Which Side Are You On?
By David Bacon
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Monday 29 January 2007
Oakland, California - Of all the supporters of corporate immigration reform,
Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff is the most honest. The day of the notorious
raids at the Swift and Company meatpacking plants, he told the media the raids
would show Congress the need for "stronger border security, effective interior
enforcement and a temporary-worker program." Bush wants, he said, "a
program that would allow businesses that need foreign workers, because they
can't otherwise satisfy their labor needs, to be able to get those workers in
a regulated program."
Chertoff is hardly the only voice in DC using raids to justify guest
worker programs. Cecilia Mu-oz, head of National Council of La Raza (NCLR),
is another. Those deported in December were among the millions of undocumented
workers who came after Congress passed the last immigration amnesty in 1986.
Since legislators at the time didn't consider people who would come in following
years, "perhaps the most tragic consequences are the terrible human costs
of workplace raids," she mourns. New guest worker programs will give future
migrants legal status, she claims, and protect them from the migra.
The raids do cause terrible suffering. But Mu-oz and other Washington insiders
actually supported bills last year that mandate the same worksite enforcement
Chertoff carries out today. More raids were a price they were willing to pay
(or that others would pay) for the guest worker programs they wanted.
Today, many Congressional leaders - Democrats and Republicans - want to allow
corporations and contractors to recruit hundreds of thousands of workers a year
outside of the US and put them to work here on temporary visas. Labor schemes
like this have a long history. From 1942 to 1964, the bracero
program recruited temporary immigrants. They were exploited, cheated, and deported
if they tried to go on strike. Growers pitted them against workers already in
the country to drive down wages. Cesar Chavez, Ernesto Galarza and Bert Corona
all campaigned to get the program repealed.
Advocates of today's programs do everything they can to avoid association with
the bitter "bracero" label. They used "guest worker" until
that name also developed an ill repute. Now they prefer other euphemisms - "essential
workers," or just "new workers."
We don't live in a magical world, however. You can't clean up an unpleasant
reality by renaming it.
Current guest worker programs allow labor contractors to maintain blacklists
of workers who work slowly or demand rights. Anyone who makes trouble doesn't
get rehired to work in the US again. Public interest lawyers spend years in
court, trying just to get back wages for cheated immigrants. The Department
of Labor almost never decertifies a contractor for this abuse.
Guest workers labor under the employer's thumb. Standing up for a union or
minimum wage is risky. Under current programs, and in the new Congressional
proposals, if workers lose their jobs they must leave, making deportation a
punishment for being unemployed. No one gets unemployment insurance, disability
or workers' compensation payments. Companies save money and avoid bad publicity
by sending injured workers back home, where healthcare is virtually unavailable.
But Mu-oz and others argue that Congress can allow guest workers to go to court.
Our legal system is such a poor protector of workers' rights today, however,
that in 30 percent of all organizing drives, workers (both citizens and immigrants)
are illegally fired, with virtually no remedies or penalties on employers. Arguing
that lawyers can protect immigrants on temporary work visas is preposterous.
These problems aren't aberrations, curable with legal fine print.
By their nature, guest worker programs are low-wage schemes, intended to supply
plentiful labor to corporate employers, at a price they want to pay. Companies
don't recruit guest workers so they can pay them more, but to pay them less.
According to Rob Rosado, director of legislative affairs for the American Meat
Institute, meatpackers want a guest worker program, but not a basic wage guarantee
for those workers. "We don't want the government setting wages," he
says. "The market determines wages."
Major Senate sponsors of guest worker bills don't believe the government should
even set a minimum wage for anyone, immigrant or citizen. John McCain, John
Cornyn, James Kyl, Larry Craig and Chuck Hegel all just voted for an amendment
to repeal the federal minimum wage entirely. Making them responsible for guest
worker wages is putting the fox in charge of the chickens.
And it's not just wages. The schemes create a second tier of workers with fewer
rights and less job security. They have none of the social benefits US workers
won in the New Deal - retirement, unemployment and disability insurance. Instead
of including new immigrants in these and other social programs, giving them
legal residence and rights, Congress would create a huge workforce without them.
Corporations that have pushed for eliminating these standards for everyone would
be halfway there.
That's why workers, unions and community organizations have opposed guest worker
programs, but also why corporations want them. Starting in the late 1990s, companies
organized a shadowy lobby group, the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition
(EWIC) which today encompasses over 40 huge employer associations, including
Wal-Mart, Marriott, Tyson Foods and the Association of Builders and Contractors.
They recruited the Cato Institute to produce guest worker recommendations, which
President Bush repeats almost word-for-word. The hard-right Manhattan Institute
provides additional cover.
The corporate lobby made other inroads as well. John Gay, who heads the National
Restaurant Association and EWIC, is now board chair of the National Immigration
Forum, a major Washington player. NCLR's list of corporate sponsors includes
Wal-Mart and 14 other multinationals. Even two unions, the Service Employees
and UNITE HERE, supported the Senate guest worker compromise last year.
The question Congress is deciding isn't "what can stop immigration?"
With over 180 million people in the world living outside their countries of
origin, nothing can. Migration begins when people are displaced. In the countries
that are the main sources of migration to the US, most migration is caused by
economic dislocation - people can no longer survive as farmers or workers. Other
migrants fled the wars that raged in Central America.
NAFTA, CAFTA, and US-sponsored economic reforms, along with US military intervention,
uprooted millions of people, leaving them little option other than coming north.
Corporations like Wal-Mart and Marriott wrote US trade policy to improve their
investment opportunities abroad. Now they also want guest worker programs to
channel people displaced by those policies into their US operations. Often those
leaving home are among the most skilled and educated. Their departure makes
it even harder for their countries to progress.
This flow of forced migration may not stop in the near future, but changing
pro-corporate trade policies would reduce the pressure on people to leave home.
Unsurprisingly, that's not on EWIC's agenda.
The real question Congress is deciding is the status of people once they're
here. Other proposals, from outside the Beltway, would give immigrants far greater
rights and much more equality than guest worker programs. Congress could, for
instance,
- Give permanent residence visas, or green cards, to people already here. Those
visas don't require people to stay, but give them the chance to come and go
- to work, study, or take care of family members in the US or in their home
country. They can't be deported if they lose a job.
- Expand the number of green cards available for new migrants, opening the
door to legal immigration far enough to accommodate those now coming illegally.
Most immigrants already come through family networks. Making family reunification
easier would help them and strengthen communities.
- Allow people to apply for green cards, in the future, after they've been
here a few years. The US wouldn't develop the huge undocumented population it
has today.
- Stop the enforcement program that has led to thousands of deportations and
firings, and a border so heavily militarized that migrants cross, and die, in
the most dangerous areas.
- Prohibit companies from recruiting outside the US. They can always hire immigrants
with green cards here, and green card holders are in a much better position
to demand rights and higher wages.
It's not likely that many corporations will support such a program. That's
why those who claim to represent the interests of immigrants in Washington must
choose whose side they're really on.
David Bacon is a California photojournalist who documents labor, migration and globalization. His book Communities Without Borders was just published by Cornell University/ILR Press.
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