Global Labor Strategies

Build Alliances for Real Immigration Reform

The address by President Bush on May 15 and renewed debate in Congress have kept the issue of immigration reform on the front burner. But the debate is being shaped on the one hand by employers and on the other by right-wing ideologues who claim—falsely—to speak for established US workers. As a result, the debate is full of myths and misconceptions. We offer the following points as themes around which the common interests of immigrants and established workers can coalesce.

The best outcome of the present immigration debate in Congress is no outcome at all. There is virtually no chance that this Congress and this Administration will produce a worker and immigrant friendly immigration bill. In any event, splits in the Republican Party between nativists hoping to stop all immigration and corporate interests seeking greater access to low wage labor make chances of passing anything unlikely. Immigrant advocates should be building momentum for action in the next Congress and beyond. The emphasis on voter registration and getting out the pro-immigrant vote that emerged from the massive immigrant demonstrations could play a decisive role in shaping immigration legislation.

There is no immediate immigration crisis—only a crisis in the election prospects of the Republican Party. Current immigration policies function badly as they have for years. Reform is needed, but the immigration “crisis” is a product of a the Republican right’s attempts to fan the flames of a growing, but still contained, backlash against undocumented immigrants as part of its election year strategy. They may have miscalculated. The real backlash may be among the millions of Hispanic voters, many of whom have voted Republican in past elections.

Increased border security fails to keep undocumented immigrants out, but it does keep them in. The number of border patrol agents increased from around 2,500 in the 1980s to 12,000 today. Over-all spending on border security since the late 1980s has increased 500%. One result is that the cost of making a crossing for an undocumented immigrant today is about  $2,500.  According to Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey in the 1980s about half of all undocumented Mexicans returned home within 12 months, but by 2000 the return rate was only 25%. Thus the net result of increased border security is to actually increase the number of undocumented workers in the US. Immigrant advocates should stop pandering to uninformed or xenophobic voices demanding “border security”.  Effectively sealing the border would require a massive attack on civil liberties and unacceptable economic and political costs in the US and abroad—and its primary effect would be to keep undocumented immigrants from returning home.

Abruptly halting undocumented immigration would have a chaotic effect on the economies of Mexico and Central America.   Remittances from the US account for second largest sources of foreign capital in Mexico after oil. About 18% of Mexican adults—and 29% of Salvadoran adults—receives remittances from someone in the US. Those remittances are essential to support families and build communities. Shutting off the flow would create hardship and instability in Mexico and Central America. Instead ways need to be found to smooth the flow of remittances and make them part of a new economic development strategy that utilizes them to provide socially constructive forms of credit.

Policies supported by the US and institutionalized in treaties like NAFTA are a key factor pushing migrants north. NAFTA helped push around two million peasants off the land in Mexico and forced many Mexican companies out of business because they were unable to compete with cheaper imports. While NAFTA was touted as a way to slow northward migration, it has done the opposite. The giant sucking sound that many thought NAFTA would produce turned out to be less from jobs going south than from workers heading north. In 1995 there were 2.5 million undocumented Mexican workers in the US, ten years later there were more than 10.5 million.  Any solution to the immigration problem must begin with rewriting NAFTA. With massive political change going on in Latin America, it’s time to take a fresh look at ways new hemispheric economic policies can make it possible for people to live decently at home without being dependent on migration or remittances from the US or elsewhere.

In some industries and some localities there is already a hemispheric labor market. In some occupations undocumented immigrants make up a substantial percentage of the workforce. About 24% of all farm workers are undocumented immigrants; 17% of all cleaners; 14% of all construction workers; and 12% of all food preparation workers. Taking a closer look at jobs within these categories 36% of all insulation workers; 29% of all roofers and drywall workers; and 27% of all butchers and food processors are undocumented. It is interesting to note that many of these occupations have had a large immigrant component throughout the 20th century. National laws have not kept pace with the reality of transnational labor markets. What’s needed now are laws and regulations that guarantee immigrant workers the basic human and labor rights needed to let them work and live in dignity.

Any comprehensive immigration program will be the result of a compromise among workers—both immigrant and established—employers, and politicians. The result will not be perfect, but it can be satisfactory. Employers need immigrant workers; workers need jobs. The interests of both are opposed to the right-wing anti-immigrant ideologues.

There is the basis for an alliance between immigrant and established workers. Immigrant rights advocates and progressives should not cede the established working class to the right-wing nativists. US workers—partly because many have immigrant roots—can be an ally in the fight for just reforms as the progressive role of US unions in the current debate shows. But fears that immigrants take jobs and decrease wages need to be taken seriously. Immigration legislation should emphasize the labor rights of immigrant workers both to protect their human dignity and to protect the wages and working conditions of established workers.

Immigration reform must be hemispheric in scope. A step in the direction of recognizing the hemispheric and global nature of the immigration issue has already been taken. The governments of the nations of Latin America that send migrants to the US have banded together to lobby against the most draconian immigration reform bills currently before Congress. This recognition that immigration is no longer a strictly national issue should prompt the labor and social movements in Latin America and the US to convene a hemispheric meeting of unions and social movements to help draft a worker and immigrant friendly immigration program.  Unions and social movements should not leave immigration reform to elite decision makers whether in the US or in the hemisphere.

A program can be developed that represents the interests of established US workers, undocumented immigrants, and Latin Americans. Their interests can be meshed with those of the US employers on this issue. The claims of nativist ideologues to speak for American workers can be discredited. If the groundwork for such a program is laid now, the alliance of immigrant and established workers can seize the initiative in shaping immigration legislation after the 2006 election.

M.O.

May Day: The Past as Prologue

May Day conjures up a host of historical images: European peasant children dancing around a May Pole; working men and women fighting for the 8 hour day in late 19th century Chicago; annual marches for worker justice held in cities and towns throughout the world as an international day of worker solidarity; columns of soldiers and tanks filing past the reviewing stands crowed with the officials and generals of repressive regimes. Take your pick; each is an authentic representation of what May Day has been over the past 116 years since the holiday was declared by the Second International to commemorate the Chicago general strike of 1886 and the fight for the 8 hour day.

Today immigrants and their supporters are re-claiming May Day as a time to protest for basic rights and standards. In actions across the US, some are striking, some are protesting on the job, some staying out of stores, and many are participating in demonstrations to demand a new approach to immigration rights and laws in today’s global economy. In doing so they are enriching US society and civic life that have become all too passive.

Here in Massachusetts, immigrant and labor activists organized by Centro Presente, the American Friends Service Committee, and others have rallied around the following set of demands which we support.

MAY DAY call:
•    Legalization for all undocumented workers
•    Family reunification, and the immediate addressing of backlog petitions
•    Full worker rights, and no guest worker programs 
•    Full civil rights and due process for all immigrants
•    End the raids, round-ups, mass detentions & deportations
•    End the militarization of the border(s)
•    Stop Free Trade Agreements and Structural Readjustment Policies

May Day was the first international working class attempt to establish some basic standards for workers all over the world. It became an international workers holiday at the end of the 19th as part of a global fight for the 8-hour day and minimum labor rights and standards. Its guiding idea was that workers in each country, using the means that they had available, would unite in common struggle for similar basic standards.

It’s still a good model. The 8-hour demand cut across national, economic, and craft boundaries. It demanded this standard as a basic social minimum and as a fundamental human right. Today, a new global standards approach may be essential if labor and its allies are to successfully respond to corporate led globalization and develop worker friendly alternatives.

M.O.

(Cick on migration on the menu to the left for more blogs on immigration.)

Immigration and the Militarization of the Border

Here is a footnote to our last post on immigration. One of the themes of the immigration debate is the need for increased border security. The McCain-Kennedy bill that many immigrant activists are supporting is actually called the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, and includes all kinds of security measures.

We live, to be sure, in an age of heightened anxiety about domestic security exemplified by the creation of a cabinet level office of “Homeland Security.” (The term itself—probably dreamed up by some neo-con political consultants—evokes dark images out of repressive regimes of the past.) Even spokespeople for progressive immigration reform generally include an obligatory nod toward increased vigilance along the border in their advocacy pitches. But the fact is that the US-Mexican border is already the most militarized border between two countries at peace anywhere in the world. And, interestingly, as security has been ratcheted up, the flow of immigrants has actually increased. While every country has a right to control its borders, further militarization would require a massive attack on civil liberties and unacceptable economic and political costs—and probably wouldn’t work anyway. 

One consequence of the militarization, as Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey has shown, is that while it has failed to keep immigrants out, it has succeeded in keeping immigrants in. As a result, the normal back and forth cycle across the border has been interrupted, increasing the number of undocumented workers in the country at any one time. Indeed, it is an American conceit that most immigrants want to come here and permanently settle. That is simply not the case. Many immigrants, perhaps most immigrants, want to come here to earn some money to take back home to buy land, build houses, and start businesses. Making the border crossing more difficult is thus counter-productive.

Immigrant advocates should stop pandering to the uninformed and/or the xenophobic and instead focus on the kind of comprehensive reforms that will really reduce and regulate the flow of migrants heading north. And as we have argued, that includes not only reforms on this side of the border, but programs that address the reasons people leave their communities in search of work.

For those that missed it, here is Douglas Massey’s op-ed that ran in the New York Times on April 4, 2006.

The Wall That Keeps Illegal Workers In

The Mexican-American border is not now and never has been out of control. The rate of undocumented migration, adjusted for population growth, to the United States has not increased in 20 years. That is, from 1980 to 2004 the annual likelihood that a Mexican will make his first illegal trip to the United States has remained at about 1 in 100.

What has changed are the locations and visibility of border crossings. And that shift, more than anything, has given the public undue fears about waves of Mexican workers trying to flood into America.

Until the 1990's, the vast majority of undocumented Mexicans entered through either El Paso or San Diego. El Paso has around 700,000 residents and is 78 percent Hispanic, whereas San Diego County has three million residents and is 27 percent Hispanic. Thus the daily passage of even thousands of Mexicans through these metropolitan areas was not very visible or disruptive.

This all changed in 1992 when the Border Patrol built a steel fence south of San Diego from the Pacific Ocean to the port of entry at San Ysidro, Calif., where Interstate 5 crosses into Mexico. This fence, and the stationing of officers and equipment behind it, blocked one of the busiest illicit crossing routes and channeled migrants toward the San Ysidro entry station, where their numbers rapidly built up to impossible levels.

Every day the same episode unfolded: the crowd swelled to a critical threshold, whereupon many migrants made what the local press called "banzai runs" into the United States, darting through traffic on the Interstate and clambering over cars.

Waiting nearby were Border Patrol officers, there not to arrest the migrants but to capture the mayhem on video, which was later edited into an agency documentary. Although nothing had changed except the site of border crossings, the video gave the impression that the border was overwhelmed by a rising tide of undocumented migrants.

In response to the ensuing public uproar, the policy of tougher border enforcement was expanded to all of the San Diego and El Paso area in 1993 and 1994. So migrants began going to more remote locations along the border in Arizona. In 1989, two thirds of undocumented migrants came in through El Paso or San Diego; but by 2004 two-thirds crossed somewhere else. (My statistics on Mexican immigration come from a study I have been undertaking with financing from the National Institutes of Health since 1982.)

Unlike the old crossing sites, these new locations were sparsely settled, so the sudden appearance of thousands of Mexicans attracted considerable attention and understandably generated much agitation locally. Perceptions of a breakdown at the border were heightened by news reports of rising deaths among migrants; by redirecting flows into harsh, remote terrain the United States tripled the death rate during border crossing.

Less well known is that American policies also reduced the rate of apprehension, because those remote sectors of the border had fewer Border Patrol officers. My research found that during the 1980's, the probability that an undocumented migrant would be apprehended while crossing stood at around 33 percent; by 2000 it was at 10 percent, despite increases in federal spending on border enforcement.

Naturally, public perceptions of chaos on the border prompted more calls for enforcement and the hardening strategy was extended to other sectors. The number of Border Patrol officers increased from around 2,500 in the early 1980's to around 12,000 today, and the agency's annual budget rose to $1.6 billion from $200 million. The boundary between Mexico and the United States has become perhaps the most militarized frontier between two nations at peace anywhere in the world.

Although border militarization had little effect on the probability of Mexicans migrating illegally, it did reduce the likelihood that they would return to their homeland. America's tougher line roughly tripled the average cost of getting across the border illegally; thus Mexicans who had run the gantlet at the border were more likely to hunker down and stay in the United States. My study has shown that in the early 1980's, about half of all undocumented Mexicans returned home within 12 months of entry, but by 2000 the rate of return migration stood at just 25 percent.

The United States is now locked into a perverse cycle whereby additional border enforcement further decreases the rate of return migration, which accelerates undocumented population growth, which brings calls for harsher enforcement.

The only thing we have to show for two decades of border militarization is a larger undocumented population than we would otherwise have, a rising number of Mexicans dying while trying to cross, and a growing burden on taxpayers for enforcement that is counterproductive.

We need an immigration policy that seeks to manage the cross-border flows of people that are inevitable in a global economy, not to repress them through unilateral police actions.

M.O.

Broaden the Immigration Debate

The huge immigrant demonstrations of the past few days and weeks have put a face on the country’s immigrant population, and could serve as one anchor for a new progressive politics and a revival of the labor movement. The demonstrations have prompted a much needed public discussion about work, wages, and how job markets function.

Many unions have worked hard to mobilize members for the demonstrations and to educate their members on immigration issues. Best of all, it’s now very clear that across the board labor supports an amnesty for workers currently in the country.

But labor has made less of a contribution to solving the problem posed by massive immigration.  That’s a pity, because this debate is fundamentally about work and labor is the social institution with the standing to speak on employment matters.

Some unions have supported the Senate reform efforts, even as draconian measures were tacked on to bills and the amnesty  provisions were trimmed.  These unions formed alliances with business groups interested in access to low wage workers through a guest worker program, without demanding the kinds of protections that such a program would require. The support and the alliances were well intentioned--the desire for amnesty and reform in a difficult political environment--but the proposed reforms would benefit neither immigrant nor established workers. Other unions simply rejected the reforms outright because they contained guest worker programs. But while rejecting the current bills is good in itself it’s time for a proactive worker friendly immigration reform program to emerge from the ranks of labor.

With the various immigration bills apparently stalled in Congress until after the November congressional elections, there is time for labor to work towards its own comprehensive reform program. Such a  program needs to address the interests of both  immigrants and currently established workers and include in-put from sending and receiving communities and countries. To that end,  labor should promote a hemispheric dialogue on all aspects of migration/immigration issue.

There is some movement in that direction among hemispheric elites and governments. In February representatives of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries met in Columbia and agreed upon a plan to lobby the US Congress about immigration reform. The specific target was the draconian House bill that would build a physical barrier along the border and criminalize undocumented immigrants. The group agreed to mobilize religious, business, and immigrant groups in the lobbying campaign. Such intervention in the US legislative process is an example of the importance neighboring countries place on immigration reform. The intervention may have helped give the immigrant workers the confidence that made massive demonstrations possible.

Largely ignored in the US debate are the factors pushing people in Latin America to become migrants. Policies supported by the US, and institutionalized in treaties like NAFTA, have driven up to two million peasants off the land in Mexico and forced many domestic industries out of business because they were unable to compete with cheaper imports. While NAFTA was touted as a way to slow northward migration, it has done exactly the opposite. The giant sucking sound that many thought NAFTA would produce has turned out to be less from jobs going south than from people going north. In 1994 there  were 2.5 million undocumented Mexican workers in the US, ten years after NAFTA there were around 10.5 million.

It’s not surprising that many think that increased border security will block this migration, but as Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey, who has studied the border over past few decades writes,  this is not the case.

The number of Border Patrol officers increased from around 2,500 in the early 1980's   to around 12,000 today, and the agency's annual budget rose to $1.6 billion from $200 million. The boundary between Mexico and the United States has become perhaps the most militarized frontier between two nations at peace anywhere in the world.

… border militarization had little effect on the probability of Mexicans migrating illegally..

But as Massey points out, if it has not kept people out it has kept people in.

My study has shown that in the early 1980's, about half of all undocumented Mexicans returned home within 12 months of entry, but by 2000 the rate of return migration stood at just 25 percent.”

Immigrants come looking for work, and they find it in the relatively open US economy.  As a result, many US labor markets are actually hemispheric is scope. In 2004 one third of all new jobs in the economy were filled by undocumented immigrants. In some industries like agriculture and construction immigrants are a major fraction of the entire workforce. In some trades and occupations—insulation workers, drywall workers, cleaners, and butchers--immigrants represent more than one quarter of all workers.

The concentration of immigrants in low wage industries and occupations poses a potential threat to wages and working conditions in some sectors. There is very credible data that current immigration flows depress wages and close employment opportunities in some industries for already established workers especially in low income communities. There is also some evidence that the massive immigration of the past few years is lowering wages for the newest immigrants, as well. (We leave the question of how visa and immigration policies affect high skilled high tech workers for another day.) Immigrant rights advocates ignore these uncomfortable facts at their peril.

The pervasive economic insecurity experienced by workers in the US could be manipulated by right-wing demagogues to destructive ends. As labor stakes much of its future on organizing in sectors with large immigrant populations, it’s not too difficult to imagine  a backlash in which one group of  union members demands the deportation of another group.

To prevent such a backlash, US labor needs to develop a program that ends exploitation of vulnerable immigrants, promotes job creation in the hemisphere, and elevates wages and working conditions for immigrants and established workers alike.

An example of the kinds of proposals a cross border dialogue could produce was recently aired by former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. In aninterview on NPR, Castaneda talked about the deal that Mexico wants on immigration: amnesty for those already here and a guest worker program that matches the number of  workers already coming illegally and which assures decent wages and working conditions. In exchange Mexico would agree to “step up to the plate” and deal with remaining illegal immigration. He proposes that instead of walls and armies a series of non-repressive “incentives and disincentives” including better welfare support for families and better educational opportunities for those that stay in Mexico.

Another piece of a comprehensive program  could be the creative use of remittances to support the kind of economic development that would allow to people to stay in their own countries. In the past 10 years remittances have come to play an important role in the economies of the sending communities and countries. About 18% of Mexican adults—and 29% of Salvadoran adults—receives remittances from someone in the US. Those remittances support families and help build communities. In Mexico as Douglas Massey writes, migrant families use money earned abroad “as a tool to overcome failed or missing markets for insurance, capital, and credit at home….. because Mexico has virtually no mortgage banking industry, a large share of the money earned by Mexican immigrants in the United States is channeled into the construction or purchase of homes in Mexico.” The remittance flow could serve as the basis of a community banking system that would help meet the housing and other investment needs of Latin American communities.

The point here is not whether these proposals are good or bad but that new concrete proposals are possible when concerns of both the sending and receiving communities are addressed together.

Now its time for labor to “step up to the plate” and convene a hemispheric dialogue involving union and social movements to develop a comprehensive worker friendly plan that tackles all of the issues—amnesty, regulating the flow of migrants, new development policies, repealing or redesigning NAFTA, and protecting the wages of established workers in the US.

These are questions that are too big for national answers and too important to be left to elites.

(Click on "migration" on the menu to the left for more blogs on the immigration debate.)

M.O.

Immigration: Half the Job is Done

Immigrants all over the country have taken to the streets to protest recent Congressional immigration reforms: 500,000 in LA, 50,000 in Denver, 4,000 in Detroit, 20,000 in Phoenix (click here for some great reporting on the LA protests). Carrying signs that read “No Human Being is Illegal” and “No Second Class” over 22,000 high school students walked out of class on Monday to march on the LA City Hall; 100 clergy, who had bound themselves with plastic handcuffs, marched to a Senate office building and chanted, “Let our people stay!”  According to the New York Times, 1,000 demonstrators gathered on the west lawn of the Capitol to cheer at news that the Senate Judiciary Committee had cut a provision that made it a crime to give aid to illegal immigrants (the provisions remains in the House-passed version of the bill).

Despite successfully excising the most draconian elements of the immigration bill voted out of the Senate committee Monday, the bill is deeply flawed and should be rejected. This is a time to just say no. There is little likelihood that anything decent can come out of this Congress and be signed by Bush into law. As we have argued it is up to labor and its allies to develop a worker friendly bill that addresses the needs of all workers and puts the question of immigration in a global context. Latin American governments have already started this process by their intervention in the US immigration debate. (See our blog on “Labor and Global Public Policy”.)

But equally important as saying “no” is figuring out how we can reach out to native workers that either are—or think they are—being adversely affected by immigration. 

According to liberal economist Paul Krugman writing in Monday’s New York Times:

"I'm instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration. But a review of serious, nonpartisan research reveals some uncomfortable facts about the economics of modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular. If people like me are going to respond effectively to anti-immigrant demagogues, we have to acknowledge those facts.

First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent.

Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration - especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S.worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans. The most authoritative recent study….estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration."

Although Krugman’s op-ed--whether right or wrong--is quickly becoming a show piece for immigration bashers like Ira Mehlman at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, we have to confront head-on the issue that immigration may negatively affect native-born workers.  Workers instinctively think that increasing the labor pool drags down wages.  Rather than ignoring or turning away from the issue, now is the time to build new bridges.

Labor and its allies need to ask hard questions and it needs to seek answers to those questions in collaboration with unions and social groups in the countries that send immigrants. How can we mitigate the adverse affects to native born workers? Are there rational ways to regulate the flow of immigrant workers? What impact will US immigration reform have on Mexico and Central America where remittances play such a huge role in the domestic economies? US action to promote NAFTA and CAFTA helped push farmers off the land and workers out of domestic industries driving them North to find work. What kind of development strategies could reverse this trend? These and other questions must be addressed if we are going to have worker friendly immigration reform.

Over the last few weeks we have been blogging on immigration in an attempt to frame the issues for US unions. Take a look at our previous immigration posts on "Real Immigration Reform," "The Undocumented Workforce," "US Labor and the McCain-Kennedy Bill," "Immigration Backlash," "Globalization, Immigration and Organizing."  Immigration remains a key controversy in the globalization debate around the world, witness the French immigrant protests several months ago, strikes by Indian construction workers in Dubai, and more recently the central role illegal immigration is playing in the upcoming the Italian elections.  An immigration policy that is friendly to (or addresses the needs of) native US workers, immigrants, and people in poorer countries is possible, but it will take collaboration to work it out.

Over the next few weeks we'll begin presenting some worker-friendly policy alternatives to address the pressing issues of immigration in era of globalization.

N.T.

The Undocumented Workforce

The Republican leadership in the Senate is pushing for action on an immigration bill by the end of March. Hearings are underway in the Senate Judiciary Committee, but the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee says he needs more time if the committee is to report out a bill. If things go the way they are headed nothing will get done before this session ends. And that’s probably the point. The Republicans want to capitalize on voter unease about immigration in some parts of the country in the coming Congressional elections. And yet the Republican Party itself is split on the issue. The business wing of the Party that wants access to immigrant workers through a guest worker program and the hard right and nativist elements wants a wall along the border and draconian repression. .

The best that can be hoped for in this session is a deadlock—since it is almost unimaginable that anything friendly to workers—immigrant or native born can come out of this Congress.

Now, a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center provides facts that can help pierce the fog of misinformation and anxiety the clouds this issue. By providing an accurate snapshot of the migrant workforce and the jobs and industries in which they are employed, the report,
Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population, can help labor develop a nuanced worker-friendly approach to immigration reform that can allow migrants to find appropriate work; ensure that there are legal protections in place to protect them, including an amnesty for those currently employed in the US; and protect the jobs, wages, and working conditions of US workers.

Latino immigrants continue to come to the United States in increasing numbers.  According the Pew report, between 2000 and 2005, 850,000 undocumented immigrants arrived in the US each year but about 350,000 also left each year, so the net average yearly gain was 500,000 people. Today the total number of undocumented workers in the US is between 11.5 and 12 million people which is about 30% of the 37 million foreign-born population of the US. And undocumented workers represent nearly 5% of the total US workforce of 148 million.

Most undocumented workers are from Mexico and Central America. This includes 6.2 million people, or 56% of the total undocumented population, from Mexico and 2.5 million, or 22% of the total, from Central America.

What stands out in the report is that despite the growing militarization of the border, especially since 9/11, the biggest growth spurt in the number of undocumented people has occurred since 2000. Today 66% of undocumented immigrants have been in the country less than 10 years. But most striking is the fact that 40%, or 4.4 million people, have been in the country 5 years or less.

Men make up only 49% of the total undocumented population. Women make up 35% and children about 16%. There are about 6.6 million “undocumented families” containing 14.6 million people in which either the head of the family or a spouse is undocumented. Fully 66% of all children in these families are US citizens by birth—about 3.1 million in 2005.

Undocumented immigrants are part of a classic push-pull pattern. Poverty, unemployment and underemployment push Latin American immigrants north. Many are drawn from the Mexican country-side where NAFTA based policies forced two million farmers off the land in the decade ending in 2003.  Other workers lost jobs when cheaper foreign goods forced Mexico’s domestic manufacturing industries to close. And in the last few years, Mexico has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs to China displacing even more workers.

The migrants are pulled north toward a US economy that produces large numbers of lower wage, highly precarious, contingent and near contingent jobs. Today, close to 30% of all jobs in the US are contingent—either temporary, part-time, on-call, or independent contracting jobs. Many more jobs are near contingent—jobs with high turnover built into the job structure in industries like retail or fast food restaurants. It is an economy with a low-wage and contingent sector that can absorb many migrant workers.

Undocumented male migrants work at a greater rate than either legal immigrants or native born people: about 94% of undocumented males work compared to 85% of legal immigrants and 83% of native born workers. The reasons are fairly obvious: migrants made the arduous trip North to find work, and they are almost all are in the working age population.

By occupation about 19% undocumented workers are employed in construction; 31% work in service jobs of one sort or another; 15% work in production jobs; 12% in sales jobs; 10% in business professional jobs; 8% in transportation; and 4% in agriculture.

In some occupations undocumented immigrants make up a substantial percentage of the workforce. About 24% of all farm workers are undocumented immigrants; 17% of all cleaners; 14% of all construction workers; and 12% of all food preparation workers. Taking a closer look at jobs within these categories 36% of all insulation workers; 29% of all roofers and drywall workers; and 27% of all butchers and food processors are undocumented. It is interesting to note that many of these occupations have had a large immigrant component throughout the 20th century. What’s changed is the legal status of the workers and their countries of origin.

While immigrants continue to come to the US in large, even increasing numbers, there are some real trouble spots a head for the migrant workforce.

First, a report issued in 2005 by the Pew Hispanic Center indicates that as the economy picked up in 2004, new immigrants were finding jobs—in fact, one-third of all new jobs in the economy were filled by undocumented Latino immigrants who arrived after 2000. But like the wages of virtually all workers, the wages of the undocumented are falling, indeed for Latino immigrants wages are falling faster than those of non-immigrant workers. The report suggests that the large in-flux of migrants into the limited sectors of the labor market where they are employed may be increasing competition and driving down wages in these sectors.

Second, the occupational clusters that immigrants work in—construction and certain services—may be headed for a downturn. That’s because a lot of these jobs are dependent on the housing boom—both new construction and rehab work. If the housing boom slows or crashes—and the recent interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve Board make one of those scenarios a distinct possibility—residential housing construction jobs will likely be hard hit, putting many immigrants out of work and depressing wages for the those that do find work. The end of the housing boom may also affect employment in services such as landscaping and house cleaning—both major employers of undocumented workers—as middle class homeowners dependent on the “wealth effect” of their homes cut back on the services they purchase.

Third, the hardship generated by a shrinking number of jobs on offer will ripple through the entire hemisphere. Around $30 billion gets pumped into the economy of Latin America and the Caribbean each year from remittances sent by workers in the US. In Mexico 18% of all adults receive remittances, in El Salvador 28% do. This flow of money is growing—in all countries except El Salvador more than half of those receiving remittances from relatives have been receiving them for less than 3 years. The effect of a major slowdown in remittances will have a major impact on the region.

The time bought by the deadlock in Congress could give labor time to re-frame the debate and come up with a worker friendly immigration reform bill. To do that it would have to put the issue in the context of globalization and work with unions and social movements in the rest of the hemisphere to draft a comprehensive approach that would protect the rights of all migrant and non-migrant workers and contain development policies that would allow workers to remain in their home countries.

A step in the direction of recognizing the hemispheric and global nature of the issue has already been taken. As we reported in a previous blog, the governments of the nations of Latin America that send migrants to the US have banded together to lobby against the most draconian immigration reform bills currently before Congress. This recognition that immigration is no longer a strictly national issue should prompt the US labor movement to convene a hemispheric meeting of unions and social movements to help draft a worker-friendly immigration bill.  Labor should not leave immigration reform to elite decision makers whether in the US or in the hemisphere.

M.O.

Real Immigration Reform Needed

The debate on immigration reform in the Congress began in earnest this week when Senate hearings on the issue began. On offer are a half dozen or so bills that range from bad to draconian.

We’ve discussed in a previous blog the McCain-Kennedy bill, certainly the best of the lot that’s been filed in the Senate.  SEIU, and a few other unions, have formed a coalition with the US Chamber of Commerce and other business interests to support passage of the bill. SEIU argues that it’s the best that can be expected in the current political environment.

But a new omnibus bill sponsored by Senator Arlen Specter promises to be the centerpiece of the current hearings, since Specter is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee where the hearings are being held. The bill includes amnesty provisions for some of the 11 million undocumented workers currently in the US, along with a number of extremely repressive measures directed against undocumented workers, and a guest worker program.

Specter’s guest worker program is more restrictive than the guest worker program in McCain—Kennedy. It would allow businesses to recruit workers for 3 year stints with a 3 year renewal period, after which they would have to return to their home countries. Workers who were unemployed for 3 weeks would be deported. Remaining in the US without a visa would be a felony. The social security administration would issue all US workers a work permit and enforce violations. (For an analysis of Specter’s bill and other bills filed this week check out David Bacon’s article.)

( By comparison, McCain—Kennedy  would allow guest workers to change jobs while in the US, to be unemployed for up to 60 days before being deported, and to remain in the US after their renewal period has ended to apply for permanent status)

The other bills before the Senate Judiciary Committee are even more repressive than Specter’s bill and much closer in spirit to the immigration bill that passed the House in December. That bill sponsored by the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), calls not only for the criminalization of undocumented migrant workers, but also for the building of a 700 mile long fence along the US-Mexican border.

The bad news is that in the present political climate any bill that passes the Congress and gets Bush’s signature is certain to be bad for workers. The good news is that a split in the Republican Party between the hard Right and business interests that employ large numbers of undocumented workers is likely to stall action until after the election. While the delay may or may not improve chances for a better outcome, it at least opens up new opportunities to expand the debate.

We’ve written before about a growing immigration backlash and its consequences for labor. Demagogues on the hard right of the Republican party are gearing up to exploit the unease about immigration to shore up their sagging support in the country as a whole. They may find a willing audience among union members, especially low wage union members—both white and African-American—worried about their declining wages and insecure jobs. The possibility exists of one part of the labor’s rank and file demanding the deportation of the other half. This would, of course, shatter labor’s strategy of organizing low-wage industries.

Labor should stop being a fellow traveler in the immigration debate and instead step out with its own worker friendly immigration program.

Such a program must begin with the recognition that migration is a global issue. There are some 170 million migrant workers, world-wide, including 11 million undocumented workers in the US. The massive migration of workers into the US has created an integrated hemispheric-wide labor market, while the laws and institutions which regulate it have remained national. That needs to change.

Even as they argued otherwise, US political and business elites have consistently promoted policies—like those enshrined in NAFTA—that cause workers to migrate in search of work.

Jeff Faux writes in his new book, The Global Class War, on the arguments made by proponents of NAFFE during the debate about is passage in 1994:

“….Said President Clinton to the White House audience[at a bi-partisan meeting to support NAFTA], ‘And there will be less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home.’ Added ex-president Jerry Ford, ‘We don’t want a huge flow of illegal immigrants into the United States from Mexico….If you defeat NAFTA, you have to share responsibility for increased immigration into the United States, where they want jobs that are presently being held by Americans.’ If Congress does not approve NAFTA warned Jimmy Carter, ‘The illegal immigration will increase, American jobs will be lost.’

The reality is that NAFTA directly contributed to a massive migration of Mexican workers laid off from domestic Mexican industries shut-down because they could not survive under NAFTA and farmers driven off the land because they could not compete against giant US agri-business. In 1995, a year after NAFTA’s passage there were about 2.5 million Mexican undocumented Mexican workers in the US,  today there are at least 10.5 million. And as journalist Harold Myerson points out, they have come despite a significant increase in border enforcement. The real sucking sound was US industry sucking workers north.

More than a decade later this Congress recently passed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) which, like NAFTA, ratifies by treaty the very policies that have led to a massive and growing migration to the US of Central American workers in search of work.

A move by Latin American governments to launch a joint effort to campaign against repressive US immigration reforms—which we recently reported on—signals a growing recognition that immigration must be addressed by all of the countries involved including those countries that send migrants and those that receive them.

The US labor movement should follow suit and convene meetings with unions and social movements from throughout the Americas to come up with a common agenda on immigration reform. It is not enough to let global elites dominate this conversation.

Such an effort should advance development strategies to help workers remain in their home countries and create a transnational bill of rights insuring equality to workers in all labor markets regardless of immigration or employment status.

Work such as the Alternatives for the Americas agenda of the Hemispheric Social Alliance could serve as the basis for thinking about an integrated public policy agenda in the Americas.   

In addition, worker friendly US immigration reforms must do two other things. First, back a general amnesty for workers currently in the US. Fortunately, all of the US labor movement is on record in support of an amnesty.

Secondly, address the real concerns of workers—especially low-wage workers—that immigration is a threat to their livelihoods. We’ve heard many in the debate over immigration dismiss these worries as racist or nativist. Those making these charges are usually comfortably positioned and do not have to compete for scarce jobs at falling wages. Labor must tackle this issue—and the deterioration of jobs and wages in the US—head-on if it is to be a credible voice in the debate. Otherwise labor will open the door to xenophobia.

Labor and Global Public Policy

The debate on immigration reform in the United States took an important turn this week when representatives from 11 Latin American countries meeting in Cartagena, Columbia, announced plans launch a coordinated campaign to defeat the Republican sponsored immigration reform bill now pending in Congress. The bill would turn undocumented immigrants into felons and would create a 700 mile long wall along the Mexican border. It passed the House in December, and is now headed for the Senate. The Bush administration supports the measure, but it’s also calling for the creation of a guest worker program to accompany it.

The 11 Latin American governments, including close allies of the Bush administration, plan to lobby Congress and to mobilize religious groups, chambers of commerce, immigrant rights groups and others to defeat or significantly alter the bill.

For Latin America, the stakes are high. There are up to 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US today, most from Latin America. Undocumented workers coming into the US from Latin America now outnumber those with visas. The remittances that immigrant workers send back home pump $32 billion into Latin America’s economies, providing an important source of foreign capital for many countries.

While the massive migration of workers has created an integrated hemispheric-wide labor market, the laws and institutions which regulate it have remained national. The move by the Latin Americans signals a recognition that this should change: immigration is a global issue that must be addressed by all of the countries involved including those countries that send migrants and those that receive them. Immigration laws are no longer a national matter.

The Latin Americans argue that the US is being hypocritical by placing ever more barriers in the way of migrants. After all, the US economy produces hundreds of thousands of low-wage jobs each year—most of which are filled by immigrants—and yet it issues only a few thousand visas for unskilled workers. The rest are undocumented.

By creating new criminal laws and building physical barriers along the border, the US only makes the immigrant workforce more desperate and more vulnerable. For instance, each year hundreds of people die trying to cross the deserts along the US-Mexican border. Building a wall will only make the crossing more dangerous by forcing people to even more remote locations, and it will have little over-all effect on the number of immigrants coming. In fact, as border enforcement has stiffened over the past few years, the number of those crossing has actually increased. And turning immigrants into felons will make them even more unwilling to organize into unions or to report labor law violations or workplace abuse.

The intervention by Latin American governments is one more step in the development of transnational public policy. Immigration now joins issues like trade in the global public policy arena. And not just in the America--the on-going controversy in EU over the rights of Eastern Europeans to work in the older EU states is another aspect of this emerging discussion. 

Labor needs to be involved in the global public policy arena and particularly in this discussions on issues like immigration. Labor has staked much of its future on organizing low wage workers, many are immigrants, many are undocumented. And as the number of undocumented workers in the workforce and in unions increases there could be an anti-immigrant backlash. The drumbeat of nativist demagogues, coupled with genuine worry but US workers about the effect immigrants are having on wages, could result in one part of the labor movement demanding the deportation of another part the labor movement. But by placing the immigration issue where it belongs--in the broader context of globalization--labor can shift the debate to more rational and more worker friendly solutions.

Building a global labor movement must be about more than collective bargaining or promoting national public policies. It also requires cooperation among unions and allies around the world to affect public policy at the national and international levels. US labor should convene meetings with unions and social movements from throughout the Americas to come up with a common agenda on immigration reform. It is not enough to let global elites dominate this conversation. Work such as The Alternatives for the Americas agenda of the Hemispheric Social Alliance could serve as the basis for thinking about an integrated public policy agenda in the Americas.

US unions have the resources to act now and they can draw on the hundreds of thousands of workers from throughout the Americas that are already within its ranks to help in the process of developing worker friendly immigration laws.

US Labor and the McCain-Kennedy Bill

The debate within the US labor movement over support for the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill is necessary and appropriate. People of good will are on both sides of the issue. In previous posts we argued that labor needed a comprehensive program of its own on immigration reform.  Migration is a global issue. That is why we think that labor's program should emerge from a broad transnational discussion among US unions and immigration activists, progressive Mexican unions and social movements, and activists from other countries impacted by US immigration policies. Over time, we will make our contribution to that debate. But in this post we focus narrowly on the McCain-Kennedy bill and the issues it raises.

The McCain-Kennedy bill is a good faith attempt to head off far more draconian legislation being promoted by the Right, such as that which passed the House last month. McCain-Kennedy offers itself as a “comprehensive” approach to the immigration crisis.

Here are the key provisions.

•    It establishes a guest worker program that would create a new temporary work visa—H-5A—for 400,000 unskilled workers each year. The number of visas would be adjusted as conditions change. To obtain a visa, workers would need to have a job waiting for them in the US, pass a security check, and pay $500 plus application fees. A job index would determine whether US workers were available to fill jobs before visas would be granted.

The visa would be good for 3 years with a one time renewal for a total of 6 years. After that, a worker would either have to be in line for a green card or leave the country. Workers could be sponsored for a green card by an employer or, after 4 years, a worker could apply on his/her own. The Bill calls for protections to be put in place to prevent abuses by labor contractors or employers.

Visas would be portable but workers who are out of work for more than 60 days would be ordered to return home.

•    It allows undocumented workers now in the US to register for an H-5A visa good for 6 years. Spouses and children will also be eligible for a visa. Workers will have to pay fines of $2,000 or more per adult for their current/past violation of immigration laws. They would then become eligible to apply for a green card.

•    The Bill mandates new security measures along the US border.

•    It creates a new work authorization system to replace the current I-9 system. The system would be universal--random audits of employers would be conducted to ensure compliance with labor laws.

•    The Bill requires that countries sign migration agreements with the US to regulate the flow of workers. The US government would be directed to work with Mexico to promote jobs in Mexico and encourage return of guest workers after their visas expire.

•    It speeds up the reunification of families by taking immediate family members of US citizens off the annual quota of family related green cards and increases the number of visas for employers wanting permanent workers.

A number of questions have been raised about the bill beginning with whether it is a good idea to give this President and this government a blank check for additional security mandates and the authority to establish new work authorization regulations.

But by far, the most controversial part of the bill is the creation of a guest worker program.

Supporters of McCain-Kennedy in the labor movement believe that the only realistic hope of enacting an amnesty program that would normalize the immigration status of millions of undocumented workers currently working in the US is to create a broad coalition. To be politically viable, that coalition must include businesses interested in dependable access to cheap labor—hence the alliance with the US Chamber of Commerce. This simple argument, based on political realism is compelling--given that there are as many as 8 million undocumented workers currently in the US desperately in need of legalization.

Opponents say it is a Faustian deal that would further undermine standards for all workers. At one time, most Americans worked in a so-called “primary labor market” in steady jobs provided by large employers. Immigrants were not in direct competition with native workers because they largely filled marginal, contingent jobs in the so-called “secondary labor market". But that’s changing. Over the past few decades corporations have developed staffing strategies that divide the workplace into a shrinking group of workers in permanent jobs with decent wages and benefits and an expectation of long term employment and a growing workforce of contingent workers in temporary jobs with inferior wages and benefits and little expectation of long term employment. The creation of a guest worker program would further institutionalize and intensify this trend without adding new safeguards.

If current experience with the staffing industry is any guide two channels will emerge to bring guest workers to the US. First, big temp agencies like Manpower, already well established in countries like Mexico, will “fill orders” for workers in the US. Second, a smaller group of marginal temp and employment agencies will seek to compete for niche business. In either case, guest workers will constantly face the threat of being fired and blacklisted by abusive employers thus sending them underground or back home. And given current US labor law, for both practical and legal reasons, guest workers will be unable to form unions to protect themselves from abuse.

Opppnents say that it is unrealistic to think that the Department of Labor would prevent worker abuse. The DOL lacks both the will and the way, since it does not even have the agents needed to enforce current laws let alone new ones.

So here we have the issue. Pick your poison or start working on alternatives

Labor's Necessary Debate on Immigration

Yes, politics does make strange bedfellows. Last week Andy Stern of SEIU, Terrence O’Sullivan of Laborers International Union, along with representatives from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Health Care Association, and the US Chamber of Commerce, held a press conference to announce the formation of a coalition to promote passage of the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill.

Key features of the bill include provisions for undocumented workers already in the US to normalize their immigrations status and for the creation of a guest worker program to allow hundreds of thousands of workers to come to work in the US under a new short-term visa program. After 4 years they would be eligible to apply for a green card.

“Most times we’re on opposite ends of the issue on Capitol Hill, but on this one we are in agreement. We agree that to fix this immigration system that is completely broken we need to legalize the people who are here and find a legal way for workers to come in the future” said Eliseo Medina of SEIU.

But the coalition highlights the state of confusion and dissention within the labor movement about immigration reform. Not even all of the coalition partners are united in total support for McCain-Kennedy. The Laborers, for instance, do not support a key provision of the bill—the establishment of a guest worker program. “We will not agree point on point on immigration reform. But the majority of the major components we do agree upon. And there’s strength in numbers” according to O’Sullivan.

Shortly after the press conference, the AFL-CIO jumped into the debate with sharply worded criticism of union support for a bill that includes a guest worker program. “We’re   turning permanent jobs into jobs that are temporary, staffed by temporary workers. It’s really troubling that any labor union is just sitting back and conceding that this is something that needs to happen,” said Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO supports amnesty for undocumented workers but has been lobbying hard against any guest worker programs.

We think it’s fair to say that no one in the labor movement likes all of the provisions of the McCain-Kennedy Bill. It’s a compromise bill that tries to bring together enough interest groups to make passage of an immigrant friendly bill possible. And the problem with fashioning such a compromise in this case is that the interest groups needed for passage have contradictory agendas: the Chamber of Commerce’s wants cheap labor; SEIU’s wants protection for its growing immigrant membership. For labor the real question, then,  is whether this bill is worth the compromises need for passage.

The whole brouhaha is in part a regrettable result of the labor failure to develop its own comprehensive immigration plan. Fashioning such a plan should involve not just the US labor movement, but progressive elements of the Mexican labor movement, and other labor and social movements affected by US immigration policies. If there ever there was an issue for “global unionism”, to use a current buzz word, it is the global migration of people looking for jobs.

N.B. Labor is not alone in its confusion and dissention. We reported in an earlier blog that the Republicans are also spilt on immigration reform. The corporate wing of the party, represented by the Chamber of Commerce, wants a guest worker program. But the anti-immigrant Right wants a lock-down at the borders. Within the past month a draconian immigrant reform bill pushed by the Right that would build a wall along the border (literally) and make felons out of undocumented workers passed the house.

The division between the corporate and the hard-Right factions of the Republican Party may lead to paralysis on immigration reform, especially in the run-up to next year’s Congressional elections. Labor should take the time to step back and organize a transnational discussion to come up with its own plan for immigration reform and a campaign to implement it.

The McCain-Kennedy Bill and the debate which it triggers can be part of Labor’s discussion. In our next blog we will discuss the bill and the questions it raises.