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By HC116, April 6, 2006
When we say that it is the labor aristocracy behind the anti-migrant movement, we are not suggesting that it is literally Amerikan workers in hard hats or work shirts in Congress who are engaged in the legislative wrangling. Indeed, the movement encompasses vastly more than just the legislative debate, and much less are the white nationalists arguing with each other in Congress, over how best to repress migrants without endangering imperialist privilege for Amerikans, just posturing for the sake of elections. The anti-migrant movement is not some "culture war." This is not a "wedge issue." The matter has to be put in these stark terms; otherwise, confusion is inevitable. The politicians are doing some maneuvering for votes, but real social and economic concerns (albeit reactionary ones) underlie the so-called immigration reform debate. The politicians try to give imperialist border repression some refinement by talking about "compassionate" immigration reform, securing the border while "reuniting families," and so on, but the biggest impetus for the anti-migrant movement is located in the labor aristocracy, made up of the vast majority of Euro-Amerikan workers. Some critics of the anti-migrant movement equate it with election- year grandstanding, but this posturing is in response to something real.
Politicians in the United $tates do serve their oppressor-nation constituencies. The labor aristocracy is the majority in the Euro-Amerikan dominator nation. It can exercise huge influence on the government, and it is doing so now. Many liberals have pointed out that the anti-migrant movement is just the latest in a series of cyclical reactionary movements with economic underpinnings. This is true; although, the Euro-Amerikan working class is even more bourgeoisified than it was before. Yet, the same liberals focus mainly on the racist, nativist and hyper-patriotic overtones of the immigration debate. These are very real overtones and reflect genuinely racist and xenophobic ideas, but a discussion of the labor aristocracy's responsibility for the anti- immigrant movement has been lacking. The liberals raise the issue of the anti- immigrant movement's economic motivations, but then drops the question without drawing the appropriate conclusions. The history of anti-migrant movements in the United $tates shows that even openly racist statements about migrants as having low intelligence, violent tendencies, etc., have economic, social and political underpinnings. Racism reflects class and social positions. Racist ideas are not just something that floats above the social system.
The majority of Amerikan workers are not out on the streets defending HR 4437 and similar brazenly reactionary legislation. Some are. Not all Amerikan workers go to the border to get a thrill out of hunting migrants either. Some do. Instead, they call their government representative, talk in town hall meetings, call up radio talk shows to chime in on anti-migrant rants, blog on the Internet, discuss things in labor union meetings, complain about migrants at work and when they're at the bar, and do things like sit on the couch watching students protest HR 4437 on TV, calling them "illegal alien" juvenile delinquents and brats, and rooting for the police who handcuff them and beat them up. Such is the nature of class politics in the United $tates. Not all imperialists are politicized enough to even go to party precinct meetings either. As a class, they still exercise control. The apathy of the couch-potato labor aristocracy is complicity.
Much of the most ugly racism in the anti-migrant movement is hidden or privately spoken; although, mainstream media outlets such as CNN -- not just Lou Dobbs -- have consistently described migrants and protesters in a prejudicial and racist way. Other kinds of opposition to open borders and hostility toward migrant proletarians are hidden. Umbrella bureaucracies like the AFL-CIO have made statements on different pieces of immigration and border legislation, while other organizations have remained conspicuously silent in public. Still, the statements that U.$. workers have let their leaders get away with are telling.
Just recently, the AFL-CIO and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have supported the repressive sections of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006. Both have expressed concern over the bill's guest-worker provision, finding it to be "deeply troubling" and "deeply concerning." Some individual AFL-CIO unions have been more directly critical of the bill in public. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, denounced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, claiming that the temporary- worker provision would in fact lower the living standards of the majority of U.$. workers. The AFSCME in one of its recent weekly reports had nothing to say about the enforcement provisions of the bill.
As early as a few months ago, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO, CLC, openly supported the idea that migrants in general, not just undocumented migrants, were an obstacle to workers aspiring to middle-class living standards. This puts the lie to the notion that the anti- immigrant movement is just due to poor white workers "trying to get by" on "poverty wages." In general, the U.$. minimum wage is a privilege compared with the wages of Third World workers and depends on the exploitation of super- exploited Third World workers, but the labor aristocracy isn't satisfied with that. It openly clamors for some of the wealthiest bourgeois lifestyles.
The anti-migrant sentiment goes right to the bottom. It has little to do with labor bureaucracies just pandering to anti-migrant sentiment for pragmatic political reasons. A cursory investigation of local IAM unions and other local unions shows them openly endorsing the idea that migrants in general, not just undocumented migrants and not just temporary workers with visas, are a threat to the so-called American Dream and endangering the very existence of Amerika.
The AFL-CIO is hardly the only culprit. The largest union in the United $tates, the National Education Association, has supported limiting the number of limiting the number of temporary workers in education. At the same time, it has been silent about other immigration restrictions and border repression. The Laborers' International Union of North America opposes guest-worker programs, and supports "securing the border," in other words, more repression of migrants to enforce immigration restrictions. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union explicitly opposes "open borders."
Leaders of the huge SEIU, which also supports repression and immigration restrictions, have endorsed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, unlike the AFL-CIO. Amerikan labor unions' differences over Specter's bill reflect divergent chauvinist economic interests and no regard for the majority of the world's workers. Simultaneously, the unions rally behind nationalists who see immigration as a threat to all Euro-Amerikan classes.
The dominant U.$. labor unions use empty rhetoric about international working-class solidarity and U.$. working-class solidarity as a cover for their particularistic aims and economic demands. Guest-worker programs do prop up the profitability of U.$. capitalists, but the world's exploited workers do not support the reactionary demands of the small-time exploiters who make up the bourgeoisified Euro-Amerikan working class.
On the other hand, Marxist economists point to the possibility of the evening out of the wages internationally as actually lowering the profit rate in the United $tates. High imperialist-country "wages" are actually profits and surplus value stolen from the Third World. Yet, MIM does not support imperialist economic policies. When it comes to temporary-worker programs, the key is to struggle against all forms of Euro-Amerikan economic nationalism. The imperialists and petty-bourgeois Euro-Amerikan so-called workers are all parasites on oppressed-nation labor.
The Amerikan labor unions say that the United $tates is a nation of immigrants as a way of smuggling their way into the proletarian class of workers who are actually exploited. But different nations are within U.$. borders, and the Euro-Amerikan is a nation of settlers, exploiting the labor of First Nations, slaves, and colonized and Third World workers.
Any opposition to temporary-worker programs must be part of a larger movement that truly opposes imperialist and imperialist privilege. Singling out temporary-worker programs for criticism, without addressing the Euro-Amerikan working class' history of attacking oppressed-nation workers, serves no purpose except anti-migrant reaction, oppressor-nation chauvinism, and fascism. The Euro-Amerikan-dominated labor unions and workers supporting imperialist repression, allying themselves with extremely reactionary imperialists, and defending their own imperialist-country privileges, fall in the enemy bourgeois camp and must be resisted.
Notes
1. "Legislation Department," 3 March 2006, <http://www.afscme.org/action/weekly_reports/r060303.htm> (6 April 2006).
2. Elizabeth Auster, "Guest worker proposals divide America's unions," The Plain Dealer (Web site), 6 April 2006, <http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/114431250522 4340.xml&coll=2> (6 April 2006).
3. "UFCW International President Joe Hansen Responds to New York Times Article on Immigration," 27 February 2006, <http://www.ufcw.org/worker_political_agenda/worker_issues/immigration/nytresponse.cfm> (6 April 2006).