|
Illegal Workers: the Con's Secret Weapon
Why Bush & Co. like a cheap and illegal labor force
By Thom Hartmann
03/09/06 "GNN"
-- --
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.”
Recently George W. Bush insulted working Americans by saying that we
need eleven million illegal immigrants here in the United States
because (in a slightly cleaned-up version of the more blatantly
racist comments of Vicente Fox) there are some jobs that “American’s
won’t do.” As the modern-day Sago miners, and the 1950s Ed Norton
character Art Carney played on the old Jackie Gleason show (who
worked in the sewers of NYC) prove, the reality is that there are
virtually no jobs Americans won’t do – for an appropriate paycheck.
It’s really all about breaking the back of the most democratic (and
Democratic) of American institutions – the American middle class.
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 U.S.
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.
In the 1980s, for example, the increasing supply of labor (both from
Reagan-allowed consolidations eliminating redundant jobs, and from
illegal immigration, which was around 3 million illegals by the time
Reagan left office) fed massive union-busting in industry sectors
from those directly hit with illegal immigrant labor (like
construction and agriculture) to those who only felt its fallout but
nonetheless were pressed (like coal mining). In part, because of
these national downward pressures on organized labor, the miners who
died in the International Coal Group’s Sago Mine didn’t have union
protection.
Indeed, as the International Coal Group’s June 2005 form S-A/1
filing notes about one of their other recent mine acquisitions:
”.assets are high quality reserves strategically located in
Appalachia and the Illinois Basin, are union free, have limited
reclamation liabilities and are substantially free of other legacy
liabilities.” Similarly, it’s estimated that the construction
industry enhanced their profits last year by over a billion dollars
because the availability of illegal immigrant labor has so
significantly pushed down the price of construction labor.
“Union free” is good for the CEOs and stockholders of giant
corporations. Reagan helped make it possible by reducing enforcement
of the Sherman Anti-Trust and similar acts, by making the Labor
Department hostile to labor, and by thus producing an environment
into which illegal immigrant labor could step. He busted PATCO and
popularized anti-union rhetoric, at a time when union membership was
one of the primary boundaries that keep illegal labor out of the
marketplace.
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.
Conservatives can’t just come out and say that they are pleased with
the estimated eleven million illegal workers in the United States
driving down wages. They can’t brag that, behind oil revenue,
Mexico’s second largest source of income is money sent home from
illegal “cheap labor” workers in the United States. They can’t point
out that before Reagan declared war on working people in 1981 we
didn’t “need a fence” to keep out illegal immigrants from the south,
in large part because the high rate of unionization in America at
that time, and enforcement of laws against hiring illegal
immigrants, served as barriers to the entry of illegals into the
workforce. They won’t acknowledge the corporate benefits of a
workforce whose healthcare is paid for by taxpayers but whose
productivity belongs to their corporate masters.
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.
They talk about building fences. They worry out loud about
brown-skinned Middle Eastern terrorists slipping in amongst the
brown-skinned South- and Central Americans. They warn us of all the
social security money we’ll lose if illegals have to leave the
country and stop paying into a system from which they’ll never be
able to collect. They even find themselves obligated – catering to
both working-class fears and to the bigots among us – to promote the
idea of giant fences around the country to keep illegals out. (A
fence that would, no doubt, tremendously profit their big contractor
friends.)
At the same time, catering to compassionate Americans who don’t
realize this is all about driving up corporate profits and driving
down workers’ wages, cons like Arlen Specter are promoting
legislation that would decriminalize the illegals currently in the
United States, thus making legal our increased workforce. As Rachel
L. Swarns reported in The New York Times on February 25, 2006:
“Advocates for immigrants said the [Bush/Specter] plan failed to
protect the rights of immigrant workers, who they argue deserve a
clear path to citizenship. And the AFL-CIO warned that a guest
worker program of unlimited scale would depress wages and working
conditions while creating a perpetual underclass of foreign
workers.”
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.
The reason for all these lies and obfuscations is simple, and found
in the core notions of conservatism, articulated from Burke in the
late 1700s to Kirk in 1953 and Greenspan over the past two decades.
It’s all about power, and since wealth equals power, about the
control of wealth in society.
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.
As the ‘60’s and ‘70’s showed – during the height of the American
middle class’s economic and political power – a strong middle class
will challenge corporate power and assert itself economically and
politically. This represents a very real threat to conservative
ruling elites. “The people” may even suggest that the most elite of
the elites should pay stiffer taxes on the top end of their income,
so that money can be used to provide the economically most
disadvantaged with an opportunity to become socially and
economically mobile. It would reduce the most massive of the wealth
and the power of the most elite of our conservative elites.
Offshoring, union-busting, and nurturing a huge population of
illegal workers (while pretending to be frantic about it and
bleating about building fences, fielding vigilantes, or offering
“amnesty”) are the core ways to destroy an economic middle class,
thus ensuring the ongoing political power of the conservative elite
takeover that began with the so-called “Reagan revolution” and
continues to this day.
This is why conservatives who complain about illegal immigration in
front of the cameras won’t lift a finger in the halls of congress to
pass legislation that would put employers of illegals into jail.
(They may support “tough fines,” just so long as they’re high enough
to sound like a lot of money to the average working stiff but low
enough to be a “cost of business” for a corporation that gets
caught.)
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.
Legal immigration is a good and healthy thing for a nation, because
it is done at a rate and in a way that allows a country to
collectively decide what sort of labor/jobs ratios it wants to
maintain. Limitless illegal immigration, however, leads to the
modern-day equivalent of slavery, benefiting only the conservative
corporate elites.
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
U.S., 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?
As the anguished mining families in West Virginia show, Bush was
wrong when he said there were jobs Americans “won’t do.” But in the
face of massive illegal immigration and the union-busting and wage
deflation it spawns, there are increasingly jobs that Americans
“can’t do” and still maintain a viable lifestyle.
While some geographically-specific industries (like coal mining)
don’t appear overwhelmed by illegal immigrant labor, its impact on
the nation as a whole has made it easier for union-busting to take
place from the construction industry in New Mexico to the coal mines
of West Virginia. Directly or indirectly, illegal immigration
affects all working Americans.
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.
Only then will Mexico and other countries to our south have an
incentive to get their own houses in order, and will our middle
class begin to recover decent bargaining power and the living wages
that accompany it.
Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling
author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk
show carried on the Air America Radio network and Sirius.
www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books include What Would
Jefferson Do? and Ultimate Sacrifice (co-authored with Lamar
Waldron). His next book, due out this autumn, is Screwed: The
Undeclared War on the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It.
Click below to post a comment on this article
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
