One of the Senate’s most ardent supporters of organized labor, who opposed a 2007 effort to reform the country’s immigration policies for failing to incorporate protections for low-income workers, says the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform effort is a big improvement.
“I think we’re going in the right direction here,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told TPM during an interview in his Senate office last week. “I feel good about it.”
Brown, along with Iowa populist Tom Harkin bucked Democratic leadership six years ago and voted to block a bipartisan immigration reform bill sponsored by Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ), in part because of the legislation’s guest worker provisions, which they concluded would be detrimental to low-skilled workers in the United States.
Today, the bill proposed by the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” has guest worker provisions with significantly stronger federal oversight. The AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce are both on board. And as such it appears that labor friendly Democrats will support the plan, so long the guest worker provisions don’t change dramatically as the bill winds its way through the legislative process.
“I think done right — and I think they’re doing it right — it could mean wages increase for low-income workers, both immigrant workers, those that are already here not yet legally, and for American workers now,” Brown said. “Paying under the table has been such a downward drag on wages. I think the 11 million deserve to be out of the shadows and toward citizenship if they earn it. I think this is good for employers, I think you’re going to see a pretty good groundswell for it.”
