13.07.2005

Workhouse of nations

US socialist Martin Schreader reports on Bush's reform of immigration policy

The common lore surrounding the United States of America often includes the axiom that this country is a 'nation of immigrants'. In the technical sense, it is true. Most of us who live in the US today can trace our ancestry to people who left Europe voluntarily (or Africa involuntarily) and came to the 'new world.' But immigration has, almost from the beginning of this country, been a source of tension and violence. In the mid-19th century, the influx of Irish immigrants led to the birth of rabid 'nativist' movements like the Know-Nothings (named, not for their displays of ignorance, but because of their secretive nature). Obviously, the irony of calling themselves 'nativists,' whilst advocating both the restriction of immigration and the genocide of 'savages' (native Americans) was lost on them. After the civil war, immigration became less of an issue. Westward expansion and settlement absorbed the thousands of Irish, Italian, Russian and Jewish émigrés from Europe. It was not until 1920 that new quotas and restrictions on immigration were once again imposed - in many ways a reflection of a nascent fascist movement, in the form of 'old' far-right groups like the Ku Klux Klan. During the cold war, immigration was more a question of global geopolitics. Cuban exiles, Russian defectors, south-east Asian anti-communists, etc only had to ask for asylum. Meanwhile, workers and peasants from places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico risked death crossing the southern border. During the 1990s, immigration policy was reoriented, and became a tool for the expansion and development of 'globalisation'. The most recent proposals put forward by the Bush regime for reforming immigration policy have to be seen in this light. They represent not only a continuation of a policy started by the Clinton White House, but a deepening and expansion of that policy. It was 18 months ago that Bush made his formal announcement on the need for reform of immigration policy. Invoking the aforementioned axiom, and surrounding himself with smiling tokens from various conservative Latino organisations (not one of the main Latino civil rights organisations was invited), Bush unveiled his plan. In short, this would create a new 'temporary worker programme' that would "match willing foreign workers with willing US employers when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs". The programme would be open to both new foreign workers and to "the undocumented men and women currently employed in the US" - thus extending legal status to tens of thousands of 'illegal' workers. Small capitalists rushed to hail the new plan. John Alger, an agro-capitalist in Florida, told USA Today that he and his fellow factory-farm owners welcomed the new initiative, saying, "To have a sustainable, low-cost labour force is crucial to us." Labour activists, like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, denounced the plan: "The president's proposal would effectively create a new basement in the labour market: a basement, according to the specifics of the president's plan, with no door out." Critics of the plan, on both the left and the right, point out mostly the same issues - albeit using different rhetoric: the proposal was timed to cultivate a base of Latino voters for the 2004 election; it only rehashes other plans that died in Congress; employers will only 'go through the motions' of attempting to find Americans to fill the jobs; etc. But these criticisms only pick lightly at the surface. In reality, Bush's proposal has far-reaching implications for working people, both documented and undocumented. Ever since the first 'free trade' deal between the US and Canada, the precursor to North American Free Trade Agreement, American capitalists have sought to use 'labour flexibility' to both drive down wages and maximise profits. 'Globalisation' itself, from the perspective of big capital, was part of this effort. However, there are inherent risks to such an international extension. Global supply chains require constant supervision and micromanaged control to be successful. The 'lean' labour model stemming from 'just in time' production - pioneered by the US but perfected by the Japanese - depends on every facet of this international system working properly and maintaining its schedule (as a worker at an Intermodal railroad yard, I can attest personally to the kind of stresses placed just on the transport sector of this method of production). But we are no longer in the heady days of 'globalisation'. From the perspective of American capitalism, the 'war on terror' has altered the playing field. It is no longer very enticing or profitable (or, in some cases, healthy) for US capital to plant its flag in other countries. But it is in places like Latin America, eastern Europe, south Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa - where the US worked overtime during the 1990s to shore up its political, economic and military presence - where the cheap labour lives. As the saying goes, if Mohammed cannot go to the mountain, then entice the mountain to come to Mohammed. For all the high phrases in Bush's 'immigration reform' plan, one glaring omission stands out: the lack of any application of existing US labour laws (what there are of them) to these new 'temporary workers'. Instead, there is an abstract commitment to legislation that "lives up to the promise and values of America". Already, the few federal labour laws that cover wages and hours are woefully backward. The minimum wage in this country has been at $5.15 (£2.90) an hour since 1990 - and there are already exemptions for waiters/waitresses, farmworkers, musicians, etc, allowing the bosses to pay well under that minimum. Bush's proposal would not even apply those pathetic standards to these new 'temporary workers', thus allowing the capitalists to pay even less for their labour. This proposal also requires all 'temporary workers'to have a capitalist sponsor them while they are in the US. Anyone who is familiar with the movement of undocumented workers from China and Latin America know that such 'sponsors' are often little more than slave-herders, picking up destitute working people and promising them milk and honey, only to force them into workplaces that make the stereotypical sweatshop look like a paradise. Bush's proposal would legalise this practice and create a new sub-class of indentured servants - modern serfs, really - bound head and hand to their capitalist patrons. If these 'temporary workers' were to try to do anything to improve their situation, like organise a union or even speak to a labour organiser, they would find themselves shipped back to their country of origin (and would likely never see the wages they are owed). The more privileged layers of the American working class and their 'official' leaders in the AFL-CIO union federation, may try to console themselves with the thought that only the service sector will be affected. This is not only rank national chauvinism: it is also myopic and a case of wishful thinking. There are no restrictions on which industries can apply to be a part of the 'temporary worker' programme. It is entirely possible that, if this proposal becomes law, capitalists from all corners of the economy, including the big three automobile makers, the steel industry, mining companies, railroads, etc will look to create their own 'temporary' workforce, more than likely as a means of having a government-sanctioned 'reserve army' that can be used to break strikes, and to crush unions or unionisation drives. In this effort, they have bipartisan help. Both the federal and state governments, whether governed by Republicans or Democrats, are quick to offer up billions of dollars in 'corporate welfare' to capitalists that promise to 'create jobs'. During the 1990s, as well, the Clinton administration expanded the programme of 'enterprise zones' - special economic zones that were exempted from certain labour legislation deemed 'harmful' to unbridled capitalist accumulation (two-thirds of Detroit, for example, is considered part of one or another 'enterprise zone' - called 'renaissance zones' here). It is in these areas where the most superexploited and oppressed sectors of the US working class are to be found. Bush's plan would allow for the following scenario: Ford Motor Company, concerned that its factories or exported managers might be killed in a 'terrorist attack' overseas, applies to the federal government for 50,000 'temporary worker' permits, and finds the appropriate number of workers from their factories in Poland, Indonesia, Iraq and Chile. It retools and reopens a closed factory in a Detroit 'enterprise zone', where occupational safety and health rules do not apply. Employees work long hours for a minute fraction of what the average US Ford worker makes. If the UAW (the autoworkers' union in the US) objects, then Ford simply closes down one of its unionised factories as 'unprofitable' and reopens it in an 'enterprise zone' ... staffed by more 'temporary workers'. This process continues until some of these unemployed ex-UAW members begin to apply for their old jobs at the new factories. Since 'American workers' have priority, they go back to work at their old jobs for a fraction of what they earned a few years before. Need I say more? In its time, tsarist Russia was called the 'prisonhouse of nations'. It can safely be said, based on its history and current policy, that the US is the 'workhouse of nations'. Whether we are talking about the agricultural labour of Africans held as slaves, Chinese railroad builders, Irish and German coalminers, Italian dockworkers, Mexican and central American farm labourers, etc - either working within the borders of the United States or for an international component of 'globalised' American capital - it has been the toil and hard labour of working people from around the world that built the US into the pre-eminent capitalist power. Bush's proposed 'immigration reform' is little more than the reorganisation of this historical arrangement, tailored for the current period of 'terrorist' bogeymen. It brings the superexploitation of globalisation home, in an effort to drive down the living standards of 'native' workers and bring them more into line with the standards imposed on the global south. Such a situation is one of those that separate the political wheat from the chaff. Petty bourgeois socialists, who take their cue from the narrow nationalism and backwardness of the minor, 'independent' exploiters, look at this situation and call for restrictions on immigration. They may shed some crocodile tears for the 'poor workers' of this or that country, but their tears only mask both their disdain for these brothers and sisters and their own inability to change the situation l