THE IMMIGRATION-LABOR CONUNDRUM: Decline of the American Working Class

"No one should play on people’s fear or try to pit neighbors against each other."

George W. Bush, March 27, 2006.

As millions took to the streets in France, protesting the erosion of labor rights for young workers by a neo-liberal government, America is still reeling from the spectacle of massive protests by Hispanic Americans on our own streets.

The ironies are rich. The two events are intimately related. Immigration and labor rights are two sides of the same coin yet few of our esteemed media pundits have made the connection. The strategies are essentially the same: Divide and conquer. In France, with what they must have felt was a stroke of Orwellian genius, the government attacked the rights of youth, a relatively powerless subgroup, in the name of providing employment opportunities. In America, with similar mendacity, they attacked the illegal immigrant, a subgroup without legal or electoral recourse.

We should not be surprised that a beleaguered Republican Congress finally played the immigration card. Stunned by the breadth and magnitude of the response, they may lose this round but they will try again because it is the only card they have left.

If they have their way, they will be rounding up Hispanic Americans in the streets. They will take them to detention centers, brand them with indelible ink, and ship them off on busses, trains and military transport helicopters. They will eventually be the subject of a breakthrough documentary, that gradually moves from Link TV to Canadian Broadcasting to the BBC, as Americans shrug their collective shoulders and fail to heed the warning: Next time they will come for you.

They will remove the placard from the Statue of Liberty ("Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…") and still the outcry will be muddled and weak. The streets will be barricaded, lined with razor wire, and the right to assemble in protest will be summarily dismissed. Riot police will shoot first and ask questions later and the self-fulfilling prophecy will come to fruition as the war comes home to roost: They were all criminals, thugs and terrorists.

The exportation of jobs will continue with renewed vigor, businesses will fold, mortgages will be foreclosed, and the politicians will be searching for a new scapegoat: Next time they will come for you.

When you have lost your home and meaningful employment, when there is no more unemployment insurance or job training, when you have no health or medical coverage, when you have no means of supporting your family, who will stand up for you?

Pundits and politicians love to focus on one part of the equation. Lou Dobbs of CNN rails on both job exportation and illegal immigration but he rarely forms the connection. He balks at the prospect of detaining and deporting millions of Hispanic residents but holds on to border security as the first and essential measure of any solution.

It must be acknowledged that the nation has a right and a need to know who is entering her borders but it need not victimize the pawns in an established economic order.

We have grown tired of hearing the solemn truth that the vast majority of migrant laborers take jobs that Americans do not want yet we must also understand that the equation is rapidly changing; that many Americans are taking jobs now that they would not have taken only a year ago.

It is impossible to address the decline of the working class and the rights of labor without acknowledging the failure of unions. It is not only that they have lost ground and political influence; they have lost moral authority as well. They stand accused of ignoring the dispossessed workers of New Orleans and the Gulf region. They stand accused of neglecting the dual threat of cheap foreign and imported labor, yet it is difficult to decipher whether it is a failure born of corruption, weakness or both.

It is certain that any solution to the labor-immigration conundrum must include union reform. Organized labor must regain the trust of American workers while simultaneously working to improve the viability of companies and corporations that honor the rights of labor.

Most critically, organized labor must fully understand that the globalization movement is an insane attempt to rewrite the history of economic development without the contribution of labor. It is insane because, to the extent that it succeeds, the working middle class of every nation will decline. It is insane because the working middle class is the foundation of a consumer economy. It is insane because it will breed massive discontent (witness the recent protests and magnify tenfold) and if history teaches us anything, it is that economies cannot thrive in societies of discontent.

When Americans can no longer afford to shop anywhere but Wal-Mart and its equivalents, we will more resemble the Soviet Union in the eighties than modern America and we will be facing a similar outcome.

Suffering under the illusion that the problems born of this global economic disease can be solved by punishing the powerless, America is erecting a wall on her southern border. We are setting the stage for reactionary, knee-jerk measures on the false belief that it will impact the root problem. It is a cynical attempt to transform a class conflict into a racial vendetta.

What would happen if the cheap immigrant labor force were eliminated? Would American job security improve? Would wages halt their decline? Would the rights of labor be strengthened?

Contrary to the forecasts of neo-liberal pundits, none of these outcomes is likely.

Illegal immigration has been allowed to flourish because it is a means of shunting labor rights aside. As a class, the illegal immigrant worker receives no benefits and is exempt from all legal protections, including minimum wage. If the undocumented worker is hurt on the job, he must fend for himself. If she is asked to work twelve-hour days without breaks, she must accept or lose her employment – along with the paycheck she had already earned.

Who hires illegal immigrants? Everyone from Wal-Mart, corporate farmers and ranchers to the smallest family business, the local market, restaurant, garage and construction crew.

If we eliminated the migrant labor force, Wal-Mart would survive but the small businesses, that cannot export labor and cannot afford to provide benefits and decent wages, would not.

The net result would be a further consolidation of capital and business opportunities. Small businesses would fold and those who were former employers would enter the job market. The mega corporations would expand and intensify their overseas operations (as well as mechanization at home) to compensate for their own losses. Far from abated, the decline of the American worker and the consuming middle class would fall into a spiral descent.

A solution to the job exportation-immigration conundrum cannot be from the bottom up (a process that never reaches the top) but from the top down. America can no longer do business as usual with nations that are building their economies on inhumane working conditions and virtual slave labor practices.

The first condition of all trade agreements must be a firm recognition of the universal rights of labor.

We are an infinity away from an ideal world, a world without borders, a world without religious, ethnic, economic and cultural barriers, but we are desperately mistaken if we believe that a wall can protect us from the tragic consequences of an economic collapse our leaders have so diligently prescribed for us. There are no scapegoats or knee-jerk measures that can fight back the inevitable.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE APPEARED ON DISSIDENT VOICE, THE ALBION MONITOR, BUZZLE, PEACE-EARTH-JUSTICE AND COUNTERPUNCH.

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