A ray of hope

Last week, the Senate passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution to finance a wide range of infrastructure projects and social programs, including a pathway to citizenship for approximately 10 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States.

Immigrant rights advocates that have been calling for such a pathway for decades celebrated this mark of progress, underscoring the dangers undocumented workers face every day. “For more than a year, immigrants like me have kept our country running during this pandemic despite living under the constant threat of deportation and family separation,” said Hina Naveed, Co-Director of DRM Action Coalition and an advocate for the New York Immigration Coalition. “The inclusion of a pathway to citizenship in the budget reconciliation package that just passed the Senate is a testament to the courage of Dreamers, TPS (Temporary Protected Status) holders, and essential workers who mobilized their communities and demanded this long-awaited action.”

Throughout the pandemic, undocumented workers have been on the frontlines, working in farm and agriculture jobs, meatpacking plants, and as grocery store clerks, providing essential services to keep the country running during a global pandemic. According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, approximately 69 percent of all immigrant workers and 74 percent of all undocumented workers are employed in essential industries.

These undocumented workers risked not only their health on the frontlines, but their livelihood as well. Those out of work during the pandemic are by and large ineligible to collect unemployment insurance. Because undocumented community members do not have Social Security Cards, millions did not receive any of the federal stimulus checks.

The pandemic disparities between these essential frontline workers and top corporate executives are staggering. An Institute for Policy Studies report found that the CEOs of the 100 largest low-wage employers earned an average of $14 million last year.

While billionaires and corporate executives have largely come out of this pandemic even wealthier than before, Congress now has an opportunity to pave a pathway for essential, undocumented workers to share in the benefits of economic recovery.

“Seventy-two percent of American voters support immigration, and reconciliation may be the last chance we have to provide certainty for immigrant workers and employers,” said Rebecca Shi, Executive Director of the American Business Immigration Coalition. “Adding immigration in reconciliation is the only vehicle in sight, and legalization would add $31 billion in federal and state tax dollars and bring about $121 billion dollars in US economic growth.”

Excerpted: ‘Two Years After the Largest Workplace Raid in U.S. History, a Path Forward for Undocumented Workers’

Counterpunch.org