Citizenship and the Affordability Agenda: A Path to Better Jobs, Higher Wages, and Prosperity for All

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) today released a new report, Citizenship and the Affordability Agenda: A Path to Better Jobs, Higher Wages, and Prosperity for All, detailing how the mass deportation agenda is exacerbating the affordability crisis by disrupting critical industries, eliminating jobs, weakening workplace protections, and driving up costs for working families. The findings come as communities continue to suffer the impact of mass de-legalization, record levels of immigration arrests and rebound from the economic toll of militarized enforcement operations like Minnesota’s “Operation Metro Surge." The report finds that a broad path to citizenship would stabilize jobs and prices across the construction, hospitality, and care industries that families depend on while raising wages for all American workers. It also examines how Congress has committed at least $240 billion to immigration enforcement, while cutting funding for programs that help families afford food and health care, including SNAP, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act subsidies — and in some cases allowing them to expire. “Deportations make workers poorer and more vulnerable to exploitation by employers,” said Naureen Shah, director of government affairs, equality division at the ACLU. “When ICE continuously raids a community, everyone pays for it – in lost jobs higher prices and damaged businesses. The only immigration agenda that actually improves affordability is one that creates a broad path to citizenship.” “Working people are paying the price for an immigration system that is destabilizing entire industries and communities and making it easier to exploit workers,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “As this report demonstrates, a broad pathway to citizenship for all would raise wages, create more and better jobs, and strengthen our economy in ways that help all of us. It’s past time to give millions of working people and their families the stability they deserve, and we call on Congress to make citizenship a top priority. Working people know that it’s not an immigrant that stands between them and a good job—it’s the billionaires—and it’s time our laws reflect that. Among the report’s key findings: Immigration enforcement enables workplace exploitation. The federal government now spends 91 times more on immigration enforcement than on labor-standards enforcement, which leaves workplaces more dangerous and enables employers to violate wage, safety, and overtime laws while crushing worker organizing. More than a quarter of workers in low-wage industries report minimum-wage violations. While these abuses are highest among immigrant workers, they are widespread enough to suppress pay and standards for all workers in those industries, regardless of immigration status. Immigration raids stunt business activity and revenue creation. Immigration raids and enforcement surges have terrified people from going to work, shopping, dining out, and participating in their communities. The report cites an estimated 8.1 billion fewer visits to businesses and between $3 billion and $14 billion in lost annual spending. For example, Minnesota businesses lost $10–$20 million a week during and after “Operation Metro Surge.” Mass deportation eliminates jobs held by U.S. citizens. The Economic Policy Institute projects continued pursuit of the administration’s deportation agenda could eliminate nearly 6 million jobs, almost half of which are currently held by U.S. citizens. Stripping workers’ legal immigration status is worsening the affordability crisis. The Trump administration’s mass “de-documentation” campaign has stopped work authorization from nearly 2 million people, disrupting key industries like construction and hospitality. A broad path to citizenship would create jobs and raise wages. Creating a path to citizenship would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and substantially raise wages for every American worker= by removing immigration status as a tool employers use to suppress pay and silence workers. This report, published in partnership with the AFL-CIO, is the third in the ACLU’s affirmative vision series, in which policy and legal experts explore how the Trump administration’s immigration agenda has harmed communities nationwide, undermined our democracy, and wreaked havoc on key industries and weakened the American workforce. The series will also outline steps that members of Congress, as well as state and local policymakers, can take to reform the U.S. immigration system and inoculate against future attacks on our rights and safety. You can read the full report here: https://www.aclu.org/publications/citizenship-and-the-affordability-agenda-a-path-to-better-jobs-higher-wages-and-prosperity-for-all