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Page 3 of 3 Free Trade and Immigration Michael Billeaux contributed to this section. According to a Mar. 31 poll conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, roughly one-half of Americans believe that immigrants are a burden because they take jobs and housing. No doubt there is a grain of truth to this, although ‘take’ is the wrong word to use. At 7.2 million people, undocumented workers presently make up five percent of the U.S. labor force. Not surprisingly, the majority of these workers are concentrated in states along the U.S.-Mexico border, with 1.4 million working in Texas alone. These workers are generally paid tax-free cash, at hourly rates usually below the minimum wage. With so many workers being paid at such low wages, it seems to be a matter of simple economics that in a competitive labor market they would be employed over native-born workers, who typically demand higher wages, benefits, and better working conditions. However, there is very little competition for menial jobs in the construction, dish washing, or agriculture industries. “For that argument to hold, it would be based on the assumption that people authorized to work would actually be interested in those types of jobs,” says Adolfo Benavides, professor of economics at Texas A&M – Corpus Christi. “The fact that [illegal immigrants] find work here tells me that there aren’t too many legal workers with carpentry, roofing, [or] bricklaying skills to apply for those types of jobs.” If immigrants are simply filling jobs that native-born workers are not willing to take, then these are not jobs that are being “taken away,” and the impact on wages for documented workers is, if anything at all, only minimal. Additionally, according to the analysis of high-immigration cities by David Card, professor of economics at the University of California-Berkeley, recent immigration has a very low impact in local labor markets, and opportunities for low-skill workers across all industries are sustained – not diminished – by immigration, due to a relative increase in the amount of available low-skill labor. Nevertheless, immigrant labor is used to the great benefit of employers, since they can threaten native-born workers with replacement in order to drive wages down and help deteriorate working conditions. However, this is simply another reason why undocumented immigrants should be paid the same wages and receive the same rights as native-born workers, not an argument in favor of increased crackdowns and deportations. So long as immigrants in this country work for lower wages than native-born workers do – which, presumably, will be for a very long time – it is in the interests of the working class and the immigrant rights supporters to unite and oppose exploitation of all workers by their employers. It would be incredible to say that illegal immigration into the country has zero effect on workers’ wages, or that it only helps the economy and everyone living here. Those who insist this are simply pushing laissez-faire propaganda. But it is equally dishonest to use immigrants as a scapegoat for deterioration of workers’ statuses. This deterioration is simply the logical outgrowth of advanced global capitalism. The real culprits here are the transnational corporations and politicians such as Bill Clinton who rammed through NAFTA and other so-called “free trade” agreements without public support, knowing full well that these agreements were predicted to drive wages down and reinforce job insecurity for the poor and working classes. In 1982, Mexico ran out of money to make payments on its foreign debt, setting off a near panic in New York, Washington, and other world business centers where it was feared that other Latin American debtors would follow Mexico’s example by declaring de facto defaults. The U.S. government, together with the IMF, rushed a “rescue” package to Mexico that enabled the country to continue paying its debts. This came at a steep price to the Mexican people, as real wages fell, public spending was cut, state-owned companies were privatized, and the population was shoved into economic misery. Since then, successive Mexican governments have been increasingly pressured to accept neoliberal economic policies (in other words, “free trade”, austerity, and privatization), with disastrous effects. When NAFTA was passed in 1994, for instance, six million Mexican farmers were forced out of work because they couldn’t compete with government-subsidized corn and wheat from the United States and Canada. And in 2008, as many as two million more farmers will be ruined by the full opening of Mexico’s borders to U.S. exports of corn, beans, and powdered milk, the last products to be liberalized under NAFTA. The position that people are forced into by these circumstances is what drives so many to immigrate to the United States, where they are attacked by the very same neoliberal forces who propelled them into misery in the first place. It should come as no surprise that the United States praises the merits of “free trade” while it grants enormous subsidies to its agricultural industries – probably the largest such subsidies granted on the planet, in fact. For the United States, “free trade” means free trade for us, but not anyone else. Families will be torn apart, whole countries will be subjected to economic tyranny, and thousands will die trying to cross militarized borders until the people of this nation realize that immigrants are victims rather than criminals and that the struggle for immigrant rights has international dimensions. Until we can address neoliberalism and its legacies, we can’t begin to solve the immigration problem. Xenophobia and its Political Uses Chris Lockamy contributed to this section. Demonizing immigrants has many political uses, none of which are in the interests of the American working class, let alone immigrants or their supporters. Among blacks, for instance, there is strong resistance to what many consider co-optation of the civil rights movement, historically a black cause. According to the Pew Hispanic Center study cited above, 33 percent of blacks also believe that immigrants take jobs. As Chicana activist Elizabeth Martinez observes, “Various studies conclude that this is mainly true only on the level of low-income work, but the feeling persists along with the belief that immigrants depress wages by accepting low incomes.” Republicans exploit these rifts as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy. The first big indicator of this occurred in 1994, when nearly 50 percent of Californian blacks, frustrated by illegal immigration, voted for Proposition 187, which denied public services to undocumented immigrants. That year, Republican governor Pete Wilson shamelessly exploited anti-immigrant hysteria to win the election, garnering 20 percent of the black vote – more than double what Californian Republicans typically receive. However, blacks, immigrants, and workers in general would all be better off if they were in solidarity with one another. As black political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson points out, “A shrinking economy, savage state and federal government cuts in and the elimination of job and skills training programs, failing public schools, a soaring black prison population, and employment discrimination are still the major reasons for the grim employment prospects and poverty in inner city black neighborhoods.” The immigration debate is also used to distract the public from other, more pressing issues. In recent months, Republicans have drummed up anti-immigrant sentiment as well as pressed for amendments banning flag burning and gay marriage in order to recover their fan base, whereas both parties have focused on immigration to distract Americans from Iraq, the economy, domestic spying, and other failings that stem from imperial overreach. Similarly, immigrants play the part politicians assign to “communists” and “terrorists”: that is, they are used as a pretext to crack down on the civilian population and advance U.S. militarization. In January, for instance, Halliburton subsidiary KBR was awarded a 385 million dollar contract from the Department of Homeland Security to build “temporary detention and processing capabilities.” This has been done in order to augment existing detention facilities “in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.” The quotes are Halliburton’s own, but they don’t really say what these “new programs” entail. There’s some speculation, however, that they might be used in the future to implement martial law in much the same way that internment camps were used to hold Japanese-American citizens during WWII. Other companies that stand to benefit from militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border include Wackenhut, G.E.O., and Corrections Corporation of America. The implications of Washington inciting border wars to help defense contractors reap in enormous profits could not be more frightening. +++++ Against these many arguments are repeated complaints that we must “respect law and order,” that we must prevent terrorist infiltration, and that refusing to grant immigrants the same legal rights as U.S. citizens should not be construed as “anti-immigrant.” But respect for “law and order” is and has always been a clever ruse to protect power and privilege. If the United States is so concerned about terrorists entering the country, then it should quit harboring war criminals and international terrorists such as Emmanuel Constant, Luis Posada Carriles, and Orlando Bosch. And if group A treats group B as if it were the plague, it would be impossible not to draw the conclusion that group A has something against group B. There is much more to be said about these themes, of course. Hopefully we will have an opportunity to revisit these issues before Labor Day (Sept. 4) this year, when many immigrants rights group intend to hold another round of demonstrations. DC Tedrow is a writer living in Corpus Christi, Texas. He is a founding member of both Turning the Tide and CHR Media Collective. Michael Billeaux is a student at Texas A&M - Corpus Christi who is pursuing his interests in alternative, independent media. Chris Lockamy is a poet, writer, and activist living in Corpus Christi.
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May/June 2006 
