What is Immigration Reform Today?
Implications for Women, Families, and Public Policy Although immigrants make up a substantial part of the labor force in the United States, they do not have adequate protection under federal law. The session on immigration at this year’s annual conference not only focused on ways that immigration policies need to be changed, but also the need to reframe the immigration debate into a language of integration and multiculturalism. “Historically, there is a legacy of struggle for immigrant workers but it is especially difficult when it comes to women. Today, global outsourcing has decimated employment and has put downward pressures on wages making it harder for immigrant women to organize and lobby for change,” said Katie Quan of University of California at Berkeley. She noted that many women garment workers were impacted by the termination of the Multifiber Agreement (MFA) in January of 2005 which mandated an international free trade policy. In her study of Latina and Chinese immigrant wo
