A new AFL-CIO report on the TPP and Migrant workers says the TPP trade agreement is bad for workers and displaces migrant workers, impacting the U.S. immigration system.
AFL-CIO Trade and Globalization specialist Celeste Drake.
[Celeste Drake]: "It provides no guarantee of equal rights and remedies to migrants for labor violations. No regional task force or other solution to address the region-wide trafficking issues. And no region-wide restrictions on abusive behaviors by labor recruiters who pray on desperate workers simply trying to feed their families."
There are similar problems for migrant workers and the U.S. immigration system in the NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements.
Drake says there is a better way forward.
[Celeste Drake]: "There is a better way to work internationally to promote shared prosperity, to insure that migration is a choice and not a necessity and to elevate human rights.
But it requires us to reject the TPP.
And it requires us to begin talking to each other and not past each other about the dangers of U.S. trade policy."
Shannon Lederer is the AFL-CIO's Director of Immigration.
[Shannon Lederer]: "Building an immigration system that works for working people and promotes shared prosperity is a key priority for the labor movement.
One major goal in that stork is to stop the criminalization of migrant communities and eliminate the profit motive for migrant detention.
At heart we need our workers to have rights and to be able to exercise them regardless of immigration status."