I am linking to here and excerpting parts of a very good article by Thom Hartmann on illegal immigration. I agree with almost everything he says.
Link: Illegal Workers - The Con's Secret Weapon | Thom Hartmann/CommonDreams.org
Conservatives are all atwitter about illegal immigrants. Some want to give them amnesty. Others want to reinstitute the old Bracero program. Others want to build a wall around America, like the communists did around East Berlin. Some advocate all of the above.
But none will tell Americans the truth about why we have eleven million illegal aliens in this nation now (when it was fewer than 2 million when Reagan came into office), why they're staying, or why they keep coming. In a word, it's "jobs." In conservative lexicon, it's "cheap labor to increase corporate profits." ...
One of the tools conservatives have used very successfully over the past 25 years to drive down wages, bust unions, and increase CEO salaries has been to encourage illegal immigrant labor in the US. Their technique is transparently simple.
Conservatives well understand supply and demand. If there's more of something, its price goes down. If it becomes scarce, its price goes up.
They also understand that this applies just as readily to labor as it does to houses, cars, soybeans, or oil. While the history of much of the progressive movement in the United States has been to control the supply of labor (mostly through pushing for maximum-hour, right-to-strike, and child-labor laws) to thus be able to bargain decent wages for working people, the history of conservative America has, from its earliest days grounded in slavery and indentured workers from Europe, been to increase the supply of labor and drive down its cost. ...
Today, this fundamental economic rule of labor supply and demand is most conspicuous in the conservative reluctance to stop illegal immigration into the United States. All those extra (illegal) workers, after all, drive up the supply - and thus drive down the cost - of labor. Even in areas where there are not high populations of illegal immigrants, their presence elsewhere in the American workforce drives down overall the cost of labor nationwide. And when the cost of labor goes down, there's more money left over for CEOs and stockholder dividends. ...
But conservative strategists have noticed that the workers - and the voters - of the United States are getting nervous about nearly 10 percent of our workforce being both illegal and cheap. This has led conservative commentators and politicians to resort to classic "wedge issue" rhetoric, exploiting Americans' fears -- while working to keep conditions relatively the same as they are today. ...
None of the various con proposals - from a fence to amnesty - address the fundamental truth of the situation: Conservatives and the businesses they represent want to maintain a large, illegal or marginally legal, and thus powerless workforce in the United States, to keep down the price of labor and help them finally destroy the union movement - and, thus, that politically pesky middle class. ...
Conservatives believe that what John Adams called "the rabble" - you and me - can't really be trusted with governance, and therefore that job should be kept to an elite few. The big difference between the old-line Burke conservatives and modern conservatives is that Burke and the cons of his day felt that an hereditary ruling class was desirable (because it would inculcate rulers with a sense of "noblesse oblige"), whereas modern cons like Adams, McKinley, Kirk, and Bush believe that the ruling class should be more of a meritocracy - rule by the "best."
And - in the finest tradition of John Calvin (who suggested that wealth was a sign of God's blessing) - what better indication of "best" could there be than "richest"? They believe there should be a thin veneer of democracy on these old conservative notions of aristocracy in order to placate the masses, but are quite certain that it would be a disaster should the rabble ever actually have a strong say in running the country.
This is, at its core, why conservatives embrace the idea of eliminating the American middle class and replacing it with a Dickensian "working poor" class, and are working so hard to use illegal immigrant labor as the lever to bring this about. ...
If Congress were to pass a law that said, quite simply, that the CEO of any business that was caught employing illegal immigrants went to jail for a year - no exceptions - then within a month there would be ten million (more or less) people lined up at the Mexican border trying to get out of the United States. The US unemployment rate would drop close to zero, and wages would begin to rise. The American middle class would begin to return to viability, as would the union movement in this nation. ...
Thus, progressives need to begin a new dialogue about immigration in the United States. (Similar discussions are already underway in many of the countries of Western Europe.) Issues include:
To what extent should the United States bleed its middle class because Mexico is a corrupt oligarchy run by a corrupt former Coca-Cola executive?
How do we work out fair and reasonable options for illegal families living and working here who have birthed "anchor children" in the US, now citizens of this nation?
How can we ensure "security" along our southern border in an "age of terrorism"? (A good start may be to stop promulgating policies that cause the world to hate us, but that's another article.)
How do we recalibrate our business and tax laws so businesses - particularly small and middle-sized businesses - can adjust away from depending on a terrified "working-poor-competing-with-even-more-terrified-illegal-labor" workforce and move toward being able to pay a more robust, domestic, unionized workforce?
How can progressives join with the few remaining populist Republicans (like Lou Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan) to forge an alliance to make this an all-American effort and not have it further split the nation?
And how can we all collectively work to prevent Bush and Specter from re-instituting the brutal Bracero "guest worker" program of the last century? ... Condemning the frightened working-class white guys organizing citizens' militias along our southern border, or vilifying those who listen to Limbaugh and are convinced that "liberals" are in some sort of collective plot to undermine America may feel good, but it doesn't address the real problem. Progressives will be most effective when we reach across the divides created by Bush, Specter, et al, and point out how this is really all about corporate conservative efforts to replace the American middle class with a workforce of "working poor" Americans and powerless illegal immigrants (or powerless "amnestied" workers) - all so CEOs can fatten their paychecks and further reward the "conservative" investor class.
Now we see what "progressive" values really look like: Kick out immigrants, put America above all else, and screw the rest of the world.
Those who want to crack down on illegal immigration seek to boost the American lower-middle class (who are already richer and better off than most of the world, anyhow) on the backs of poorer nations, keeping them indebted, impoverished, and in the hands of violent fanatics for another century. For what? Are we really so arrogant that we'd rail against a drop in income from $30,000 to $20,000 is so horrible, when the median global income is still less than $1000?
Think about the *global* consequences of your actions and the *global* message it sends. Isn't that one of the supposed core values of the Greens?
Free trade, free markets, open borders and economic interdependence - those will bring *global* prosperity, as opposed to stuffing the wallets of isolationist nationalists who want to close American borders and declare workers who are vital in the global economy to be "illegal" and "unwanted."
Posted by: Seth | March 10, 2006 at 02:51 PM
Seth:
Your comments could have been written in the propaganda departments of almost any mega-transnational corporation.
You wrote: "Are we really so arrogant that we'd rail against a drop in income from $30,000 to $20,000 is so horrible ..." This is the manipulation of stereotypical "liberal guilt." Hardworking middle, lower class and unionized Americans should feel bad because they simply want to protect their families???
The end result of what you seem to advocate is not only the exploitation of "illegal" immigrant workers, but the further exploitation of American workers. Lower and lower wages here, as well as in Mexico, is a dream come true for the NAFTA, FTAA and WTO elitists that advocate for, as you put it: "...Free trade, free markets, open borders and economic interdependence - those will bring *global* prosperity ..."
Here is a citation from a newly published book that you should read. 'The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future and What It Will Take to Win It Back' by Jeff Faux (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). Page 142.
"Vincente Fox, former CEO of Coca-Cola Mexico and unreconstructed champion of NAFTA, now refers to Mexican migrants in the United States as "heros" because their remittances to their families ran at perhaps some $17 billion in 2004, constituting the country's second largest source of hard-currency earnings.
"It is obvious that Mexico cannot develop by sending its most ambitious and industrious workers to the United States. It is not the poorest and least educated who migrate; it is the working-class risk-takers who, once in the United States, sacrifice to send home their exploitation wages. Mexico needs these people. It paid for the cost of their upbringing and education, in effect subsidizing U.S. consumers of low-wage work.
"Precisely because these are ambitious people, keeping them at home might cause trouble for the Mexican governing class. They might become restless in an economy in which the rich are getting steadily richer, the middle class is getting nowhere, and the poor are falling further behind. Indeed, for Mexico's oligarchs, the public focus on the condition of Mexican workers in the United States has the great virtue of diverting political attention from the condition of Mexican workers in Mexico."
Posted by: Dave Chandler | March 12, 2006 at 09:53 AM
Well, I'll be clear: I oppose NAFTA, FTAA, and the WTO, because they aren't free-trade -- they're trade-regulation bureaucracies. And I'm no fan of multinational corporations, either, although sometimes they *do* speak the truth.
We *must* move past the "us vs. them" menality in order to make headway in the immigration and trade debates. The fact is that both the American *and* Mexican economies benefit from the presence of immigrants to the U.S. who are willing to work at low wages. Summarily booting tens of millions of hard-working immigrants from the U.S. will not only devastate the American economy, but the economies of their home countries, which are greatly enriched by remittances -- which are part of the capital that people need in order to build self-sufficient lives.
And, yes, middle-class Americans *should* feel guilty for being overconsumptive and wasteful when there's such poverty and despair all over the world. These cycles of poverty and, hatred only increase every time the U.S. becomes more protectionist, isolationist, and xenophobic.
I'm greatly dissapointed that the Greens, who are usually on the forefront of these issues, aren't out there confronting the xenophobic madness that's running rampant across middle America. Are you really so desperate for a political win that you're willing to give in to the psychological of hatred and fear that's overtaking this country?
Posted by: Seth | March 12, 2006 at 06:05 PM
I am not familiar with the case of Mexico, but (illegal) migration and remittances are significant issues for Ecuador as well. Some sources suggest that from a total population approaching 13 million, as many as one million Ecuadorians may have emigrated to other countries (primarily the United States, Canada and Spain). (NB: The Mumford Center at SUNY Albany places the number of Ecuadorian immigrants in the US at around 400,000 [corrected from US Census data], most of whom are in the New York City area.) In 1999, Ecuadorian migrants around the globe remitted nearly $1.25 billion to relatives back home. Those remittances account for 10 percent of Ecuador's GDP and form the second-largest source of foreign currency after oil exports. (These remittance figures are from a 2001 report by the Inter-American Development Bank on remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean.)
Most of the Ecuadorian migrants are undocumented and work long hours at substandard wages. So, from our perspective, they are cheap, exploited laborers who help to drive down wages. From the Ecuadorian perspective, some may see them as exploited as well, but the predominant view is that they are rich. In Ecuador, the government estimates that a typical family requires about $440 each month to meet its basic needs, and the average salary is well below that (moreover, there is 10 percent unemployment, and approximately half the population is underemployed). So an Ecuadorian working in the US, even at substandard wages, can easily earn an entire month's salary in a week or less.
As in Mexico, (government) corruption is a problem in Ecuador. It is easy to suggest that all Ecuador has to do to solve its problems is end corruption, but the issue is much more complex. Like many Latin American countries, Ecuador has been systematically underdeveloped by countries such as the US, and World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies maintain that status quo. Now, I do not mean to cast all of the blame away from Ecuador itself. However, the US (along with its lackeys, the World Bank and IMF) is certainly responsible for contributing to many of the conditions that make economic survival difficult, if not impossible, for many Ecuadorians. And that situation has prompted Ecuadorians to emigrate en masse. What would happen to Ecuador if the US simply (and miraculously) wiped out corporate exploitation of cheap foreign labor and sent those immigrants packing? A more complex, multi-faceted approach is required. Before--or instead of--closing the door, we first must change other policies and help countries such as Ecuador and Mexico create opportunities at home.
Posted by: Soren M Peterson | March 13, 2006 at 11:13 AM