The Unionization of Immigrants.

First of all, it would not be an open borders policy. For instance, if the cops pick someone up who is an illegal immigrant and they come here for the purpose of committing other crimes, they would be subject to deportation like they are now. Next, instead of building walls, which would interfere with migratory bird patterns and prevent ranchers from using the Rio Grande to water their livestock, we should hire ten times the border guards that we have now -- at the cost of only a few billion dollars. The question is what to do with people who are already here, and what to do to stop the practice of wage suppression.

First of all, I suggest that we should create the crime of wage suppression -- in other words, if an employer fires someone for the purpose of hiring someone for cheaper wages, they should be subject to fines or imprisonment. Next, people who hire an immigrant for childcare or mowing lawns or performing other such tasks should be required to pay prevailing wage for the area. If someone is found guilty of hiring someone on the cheap, then they should be assessed back pay.

It is logistically impossible to deport all 12 million illegal immigrants from this country. And as Democrats, we should be in the business of restorative justice, not punitive justice. Therefore, we should apply the concept of restorative justice to this situation.

Every immigrant who comes into this country should be given responsiblity not to undercut the wages of people who are already here. Therefore, we should totally do away with employer sponsorships and guest worker programs and instead, form transnational unions which would negotiate a living wages with employers and which would provide immigrant workers to employers at competitive wages. Legal immigrants would be sponsored through family sponsorships or through these transnational unions. Also, those who came here for the purpose of starting their own business would be allowed to come as well. There are already such efforts to organize workers across borders:

Professor Gordon readily acknowledges the implausibility of winning that One Big Union on a continental scale. But persuasive precedents for her approach exist. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee, an agricultural workers’ union, signed a contract in 2004 to protect thousands of Mexican guest workers in North Carolina. In 2005, it opened an office in Monterrey, Mexico, to further its organizing efforts and defend its members from abusive recruiters there.

Last year, the United Farm Workers and Global Horizons, one of the largest suppliers of agricultural guest workers, signed the first nationwide contract covering immigrants. It provides employer-paid medical care, a seniority system and a grievance procedure to ensure that employers comply with the law.

Doubters will insist that it is crazy to expect immigrants to risk their meager paychecks to defend their rights and abstract notions of worker solidarity.

But they have already shown that they will. Professor Gordon won her genius grant after creating the Workplace Project, an organization of Latino immigrants on Long Island that uses its members’ collective power to regain withheld or stolen wages. Worker centers like it around the country are providing a surge of energy and optimism to the labor movement. Latino day laborers, organizing themselves at hiring corners around the country, are putting a floor on wages and thwarting abusive employers.

Then, we should make it just as easy to join unions as it is to join Daily Kos. Not only would that benefit US citizens, who would no longer need to deal with employer intimidation to join a union, we could use it to bring wages for immigrants up and to require them to live up to their responsiblity to end corporate wage suppression on their part. Thus, we have a mutual responsibility here -- immigrants would be required to help bring wages up by not taking jobs that pay substandard wages, while we provide them a home to help them rebuild their lives from poverty or religious or political persecution.

Therefore, anyone who is found to be an illegal immigrant would have to learn English, pay back taxes, pay a fine with monthly payments contingent on income level as determined by an immigration judge, be required to join a union, and then either organize for higher wages or find a job that pays within 90% of prevailing wage.

The deal is simple -- immigrants would be allowed to come and live and work for this country conditional on their willingness to work to uphold our labor standards. Those who were unwilling to would be deported, as would those who came here for the purpose of committing other crimes.