Congress must create a permanent legal pathway for TPS workers and Dreamers now. The labor movement is united in this demand.
TPS has helped 320,000 disaster survivors from 12 countries live and work legally in the United States. TPS workers are essential, productive taxpayers.
- The average TPS resident works 40-45 hours per week.
- They must undergo DHS background checks and pay annual renewal fees.
- They pay taxes and into Social Security and Medicare (though they can’t access benefits), and many own homes.
TPS workers strengthen our economy; deporting them would be a disaster.
- Criminalizing 320,000 workers will harm businesses. Employers and trade organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, understand this and want Congress to fix TPS.
- TPS workers are seasoned and specialized, and replacing them would cost nearly a billion dollars in immediate turnover costs. It would mean firing 50,000 TPS workers in construction, 32,000 in restaurants, 15,000 in landscaping, 10,000 in child care, and 9,000 in grocery stores.
- Criminalizing TPS workers would cost $164 billion in lost GDP – and nearly $7 billion in lost Social Security and Medicare payments over a decade.
- 60,000 TPS workers are homeowners, who would be forced to drop mortgages, harming local housing markets in Texas, Florida and Virginia.
- TPS mass deportation would cost taxpayers more than $3 billion dollars.
Criminalizing TPS workers would tear families apart.
- 270,000 American children have a parent who is a TPS worker.
- Most TPS workers have no way to uproot their lives and families.
- Most would face returning to a country they no longer know but where violence and instability create an immediate danger to them.
Diversity visas help us build a strong, vibrant, and diverse nation—for the benefit of us all. We must not let xenophobia, islamophobia or racism dictate our immigration policy.
- People from countries with large immigrant populations in the U.S. (e.g. Mexico and China) aren’t eligible for the lottery.
- It’s almost impossible for most people to legally immigrate here—regardless of education or promising qualities—without an eligible family member or employer to sponsor them.
- The Diversity Visa Program helps counteract historical discrimination and allows aspiring immigrants from underrepresented countries to get a fair shot.
DACA recipients are young people who want the chance to work hard and contribute to the country they call home. They need a pathway to permanent legal status now.
- 97 percent of DACA recipients work or are in school.
- With DACA, Dreamers were able to step out of the shadows. Their average wage increased by 45 percent. The opportunity for Dreamers and TPS workers to earn permanent legal status means rising wages and tax contributions, and broader prosperity for all workers.
- If nothing is done to protect Dreamers, our economy would lose $460 billion from GDP and $24 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions over a ten-year period.
Permanently fixing DACA and TPS is the right thing to do. A minority in Congress should not hold a bill hostage to push an agenda that will do nothing for working people.
- STOP dividing families by increasing deportations and criminalizing immigrants.
- DON’T squeeze so-called “sanctuary cities.” Cutting grants that fund economic development, housing and law enforcement as a punishment for community policing is wrong.
- NO expanding programs that import temporary workers with no rights or access to legal permanent status, while slashing legal immigration. Trump loves guest-worker programs, because immigrants are fine for cheap labor for his businesses as long as they have no rights.
- DON’T sacrifice longstanding policy to reunite immigrant families, and the visa lottery that strengths our country by promoting diversity.
- NO to wasting billions on a border “wall”—money that could go to veterans, schools, or infrastructure, to combatting the opioid crisis, or to other vital public services.
