Immigration

Glossary of Terms

Citizen: A person who has full legal rights to participate in the affairs of the country. In the United States, citizenship may be acquired through birth or through the process of naturalization.

Employer sanctions: The current employer sanctions provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 is intended to prohibit employers from hiring, recruiting or referring for a fee undocumented workers to work in the United States. Violators of the law are subject to a series of civil fines for violations or criminal penalties when there is a pattern or practice of violations. However, the current system has not deterred the hiring of undocumented workers and actually protects employers who violate labor law as a matter of business practice.

Ethnicity: Reference to a person’s membership in a distinct cultural or national group. Many citizens maintain strong ties both to their country of origin and their ethnic group.

Guest worker: A foreign national allowed to enter a country forwork for a specified period of time, but not take up permanent residence in that country. There are numerous guest worker visa programs, such as the H1-B visa, a temporary work permit for professional positions (those that require a bachelor’s degree or equivalent) that allows foreign nationals to live and work in the United States for up to six years; the H2-A program, aimed at agricultural workers working in seasonal jobs; and the H2-B program, for nonprofessional jobs lasting less than one year.

Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS): The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), an agency of the Department of Justice, is responsible for enforcing the laws regulating the admission of foreign-born persons to the United States and for administering various immigration benefits, including the naturalization of qualified applicants for U.S. citizenship. The INS also works with the Department of State, the Department of Health and Human Services and the United Nations in the admission and resettlement of refugees. The INS is headed by a commissioner who reports to the attorney general.

“Legal” immigrant: A foreign-born individual admitted to live permanently in the United States as a “lawful permanent resident” (LPR). A government-issued card attesting to the legal permanent resident status of a foreign-born person in the United States is commonly called a “green card.”

National origin: The country in which one was born. This may be different from one’s ethnic origin, country of citizenship or “racial” designation.

Naturalization: “Naturalization” is the process by which eligible immigrants become U.S. citizens. Through the naturalization process, immigrants display a willingness to become full members of our society. The process is not an easy one. It requires that immigrants live in the United States for a certain number of years, learn our language, study our history and government, not commit serious crimes and show they are of “good moral character” and, finally, swear allegiance to the United States. The application process itself usually takes six months or longer—not including the years of study that may be required in order to obtain knowledge of English and U.S. history and government.

“Nonimmigrant” workers: A technical term for people from other countries permitted to live temporarily in the United States while providing services to employers, sometimes referred to as “guest workers.” Child care workers (au pairs), teachers, farm workers, nurses and computer programmers are among those admitted through various special visa categories.

“Race”: A social and political (rather than scientific) way to categorize people on the basis of such physical characteristics as skin color, shape of eyes, texture of hair, body size and physique.

Refugees and asylees: Refugees and asylees are people seeking protection in the United States on the grounds they fear persecution in their homeland. A refugee applies for protection while outside the United States. An “asylee” differs from a refugee because the person first comes to the United States and, once here, applies for protection. In both cases, the applicant must prove that he or she has a “well-founded fear of persecution” based on his or her race, religion, membership in a social group, political opinion or national origin.

Temporary protected status: Legal designation that allows people to remain in the United States because of natural disasters or political turmoil in their homeland.

Undocumented workers: People who are employed in a country without the official permission of the government.

Work authorization: Documentation of a person’s legal authority to work. In the United States, all citizens automatically have work authorization. Noncitizens receive work authorization either through a temporary foreign worker program or because they are “lawful permanent residents.”

Immigration in the United States

The United States often has been called “a nation of immigrants,” and most Americans—with the notable exception of Native Americans—have ancestors who arrived from other countries, either voluntarily or involuntarily as enslaved Africans. Throughout American history, immigrants helped build America’s cities, towns, farms, businesses, economies and civic and cultural institutions. Immigrants from around the world also helped build the American union movement, providing generation after generation of members, activists and leaders. Today, the composition of the foreign-born (immigrant) community is increasingly diverse. Immigrants, like all workers, have wide-ranging skills and experiences, work hard, pay taxes and share similar dreams and aspirations—education for their children, owning a home, good jobs and safe communities. As a workers’ movement built by immigrants, we believe our nation should embrace immigrants for the diversity and values they bring, rather than fear them as threats to values or jobs. We cannot fall victim to employers who often attempt to divide workers by race, ethnicity and immigration status, playing one group against the other to undermine solidarity and preclude workers from achieving progress together.
FACT: In 2000, slightly more than 10 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born, and more than one of every three foreign-born individuals are naturalized citizens. The foreign-born percentage of the U.S. population peaked from 1860 to 1930, when it was 13 percent of the total.
FACT: The overwhelming majority of immigrants come to the United States legally. About eight of 11 legal immigrants come to join close family members. They are immediate relatives—spouses, unmarried minor children and parents of U.S. citizens or relatives of permanent legal residents.
FACT: While the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the size of the undocumented population at 6.8 million, other researchers, most notably from the Urban Institute and Northeastern University, estimate the undocumented population at anywhere between 8.4 million and 11 million. It should be noted these estimates have increased sharply, in part because of better outreach efforts by the Census Bureau.
FACT: Immigrants provide more to the nation’s economy and government services than they use, adding about $10 billion each year to the U.S. economy and paying at least $133 billion in taxes, according to a 1998 study, A Fiscal Portrait of the Newest Americans, by the National Immigration Forum and the Cato Institute.

FACT: According to the 2000 census, the five states with the largest number of immigrants are California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. However, as jobs have changed and relocated throughout the United States, immigrants work and live almost everywhere in the country.

FACT: The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) reports that in 2000, the top five countries of origin of U.S. immigrants were Mexico (7.8 million), China/Taiwan (1.4 million), the Philippines (1.2 million), Cuba (.95 million) and the Dominican Republic (.69 million).

FACT: Immigrants work in all job categories but are concentrated at both ends of the economic spectrum. They hold 35 percent of the unskilled jobs, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, but they also have a significant share of highly skilled technology jobs.

Legal Rights of Immigrants
Immigrant workers face many of the same problems that all workers in the United States encounter: employer interference with their rights to improve their wages and working conditions through unionization, discrimination and abuse at the hands of unscrupulous employers, unsafe working conditions and the enduring struggle for dignity and respect, both as workers and human beings.

Laws that protect workers Fortunately, our nation’s labor laws generally have been determined to protect workers regardless of their immigration status. Citizens, legal permanent residents and undocumented workers alike enjoy virtually the same workplace rights under such key laws as the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), Railway Labor Act (RLA), Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 andthe Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). For example, the FLSA generally requires employers to pay minimum wage and overtime to workers. Similarly, employers’ obligations under the OSHAct extend to everyone in the workplace, as do their obligations under Title VII to provide a workplace free of discrimination based on race, gender, religion and ethnicity.
Permanent residents and undocumented workers also have a right under the law to form and join unions, engage in collective bargaining and participate in other forms of concerted activity protected by the NLRA. In fact, much of the recent growth in union membership has occurred because of the organizing efforts of immigrants—both legal permanent residents and undocumented workers. The union movement embraces all workers regardless of their citizenship. Not only is this consistent with the principles on which unions were founded, but it also is our legal obligation.

Particular challenges of undocumented workers Although undocumented workers have rights, they face particular challenges when they try to exercise their rights. The law prohibits employers from retaliating against anyone who asserts a workplace right—whether to join or form a union, obtain the minimum wage or overtime pay or complain about unsafe working conditions or discrimination. Unfortunately, it is all too common for employers to use the threat of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) proceedings—culminating in deportation—to discourage undocumented workers from asserting their rights. Whether the threat is carried out or not, it stands as a barrier to asserting rights. In addition, undocumented workers often are reluctant to cooperate with such federal agencies as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) when these agencies try to conduct investigations into employer illegal practices. In many instances, undocumented workers are afraid of revealing their undocumented status to the government. Any worker who has been fired for exercising his or her rights may be subject to inordinate delays in enforcement. But undocumented workers face an additional obstacle: while they are entitled to back pay for any period of unlawful termination, they may not be entitled to reinstatement unless they can prove their work status has changed. Employers that retaliate against and exploit undocumented workers undermine the rights of all workers. Not only does such exploitation and retaliation erode the right of all workers to organize and bargain, it weakens workers’ rights to have a say in their workplaces in general. The most effective way to counter the strength and financial resources of exploitative employers is through a strong union movement that welcomes all workers, regardless of their sexual orientation, whether they have a disability, their race, gender, citizenship or immigration status or where they were born.

The union movement’s commitment to protecting workers’ rights The AFL-CIO is committed to protecting the rights of all workers. The union movement fosters and promotes the freedom to join a union. The federation is working for new laws that protect immigrant workers from retaliation and other forms of discrimination. In addition, the AFL-CIO has allied with unions worldwide to ensure that workers around the world, regardless of immigration status, are afforded the core labor protections as outlined by the International Labor Organization (ILO), including the right to organize and bargain collectively, to refuse forced labor, to reject child labor and to work free from discrimination. Immigrants have legal rights in the workplace, but those rights are as fragile as every worker’s rights. Our rights only exist when we organize, stand up to employers and stand together.