CIO that represent more than 15 million working people, I urge you to support the Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929, S.2468. This bill would provide a long-overdue path to citizenship for valued members of our communities, our workforce and our unions.
Unprecedented attacks against working people, including the systematic termination of TPS and other forms immigration relief, are causing immense human suffering and harming our economy in myriad ways. Rather than benefitting the remaining workforce, mass de-documentation, detention and deportation amidst an already tight labor market is shuttering businesses, disrupting supply chains, driving up costs for consumers, and putting jobs at risk.
For these reasons and many more, the mass deportation agenda is not just bad for immigrants, but for all workers. Estimates by the Economic Policy Institute suggest that it will destroy 6 million jobs in our country.1 Immigrant workers will bear the brunt of this impact, but their co-workers will also suffer, with nearly half of the job losses hitting American citizens. The real threat workers face is corporate greed, not immigrants. Extending permanent protections to workers who build, serve, feed, and care for our country is not only the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do if we want to promote continued economic growth and vitality around the country.
As immigration policy is increasingly used as a political tool to divide and silence workers, America’s unions are committed to working with Congress to pursue common-sense pro-worker policies that help lift standards in our workplaces and ensure equal and enforceable rights for all. S. 2469 will do just that by updating existing provisions in immigration law to allow long-term members of our workforce, our communities, and our unions to apply for permanent residence and eventually become U.S. citizens. This simple fix will offer working families the more secure future they need and deserve, and prevent unscrupulous employers from using the threat of immigration-based retaliation to scare workers into silence.
Unions oppose any systems that create tiered rights for workers in our economy. Decades of enforcement-only immigration approaches have created a near permanent subclass of millions of exploitable workers and an environment in which employers believe they can violate workers’ rights with impunity. This is how immigration policy becomes cheap labor policy. The only way to level the playing field is by expanding permanent rights and protections to all those whose labor helps our country to prosper. If we have learned anything from the mass de-documenting of the past year and a half, it is that work permits alone are not enough. Only permanent residency and citizenship will ensure that workers have full rights on the job and in the community.
1Zipperer, Ben. “Trump’s Deportation Agenda Will Destroy Millions of Jobs: Both Immigrants and U.S.-Born Workers Would Suffer Job Losses, Particularly in Construction and Child Care.” Economic Policy Institute, July 10, 2025. https://www.epi.org/publication/trumps-deportation-agenda-will-destroy-millions-of-jobs-both-immigrants-and-u-s-born-workers-would-suffer-job-losses-particularly-in-construction-and-child-care/.
Piecemeal solutions that pick winners and losers are not enough to address the scale of the problem after decades of Congressional inaction. Enabling millions of people to live and work without fear will keep working families together, strengthen our democracy, and promote workforce stability and economic growth. We urge you to stand with working families and co-sponsor S. 2468 today.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs