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DENVER — Unions are reaching out to the foreign workers who crowd U.S. construction sites, and some see them as a heaven-sent solution to sliding membership rolls.

As employers turn to cheaper nonunion workers, some unions that represent the construction industry are trying to organize the immigrants who take those jobs — regardless of their immigration status, said Jim Gleason, executive secretary of the Mountain West Regional Council of Carpenters.

Adding the newcomers to union rolls could mean the difference between survival and extinction for a labor movement that is struggling to remain relevant.

In return, the union offers job protection, good wages and benefits to immigrants — legal and illegal — who are struggling to survive at low-paid jobs.

"In 20 years you are not going to see many white, middle-class kids getting involved in this business," Gleason explained. "The growth in the work force is going to be in the immigrant population."

Nationally, union membership has declined steadily over the past two decades. It peaked in 1983, when 20.1 percent of all employees belonged to unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 2004, just 12.5 percent belonged.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates there are more than 9 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Another half-million enter the country each year.

Gleason estimates that two-thirds of Colorado's construction workers are immigrants, and more than half are undocumented. Yet unionizing a population that fears deportation has been an uphill battle.

Most submerge themselves in an underground economy where wages are low and working conditions poor. In many cases, they work without benefits and get less than the $12.42 to $22.70 an hour paid to Colorado union members.

Not everyone agrees that the number of foreign workers is as high as Gleason's estimate. The number of non-native workers on a construction job depends on the trade, said Rich Forsberg, owner of insurance company Forsberg Engerman in Englewood, Colo., which insures contractors.

Many of the workers hold temporary work visas, he said.

As the number of undocumented workers on payrolls increases, unions have little choice but to organize them, said Vernon Briggs, professor of economics at Cornell University.

"If the employer is hiring illegal immigrants, the only thing the unions can do is ignore them or organize them," Briggs said.

Unions aren't required to ask for proof of immigration status, an obligation that rests with employers.

The carpenters union is making its push at a time when construction is booming throughout the nation but industry wages are stagnating.

For generations of American workers, construction was a path to the middle class. As companies increase their reliance on immigrant labor, it is becoming a low-paying industry, said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank that favors stricter immigration rules.

"What we have seen contractors do is rely increasingly on day labor," Keeley said. Contractors frequently avoid taxes and other costs by paying undocumented workers off the books, he said.

Immigration has become a hot-button issue for lawmakers trying to balance the desires of business for more foreign labor with concerns about border safety and job opportunities for Americans.

"The current immigration policy has morphed into a labor subsidy," Keeley said.

"A lot of unscrupulous players have turned a cold shoulder to a native work force expecting $15 to $20 an hour."