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Un/Employment The "without" - Migrants Governments USA
By David Bacon
It’s time to say no.
Every new Republican proposal for immigration reform in
Congress makes the prospect for winning legal status
for the nation’s 12 million undocumented residents more
remote. At the same time, Congress appears ready to
pass measures that will increase border deaths, lead to
wholesale violations of workers’ rights, and give the
country’s largest corporations a huge new bracero
program.
Supporters of immigrant and workers’ rights face a
moment of truth. Can they defeat the rightwing reform
offensive? Even more important, can they build a
movement for a real alternative?
President Bush introduced his predictably corporate-
friendly proposal for immigration reform in September.
Echoing [the] proposals by the rightwing Cato
Institute, and Senators Cornyn and Kyl, Bush called for
contract labor programs that would allow corporations
to recruit hundreds of thousands of workers abroad.
They could stay in the country only while they work,
for a maximum of six years.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has now proposed four
separate reform bills, the first three mirroring Bush’s
proposal. Bill one would beef up border enforcement,
even though the increasingly militarized border has
forced migrants to cross in the most remote and
dangerous areas of the desert. Hundreds die every year
as a result. More enforcement will simply lead to more
death.
A second bill would strengthen employer sanctions, the
law that makes it a crime for an undocumented person to
hold a job. The Department of Labor and the Social
Security Administration would become immigration
police, hunting and deporting those without papers.
When prohibitions on hiring the undocumented have been
heavily enforced, the workplace fear they engender
destroyed unions and lowered wages instead.
The third bill would create a massive guest-worker
program. Historically, bracero programs have exploited
immigrants mercilessly — while undermining wages and
rights of citizens and legal residents. Finally, in his
only deviation from Bush, Hagel promises a fourth bill
to offer the undocumented some form of legal status
tied to their employment.
While the details are still in flux, the politics are
clear. The Republican majority in Congress can muster
the votes for the enforcement elements, especially by
waving the bloody flag of national security. Bush and
the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (an alliance
of the nation’s 43 largest employer associations, from
Wal-Mart to Tyson Foods) can win passage of new guest-
worker programs, even over the opposition of the
xenophobic right. But when Congress finally arrives at
legalization, the political majority will evaporate.
This reform agenda will bring repression and braceros,
and not much more.
For two years, immigrant rights advocates have been
divided over strategy to win legalization for the
undocumented. In Washington, DC, some unions and civil
rights organizations have opted to support another
bill, proposed by Senators Edward Kennedy and John
McCain, which includes all four elements proposed by
Hagel. Liberals formed an alliance with employers and
enforcement advocates, tacking the promise of
legalization onto a corporate guest worker program. The
alliance even uses Tamar Jacoby, senior fellow at the
anti-labor Manhattan Institute, as a spokesperson. This
strategy has led the national movement for immigrant
rights into a blind alley. Once liberal organizations
endorsed employer sanctions, border enforcement and
bracero programs, they were in no position to organize
opposition to more extreme, Republican versions of
those same proposals. Other alternatives are urgently
needed.
The Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations calls
for recognizing the community rights of immigrants,
instead of treating them as cheap labor. In 1999
the AFL-CIO proposed a freedom agenda that included
legalization, repeal of employer sanctions, increased
availability of family reunification visas, and
enforcement of workplace rights. Community coalitions
around the country, including the National Network for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Filipino Civil Rights
Advocates, and the American Friends Service Committee,
have also crafted proposals that advance immigrant
rights without tying them to guest-worker or
enforcement schemes.
This spring Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee introduced
the Save America Comprehensive Immigration Act of 2005,
HR 2092, with support from the Congressional Black
Caucus. It provides legalization for currently
undocumented workers, and enforces migrants’ rights in
the workplace. It has no guest worker program, and
doesn’t call for greater enforcement of employer
sanctions. It would use fees paid by people applying
for legal status to provide job creation and training
programs in communities with high unemployment.
This effort to find common ground between African
American and immigrants also led the hotel union UNITE
HERE to combine proposals for immigrant rights and
affirmative action in recent contract negotiations, and
organize the 2003 Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.
Common ground on immigration reform means fighting for
jobs for everyone. Yet this basis for an alliance of
mutual interest has largely fallen off the liberal
agenda. Free-market ideologues propose to pile guest-
worker programs and increased enforcement on top of
unemployment and job competition. This is an explosive
mixture that will produce insecurity and low wages. It
will benefit employers, and no one else.
Congress will never consider pro-immigrant, pro-labor
proposals if its current push for guest workers and
increased enforcement isn’t defeated first. A strong
coalition between immigrants rights groups, unions,
civil rights organizations and working families can
build a movement powerful enough to win legal status
and rights for migrants — and jobs and better wages
for everyone. It can not only stop the rightward push,
but win something much better.
It’s time to fight for that.