LABOR MAKES THE ROPE WITH WHICH CAPITALISM WILL HANG IT:

Labor Groups, Business Seek Immigration Law Overhaul (Krissah Williams, 1/20/07, Washington Post)

Pressure has been building on employers and labor as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency becomes more active. Last month, its agents raided Swift & Co., a participant in a government pilot program that runs Social Security numbers through a federal database. The raids sent hundreds of undocumented immigrants to detention centers and jolted business groups.

"It proved that the current system doesn't work . . . and is failing everybody," R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the chamber, said during a conference call Thursday.

Business groups paint a dire picture of a U.S. economy without the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. The National Restaurant Association says jobs in food service are growing one and a half times as fast as the U.S. labor force. And the construction industry needs 250,000 new workers per year to replace its aging workforce, according to Associated Builders and Contractors.

Proponents of a plan to legalize undocumented workers say this year offers an important window. President Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress have called immigration reform a priority, and the coalition considers a Senate bill last year that provided a path to citizenship for undocumented workers a blueprint for the policy. That legislation stalled in November when the House and Senate could not hash out a compromise.

The table is now set, said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group. "Over the course of the last year the policy ideas have really come into focus."

To hold the marriage of business and labor and right- and left-leaning politics together, the coalition's ideal bill would include both a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here and more visas for temporary workers, said Douglas G. Rivlin, spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, which is a member of the alliance.