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The Immigration Blame Game
A column of mine on immigration earlier this year provoked both an op-ed response and numerous e-mails to me, charging I "don't get it" that illegal immigrants are the cause of working class woes. My critics raised thoughtful concerns in need of a careful response.
Those who attack immigrants because of their legal status forget that U.S. citizens are not especially law abiding. Long before Mexicans crowded our labor markets, our citizens were taking far more cash under the table than undocumented immigrants ever have.
Some citizens have good reasons. I recently interviewed a young single mother who, not surprisingly, could not support her two children on $400 a month in welfare and $200 in food stamps. If she reported income, however, she would lose benefits. She earns several thousand dollars a year "under the table." She feels guilty about her lawlessness, but, "I am not going to let my family starve."
Both undocumented Mexican immigrants and many full U.S. citizens take money under the table. Both find themselves in increasingly desperate positions. But are undocumented Mexican immigrants the reason some single mothers in Maine must take money under the table?
Two recent books, Aviva Chomsky's "They Take Our Jobs - and 20 Other Myths about Immigration" and Jane Guskin and David Wilson's "The Politics of Immigration," provide extensive documentation from a wide range of historical and economic perspectives that the same global economic restructuring that has led to outsourcing the best U.S. jobs and attacks on unions here has also badly damaged societies in the developing world and led to widespread migration of the poor.
There is, however, a tradition, often informed by racist and nationalist stereotypes, that has led American workers to blame economic dislocation and joblessness on the newest arrivals. Chomsky reminds us that in the 19th century white workers in the South "clung to their status of legal and racial superiority, but the entrenched racial inequalities undermined the status of poor whites as well." Black job seekers per se did not hurt poor whites, but rather their disenfranchisement combined with racism prevented their organization into unions and political movements. Employers enjoyed a pool of poor and easily exploitable workers with which to break strikes and undermine all working-class wages.
Some academic literature does suggest that low-skilled immigrants undermine working-class wages. But a contrasting body of literature both from academics and from those in the trenches finds no or minimal impact on working class wages.
My take on this controversy is: It depends.
The effect of immigrant incursions depends on the cultural and political setting. If every immigrant worker received, merely by the fact of having a job, full access to minimum wage protection, rights to union organizing, access to occupational health and safety guarantees, and a realistic path to citizenship, employers would find it harder to use the undocumented to beat down wage standards for all. Guskin and Wilson cite U.S. Department of Labor studies showing that following the 1986 amnesty, real wages of undocumented workers rose dramatically, exerting upward pressure on all wages.
The U.S. today has no shortage of urgent tasks, from fighting fires to rebuilding levees, to laying new track lines. If all such work is properly compensated, if the Federal Reserve cared as much about job creation as inflation, if governments at all levels worried as much about the health of the infrastructure as the profits of the financial sector, plenty of good new jobs would be created.
The question for progressives is this: Are reforms of trade treaties, enforcement of workplace laws, and establishment of adequate wage standards more likely if we somehow expel most undocumented immigrants by militarizing our border and turning employers into border cops? These initiatives risk fracturing the very coalitions needed to enact progressive reforms. Just as unfortunately, they distract workers from the role that corporate tax evasion and workplace violations play in wage stagnation.
Earlier immigrants from Ireland and Italy, also much vilified, made great economic and political contributions to our society. The same is possible today. The Black Commentator recently pointed out: "In the countries [current immigrants] hail from there are traditions of working class militancy and solidarity deeper and more widespread than anything here, and traditions of broad left wing social movements tougher and more enduring than we see here in the U.S. In Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia and Brazil, in South Korea and Colombia, farm, factory and service workers join unions... and fight for their own rights, often at great personal cost."
Unfortunately, the legislation derailed in Congress last summer moved in the wrong direction. Its path to legalization was so complex and burdensome that few would be able to navigate it. Its guest worker programs tie immigrants to specific jobs in ways that make them even more dependent and exploitable. A new president and Congress need to address this problem from a more humane perspective.
John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers may contact him at jbuell@acadia.net.
© 2007 Bangor Daily News
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15 Comments so far
Show AllAnd I would add to maxpayne's comments, please US citizens, stop taking the bait to scapegoat others. It is flagrantly apparent to those who have eyes to see, that the rich and powerful want us to look anywhere but where the real inequalities and injustices rest. " Go after those dirty aliens" they shout, as they rob the nation blind. It's worse than simple deception, since it creates a climate of violence and hatred against other victims of their Godforsaken policies. When will the human race start to see that there is no such thing as " others" there is only "us"?
Here are a few solutions.
1. Cancel NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, WTO, FTAA, etc ...
2. Stop allowing the US Government and Media to support RIGGED STOLEN elections such as the one in Mexico. Remember, it was "conservative" Calderon, NOT Obrador, who supported and pushed for more ILLEGALization and dumping of immigrants.
3. It's long past due for clamping down on offshoring, outsourcing, union busting, giving tax breaks to companies that mistreat and lay off employees without reason, etc ...
4. It's time to STOP allowing consumerism to dominate. The economy is NOT NOT NOT driven by consumer spending no matter who tries to LIE to you otherwise !
The WOD was started by racist whites as an excuse to persecute Orientals, Hispanics and Blacks. NAFTA and others were a continuation of the white supremacist policies that let them exploit other countries and races.
Corporations of different races have joined the fray. Racial exploitation now has the corporate advantage.
Why does humanity always insist on a "whipping boy?" Shameful! Must we always demonize? It's disgraceful!
"Those who attack immigrants because of their legal status forget that U.S. citizens are not especially law abiding."
Why try to make your point this way? Are you suggesting two wrongs make a right?
After the Civil War my immigrant ancestors the got jobs in Chicago's slaughter houses. Blacks didn't get a chance at these relatively good-paying jobs in the North until immigration came to halt with WWI.
Union membership was the highest it has ever been in this country between 1930-1965, the years of the most restrictive immigration laws.
Our current unchecked mass immigration serves the powerholders well, that is why U.S. businesses get amnesty for hiring illegal immigrants. That's the amnesty to be concerned about now. Clinton's NAFTA was a huge mistake. The powerholders, political and corporate love it.
"Those who attack immigrants because of their legal status forget that U.S. citizens are not especially law abiding." Why try to make your point this way? Are you suggesting two wrongs make a right?
After the Civil War my immigrant ancestors got jobs in Chicago's slaughter houses. Blacks didn't get a chance at these relatively good-paying jobs in the North until immigration came to halt with WWI.
Union membership was the highest it has ever been in this country between 1930-1965, the years of the most restrictive immigration laws.
Our current unchecked mass immigration serves the powerholders well, that is why U.S. businesses get amnesty for hiring illegal immigrants. That's the amnesty to be yell about. Clinton's NAFTA was a huge mistake. The powerholders, political and corporate love it.
The real solution to illegal immigration by unemployed Mexicans is babajobs, which you can read about here.
Indian "altruists" have invented a new way to hook up starving peasants with excellent jobs for "$2 to $3 a day," and the New York Times is celebrating the "babajob" concept as the newest wonder of the already almost unbearably wonderful Global Village!
" ... a contrasting body of literature both from academics and from those in the trenches finds no or minimal impact
on working class wages."
Remember, also, that smoking has no connection whatever with lung cancer and, I presume, the law of supply and demand does not apply to labor.
The most serious impact in the US by excessive and illegal immigration is upon the black and minority communities where the loss of jobs is probably of more serious concern than the reduction in wages. At the other end of the scale, citizens and legal immigrants in high skill jobs such as in the software industry have been hit quite severely by the travesty of the H1B visa system.
When laws favor corporations they are applied with great vigor; when the reverse is true, laws just happen not to be enforced.
Having suffered a few bouts of unemployment in the past 15 years, I have some personal anecdotal evidence to color my opinions on this subject. The main thing I've noticed is that starting wages in my area are no higher today than they were ten years ago. Not coincidentally, this same ten-year period has seen an incredible increase in illegal workers here. Many jobs have also become temp jobs rather than full-time jobs.
The immigrants are treated unfairly here--make no mistake about that. Their reasons for being here have been explained by the references to NAFTA, etc. They are willing to suffer in our workplace because whatever money they can send home is worth ten times what is worth here. Unfortunately, the poor American workers whose wages have been held down don't have someplace they can send their money where it is worth more. They have to spend it here where it is worth less and less, all while their wages remain stagnant.
The Statue Of Liberty Poem:
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Author
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
Amnesty has become a dirty word, but I don't care. The only important thing about this issue is that we are all human beings; everything else is a detail, and we have to work these details out in an atmosphere of justice and compassion. If the "illegals" are getting over so much, why don't you see any anglos pretending to be Mexicans?
The original post smells like global warming's dismissal as "just a theory".
Corporate greed is end-running the law of supply and demand as indentured labor approaches normalcy.
It starts with someone like "progressive" Sen. Feinstein lamenting the back-breaking nature of crop picking and the need for "guest" workers to supplement the "uavailability" of citizen workers.
There Breckinridge Democrats (like our own Durbin), hiding behind civil rights rhetoric, routinely wink at the inevitable wage corrosion caused by illegal migration of tsunamic proportions.
Few here want the illegals themselves denied basic human rights.
Yes, repeal the SHAFTAs and trickle-up economics that are diminishing livelyhoods of workers everywhere. And fix the conveniently crippled system of verifying workers' legal status.
Both parties are studiously clueless here. But hate-mongering from the repugnicans may carry the day.
Outsourcing, outsourcing, outsourcing! Shame, shame, shame on the USA! Yes illegals are depressing US wages and displacing US workers. So don't think for a second that race-bait peddlers and white-guilt purveyors aren't trying to sell illegal immigration to American citizens under the ruse of multiculturalism! Republicans want cheap, non-union labor, and Democrats want a growing voting block they can exploit by promising free, tax-subsidized, social programs. Either way, both parties are selling out the hard-working, middle class!
The preceding comments of this debate has gone fare to solidify my beliefs that race is more of a economic construct that skin tone and hair texture. Nevertheless, I think since we are looking at solutions, we should use problems to solve problems. Why not use the immigration problem as a solution to outsourcing? With "Insourcing" We would:
a. have a better closer monitor on the quality of goods produced in our country—although inexpensively produced (its hard to monitor the lead content of toys China has been importing to us lately)
b. reduce shipping cost as well as well as take care of the immigration problem and
c. forge a tighter alliance with our neighbors to the south . … the list of benefits could go on and on if we use our imaginations
As we ponder the notion of "stagnant wages, remember that the majority of the world lives (yes I said lives, i.e., continues to exist) on far less per hour than the average U.S citizen or undocumented worker. We might want to look at the American "need" for higher wages and contrast it with our "greed" for more stuff—we might find that we can live on less and be just as content as the rest of the world.
Some of the people who have commented on the wage issue seem to be confused (understandably, given the way the mainstream media have treated the subject). We agree with them that employers use low-paid undocumented workers to create downward pressure on the wages of other workers. But what pushes wages up? A decreased supply of workers in a particular industry is only one small part of the equation. Wages go up when workers organize. The mass immigration at the start of the 20th century brought fierce labor struggles--led by new immigrants--which in the 1930s culminated in victories that raised wages, reduced hours and improved health and safety conditions for all workers.
How is organizing today affected by the existence of a large underclass of workers without legal status, who are subjected to workplace raids, "no-match" letters, and other enforcement measures? The threat of deportation makes most workers afraid to organize, and willing to accept lower wages and worse working conditions. A broad unconditional amnesty would in fact encourage organizing, creating upward pressure on wages for both immigrant and native-born workers--which is undoubtedly why most politicians won't even consider the idea.
We have been holding participatory dialogues on immigration in a number of cities to encourage people to discuss these issues seriously and rationally. If you want more information on the dialogues or other immigration questions, please write to us at thepoliticsofimmigration@gmail.com or visit our website, http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org