By Baldemar Velasquez, President of the FLOC
Braxton Winston, newly elected president of the North Carolina AFLCIO speaks on October 3, 2025. in support of our immigration reform proposal to a packed hall. Nearly 150 people participated in launching of a drive to get a million signatures supporting the concepts of the emergency resolution adopted by the International Union Federation based in Geneva Switzerland. While immigration is a global problem the resolution focuses on this issue in the United States.
See the following resolution adopted in early June:
Emergency resolution 3: Immigration Reform in the United States
In a resolution adopted by IUF’s 27th Congress on Defending and Organizing Migrant Workers it was noted that migrant workers – an estimated 244 million people who have moved from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions – are particularly vulnerable to labour and other human rights abuses. Despite the existence of an international treaty affirming their rights, migrant workers are trafficked, discriminated against, constrained to work under hazardous and debilitating conditions, locked in isolated, unhealthy and dangerous living quarters, enslaved as domestic workers, jailed and periodically interned in mass detention centres (such as the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centres) before being forcibly repatriated.
This same Congress resolution also urged IUF’s affiliates to continue organizing migrant workers, provide education on migrant workers’ rights, and strengthen governmental regulations where necessary to ensure that migrant workers can access the same rights as other workers.
Today, in the United States, while the nation debates nonsensical rhetoric on immigration, we should revisit actions taken by former Republican U.S. President Ronald Reagan. He argued and enacted the Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform and Control Act – better known as the Reagan Amnesty of 1986 – which granted amnesty to some 3 million then undocumented immigrants (or migrants) in the United States. Reagan had argued for an orderly and fair process, for people to come out of the shadows and contribute to society with all obligations, for humanitarian legal protection from abuses, and for regaining control of the border. We must propose long-term plans to address the root causes of migration – much of which stems from foreign policy and trade agreements – and plans which seek to strengthen labour and social protections to ensure that migrant workers can access the same rights as other workers.
In moving forward:
Be it resolved: Support the need for a new Amnesty in the United States including for the practical purpose of maintaining a needed workforce whose only violation is an unauthorized presence. These are essential workers who pick and pack our food and feed our country. They contribute to our economy and our communities and are our neighbours, colleagues and friends.
Further be resolved: Consider the United States – México – Canada Agreement (USMCA) and related trade agreements amid the current tensions around trade tariffs and advocate for more sustainable trade agreements throughout Latin America which would minimize the displacement of workers, include more stringent labour provisions, and halt support of repressive governments that deny or fail to protect workers access to their fundamental rights to Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining and that attack trade union movements and peasant organizations in their quest for self-determination. As part of this, a hemispheric minimum wage could also be considered, and which would aim to further prevent a “race to the bottom” in labour costs by reducing wage competition across countries.
Further be it resolved: To expand labour rights for workers using temporary and short-term employment work visas, with special attention to H-2A and H-2B visa workers in the United States and halt independent contractors from using these visas for trafficking migrants.
Lastly be it resolved: To reverse the dismantling of the U.S. immigration judicial system by expanding and hiring more adjudicators for upholding due process of refugees, asylees, protective status, parolees, and trafficking victims.]
What you can do; We are making this a collective effort in getting a million signatures supporting the concepts in this resolution leading up to the mid-term elections.
- Send your name with either your phone number or email address (best if you include both) to bsantiago@floc.com. Your phone number will only be used for a monthly update in a mass text indicating progress of the signatures or one or two sentence message on important development. Your email address will be used to send more robust developments with pictures and a way for you to communicate questions and concerns.
- Share resolution with your friends and any organization that you are part of, church group, union local or community organizations or non-profits and ask them to support the resolution and send their support as in item 1.
When enough signatures are gathered, we will partner with key organizational supporters around the country to hand-pick legislators to draft common sense legislation.
Is this far-fetched? Maybe so, but so what, no one is offering a solution to the current crisis just defensive measures and low-hanging fruit proposals in Congress. If Ronald Reagan could complete the amnesty of 1986 (IRCA) and no friend of labor and legalize 3 million immigrants why not repeat it using his justifications. Secondly if Trump can extend amnesty (Pardons) to the January 6th criminals who were given their due process and found guilty in our courts of law then released them, why not innocent immigrants who have been paying taxes of which they will never receive benefits from like social security.
Lastly, we have to give our people hope that we’re fighting for something that will wipe out the fear from their children and families and give us all a reason to get out and vote instead of staying home resigned to defeat. The current political environment affects us all, our elders, our youth, every FLOC member including the H2A workers as the current administrations has declared war on all our unions, our poor, our middle class, our safety net programs.
Immigrants are already being pummeled as the stumbling block for the current federal government shutdown, and we have to stop this nonsense. Trump will say no to these concepts, we just have to get enough people to say yes in the next round of voting.
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE UNITED FARMWORKERS (UFW) TO BE ONE OF THE EARLY ENDORSERS OF THIS RESOLUTION.
Again, send your support to: bsantiago@floc.com