WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty plan for illegal immigrants is expected to be a boon for Big Labor supporters, who are working to recruit immigrants into labor unions.

The president’s action is estimated to supply work permits to about 4 million immigrants who have been in the United States at least five years and are the parents of U.S. citizens. The existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals amnesty program was also expanded to cover all illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. as a minor prior to 2010 – which affects another estimated 235,000 immigrants, according to media reports.

“The unions would get the benefit in two ways. If a newly legalized immigrant would join unions, of course, they’d be paying dues,” Bryon York, of the Washington Examiner, told Fox.

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“And, even though they can’t vote – they’re not citizens – they can provide some of the muscle – the political muscles that unions flex – during campaigns. They can knock on doors, work in phone banks, do all sorts of things that unions do every election cycle.”

York believes that recruiting Democratic voters may have been one of Obama’s main objectives with his executive amnesty action.

“The president, I think, was looking for a way to strengthen union support, because, you have to remember, unions in the private sector have been just going downhill for decades and decades,” he said.

“At the moment 6.7 percent of the private sector workforce is unionized – an all-time low.”

Overall, public and private union membership nationwide decreased significantly from 12.9 percent to about 11.3 percent between 2003 and 2013, a decrease of about 1.2 million members. The drop is due in large part to Republican governors who have curbed organized labor’s toxic influence, the Associated Press reports.

Union officials seem kiddy about the potential for new recruits.

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“I think we’ll see very positive changes” because of the action, said Tom Balanoff, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1. “One of them, I hope, is that more workers will come forward and want to organize.”

According to the AP:

SEIU, whose more than 2 million members include janitors and maintenance workers, recently announced a website where immigrants can learn about the action. The AFL-CIO says it’s training organizers to recruit eligible workers. And the United Food and Commercial Workers and other unions are planning workshops and partnering with community groups and churches to reach out to immigrants.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing legislation to void the president’s amnesty plan because they believe it will hurt Americans who are already struggling to find work.

“The president’s action is a threat to every working person in this country – their jobs, wages, dreams, hopes and futures,” Republican U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, told the AP.

Labor experts like Shannon Gleeson, an associate professor at Cornell University, believe Big Labor’s success in recruiting immigrants will be “very place-specific,” with most of it coming from places like Los Angeles that have been friendly to illegal immigrants in the past.

In other places, like Houston, it’s less likely illegal immigrants will sign up.

“If I’m there, am I going to stick my neck out?” Gleeson said. “I don’t know, maybe.”

Illegal immigrant Felipe Diosdado, told the AP most of the illegal immigrants he knows work for cash in an effort to avoid detection, and many are apprehensive about the president’s amnesty action because it could be undone. Even so, some might be willing to take the risk.

“It’s a risk, but you always have a risk,” he said of immigrants becoming union members. “Being undocumented, you live with risk every day.”