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Immigration Laws, U.S. Trade Policy Hurt All Workers |
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Large corporations and the lobbyists they employ in Washington are running a familiar “game” on workers in the United States, Latin America and Mexico. The object of the game is to get as much out of the workers at the cheapest price. What most people don’t think about is how U.S. trade and immigration policy are both part of the game.
Photojournalist David Bacon, author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, who spoke at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., last night, says our flawed trade policies “enforce poverty in other countries.”
Bacon says so-called free trade exacerbates poverty and inequality in our trading partners, spurring migration flows. One example he cites is the way the North American Free Trade Agreement opened the Mexican corn market to cheaply produced U.S. corn, making it impossible for Mexican farmers to “get a price for their corn that would pay for the cost of growing it.”
Then people have to do what it takes to survive. So what that means is many of those people come to the United States. When they get here, they are placed in a position where the same corporate structure wants to use their labor here at a cheap price.
After they migrate to the United States, employers, in turn, are able to pay the immigrant workers low wages by selectively using our immigration laws to intimidate them with the threat of deportation.
One of the purposes of our immigration policy and of some of the bills in Congress—you’d have to call these labor supply bills—is to supply labor to corporations at a price they want to pay. They are not to help people achieve human rights and organizing rights that would allow them to build strong communities and strong families here.
Bacon says it’s no accident that many highly publicized immigration raids come when immigrant workers are trying to form a union. He says companies often use intimidation and fear of deportation to keep workers from demanding good wages and working conditions. But in the end, the intimidation hurts all workers, he says. For example, two immigration raids at the Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, N.C., not only affected immigrant workers but also shut down an effort by the rest of the workers to form a union.
He says he empathizes with U.S. workers who are vehemently opposed to allowing undocumented workers to remain in the country.
Workers are afraid that with unemployment high, if there are more people, it will be harder to get jobs—job competition. And they fear that the desire of corporations for cheap labor means immigrants are going to work for wages that undercut the wages of workers here. Those are not unreasonable fears. But we have to look at solutions that benefit all of us. The criminalization of work really is hurting everybody. We need a more just immigration policy and a trade policy, so we can have a common ground where all workers can advance.
A new trade and immigration policy, he says, ought to include policies that don’t produce huge economic pressure for people to leave their home countries just to survive. And it must protect the rights of immigrant workers as well as those who were born here.
If we start saying that some people should have rights and some shouldn’t, we have a long history of where that leads. It leads to a very discriminatory, racist system where all workers suffer. We need to lift up the bottom. All workers should have the right to organize. We need the Employee Free Choice Act, and we need to remove the ability of corporations to punish people when they try to organize.
Finally, Bacon says we need jobs programs. When the private sector cannot generate enough jobs for people who want to work, then the government has to step in and provide jobs.
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This guy is so full of crap it isn’t funny.What drove illegals here before NAFTA?We gave amnesty to millions in 1986 about ten full years before NAFTA came into being.Now they want us to do it again must be some kind of joke.Until we seal our borders and enforce our laws they will continue to come.I suppose if we repeal NAFTA tomorrow they will just stop and stay home.
What drives illegals to America? Have you been to Mexico? I’d rather live here too for all the benefits that the government is forced to provide. This has nothing to do with NAFTA. If anything, NAFTA improved Mexico’s economy enough so that people dont have to work as long in Mexico to save enough to come to California. The FLOOD of illegals was made worse by Clinton having TWO immigration amnesty days, and Bush having one also. Millions showed an envelope with a name and address and became instant citizens. I’m sure obama and mccain will have them, too. Just for different reasons
No human being is illegal. These immigrants are victims of America’s foreign policy. This policy is both militarily and economic trade and it is to favor American big business. It is not to benefit either American working people or worker people in Latin America.
A reform in immigration laws will not challenge US sweatshop factories that are exploiting workers in Latin America. Current immigration laws create many undocumented workers available for exploitation. It also keeps workers from leaving maquiladora states to search for better wages. If US corporations and Canadian Corporations can freely cross the border to exploit workers, it is only fair that the borders be opened to all workers with amnesty for all workers. Better yet why not withdraw our troops from Iraq and use the saved money to pay for social services for all US workers, documented and undocumented workers.
“no humans are illegal” ok, you can make that tru here just as soon as one other country on earth allows the same thing.
Our foreign policy was awful in the 1900s then, when countless masses came here for a better life. Wait, what?
Thats ok. Our kids will be just fine if they live off our inheritance and dont have any kids of their own, and die young before the money runs out.
This is a great article. It is plainly stated, common sense journalism. No bull…no bias. My 4th grader son even gets it. That’s what makes it so difficult to see how any adult could miss the point.
Bacon is right in stating that whenever workers want to organize for a union, the company they work for plays the “illegal immigrant” card; workers get deported, and unions never happen. If companies had good, strong unions, illegals would not be hired in the first place; legitimate, honest companies require many forms of identification from potential employees. Only dishonest, unscrupulous companies hire people they could exploit and pay poorly.
We have to get rid of the “us verses them” mentality and realize that most of us come from families that were immigrants, and this country did not turn anyone away. We would not have as many problems as we currently have if this country would actually enforce the laws it claims it has, but it does not, because corporations make a lot of money by exploiting the poor, and our government chooses to protect these corporations at all cost. As a result, we are all exploited.
All of you need to understand that your Union and my Union do not care if these people are legal citizens or not.They care about money the same as your government so long as they can pay the dues where they come from is secondary.We have thousands of card carrying Union members that are not legal citizens and some Union organized them and knew it when they did it.This country can not withstand millions of people that can not speak the langauge and are willing to break any and all laws to be here.Our forefathers did not come illegally and they obey all laws that were nescessary to become citizens.These illegals to not want to be citizens they just want what we as citizens can provide from our hard earned tax dollars.If you want to see your wages continue to decline keep supporting these people.
In the 1986 original Ronald Regan amnesty Senator Ted Kennedy said ‘This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this,’ That was nothing but a bald faced lie because after this we had the 1994 amnesty, the 1997 amnesty extension, the 1997 amnesty, the 1998 amnesty, the 2000 amnesty extension and the 2000 amnesty. The American people said enough in 2007 and pressured Congress to drop the (amnesty) immigration reform bill. Amnesty encourages illegal immigration and creates a permanent rolling underclass of workers. If the predictions for the number of illegals in this country are as accurate as the 1986 estimate we are looking at 27 million people. Having another amnesty and flooding the market with this many people will increase competition for jobs and put downward pressure on wages and working conditions. More illegal workers will come to fill the positions vacated by the amnesty and we will be right back where we started. This cycle will not end until we say no to amnesty.
I agree with Dr that the immigration problem did not start with NAFTA although it certainly has exacerbated it.
We’re kidding ourselves if we think that scapegoating immigrant workers is going to help us at all. The bosses sit back, laugh and count the money when native-born workers take the easy road and attack immigrants instead of uniting to face our common challenges. The union movement has ONLY been successful when we focus on SOLIDARITY! As soon as we swallow the belief that immigrant rights means ‘our team against their team’ … then they got us.
solidarity wins: They already have you. You are willing to give up your rights as a Citizen of the United States, so that some willful law breaker can have your job.I hope you and people like you are in the minority because I really don’t want my Grandson’s and Granddauther’s to have to compete for the scarce job’s there will be if we follow your course.I’d like to know what kind of Union takes in illegals.When I was sworn in I swore I was a citizen of this country did not advocate the overthrow of our government and was willing to work for the betterment of my union brothers and my country.These illegals have an allegiance to no one especially this country.
I assume everyone reading this is a union member, so you should be aware that the labor market is like any other market–there’s always going to be someone who, for whatever reason, will work for less than you–unless we stop fighting amongst ourselves and get organized.
Venting about illegal immigration makes some people feel good but it’s (among other things) a colossal waste of time. As long as corporations operate in a global market, we’re going to be stuck with a global labor market as well. The most stringent immigration law in the world won’t change that. The solution (as is the case with trade) is to try to level the playing field so everybody who has to work for a living enjoys the same rights. If immigrants (”legal” or “illegal”) were able to organize a union and defend their rights on the job, they wouldn’t be undercutting the living standards of those of us who already have those rights.
Unfortunately anti-immigrant agitation makes it far harder to do that.
By the way, if a law is violated on that massive a scale, it mjust might be an indication that the law doesn’t work and needs to be changed. Employers benefit from keeping immigrant workers in a legal limbo. We don’t.
As a Union member and as a human being let me ask you something, why are so many immigrants working on the fields? and why are not that many people that claim those jobs on the fields? It’s Not that they are taking those jobs away from Us is just that somebody has to do the job rigth ? in order for us to have vegetables and fresh fruits on our tables and who cares what kind of chemicals the workers were exposed to? and not only that the salaries they receive for waking up in the morning before the sun come out and going to bed when the sun goes down not even having a single decent meal during the day and you complain about this people that their only Sin is to have to leave their country in order to have a decent life?,Because note this they did not leave the Continent they are Americans too!! , they did not come to USA to look for public services most of them pay cash for the services or they never go to a doctor or dentist untill they are in a severe pain just because they are Not alowed to use the public services that most of us have the right to.
So I think is time for us to stop and think about who is really at foult here! the people who leaved everything behind to help USA to be a great country or the laws that are not working in the benefit of the best interest of the humanity.
This James Parks article is fine. David Bacon getting this issue out in front of us is just great! Hostile comments about so called “illegals” are way off base. They’re not the ones threatening our jobs, wages and working conditions, it’s the big corporations and other rat employers who systematically search for labor at the least cost. To get it, they get us fighting one another. They pit those born here against any immigrant group, changing “enemy” groups with each succeeding generation - and always pitting whites against blacks.
The key word is “systematically.” We got a system that depends on jobless workers competing against those with jobs so the bosses can line their pockets with maximum profits. And if they can close our minds and get that jobless vs. employed competition going based on immigration, race or nationality, it becomes self-sustaining.
Meantime, we’ve got millions of workers here, pushed out of their home countries by U.S. capital that crosses borders legally and by so called “free trade agreements.” They’re people just like the rest of us and, just like the rest of us, they need to organize in unions and, just like the rest of us, they and we together have to demand vigorous and equal enforcement of all labor laws, backed up by employer penalties equal to the violation crimes corporations perpetrate against working people. We need to put an end to tax incentives for companies that send jobs offshore. We’ve got to demand that trillions of our tax dollars are redeployed from wars and the military industrial complex to modernizing and rebuilding the U.S. infrastructure. We’ve got to stop the immigration raids, regularize our borders and and open a path to legal status and citizenship for people that are here. Our Constitution demands equal rights for all people within our borders. Continue to criminalize struggling immigrant workers and we set the pattern to criminalize any worker, foreign or domestic, who struggles for survival and a better life. After all, we’re all a bunch of foreigners, if we go back far enough.