Division or Solidarity: The Immigration Debate

Deep fissures in U.S. society were revealed this summer when an immigration reform bill—blessed by corporate capital, backed by leading Democrats and Republicans—failed despite intense White House lobbying on the measure’s behalf. The proposed legislation would have provided a path (albeit an expensive, circuitous one) for undocumented workers in the U.S. to acquire citizenship; at the same time future migrants would have faced tougher border security and increased criminal penalties.  Moreover, the bill would have vastly expanded guest-worker programs to create a permanent pool of second-class labor.

Fear of the bill’s repressive elements and the guest-worker program led most (but not all) union and immigrant rights activists to oppose the reform; the reason for its defeat, however, lay elsewhere. Exploiting the insecurity many working people face due to recurrent unemployment, rising bankruptcies, deteriorating social infrastructure, forces to the Bush Administration’s right created pressure to stop any amnesty program. Social fears that rationalize the belief that workers’ problems can be solved by suppression of workers who have less also allow acceptance of raids such as one at a New Bedford, Massachusetts, leather manufacturer. Immigration police arrested for possible deportation 361 employees (mainly women from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) – in the process 150-200 children, including nursing infants, were separated from their parents for up to several weeks. Hundreds of people die every year in the Arizona desert trying to evade border security; that too is “acceptable.” Absent an alternative, the lesson from the war on drugs with its devastation of the black community, of the war on terror with its devastation of Arab/Muslim communities, remains unlearned – repression fails to protect the 1ivelihood, security or rights of working people of any race or nationality.

Meanwhile, corporations are still determined to expand the guest worker program from the current 150,000 to several million. These workers, whether skilled or unskilled, employed in industry, service trades or agriculture, are bound to the employer who contracts their labor for a period of six months to two years. They have no right to change jobs or travel, no right to complain, let alone organize. Despite claims to the contrary, employers hire them not because of labor shortages, rather it is to use the hunger for work of the unemployed abroad to lower wages, benefits, working conditions of those hired at home.

A real alternative begins with union organizing across lines of division; unfortunately victories have been too few and far between. The reason can be understood by an incident at Smithfield Foods. In response to employee protests demanding Martin Luther King’s birthday as a paid holiday, management contacted immigration authorities – 21 workers were arrested and deported. The United Food and Commercial Workers have been organizing at the 5,200- employee (48% Hispanic, 37% African-American) Durham, North Carolina pork-packing plant for over a decade. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s cross-border union-building amongst guest workers faces even more serious obstacles as the murder of a union activist in Mexico highlights. Thus the need for political action. Immigrant communities have in May Day rallies the past two years pointed the way with demands that include amnesty and a meaningful possibility of citizenship for undocumented workers now in the U.S. and for work visas – not tied to particular employers – that protect the rights of future migrants. The AFL-CIO has supported demands along these lines alongside advocating an end to free trade agreements that have led to economic dislocation and suffering abroad – causing much of the massive migration occuring worldwide – A while undermining our own industrial base.

Joined with demands for a living wage, universal health insurance, labor law reform, these can provide a basis for replacing fissures amongst working people with a renewed solidarity. The challenge is to make such a program effective so as to be believed as possible. As a step in that direction, labor should be openly supporting efforts of people in other countries who are asserting control over their national economies even when this runs counter to the interests of U.S. transnational corporations – and perhaps use this as a means of starting a discussion as to how working people can assert control over our own economy. A genuine alternative that may seem utopian today, yet an alternative necessary to counter the racism that speaks to popular fears instead of hopes.

Kurt Stand, submitted to Junge Welt, July 2007

Sources:

 “Hundreds, All Nonunion, Walk Out at Pork Plant” by Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, November 17, 2007

“Immigration Raid Draws Protest From Labor Officials” by Julie Preston, New York Times, January 6, 2007

“’Farmworkers’ Union is Set to Announce First National Contract for Guest by Workers” by Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, April 11, 2006

“Raw Deal on Immiration” Editorial, Nation, June 11, 2007

“The Fight of Our Lives” by Deepak Bhargava and Angelica Salas, The Nation, May 7, 2007

“Workers Not Guests” by David Bacon, The Nation, February 19, 2007

“Immigration Fairness at Home” by Bill Mosley, Democratic Left, Spring 2007

“Transient Servitude” by Richard D. Vogel, Monthly Review, January 2007

“New Bedford Crackdown on Undocumented Workers” by Lisa Mullenneaux, Z Magazine, May 2007

“Die Morder haben ihr Ziel garantiert nicht erreicht” Interview with Benjamin Davis by Tomasz Konicz, Junge Welt, April 26, 2007