More Thoughts on Immigration

A couple of weeks ago, after the march against HR 4437, I got into a discussion with a friend about illegal workers and my friend pointed out that the "jobs Americans won't do" rhetoric is ultimately the president's rhetoric and that protecting the current status of illegal immigrants in this country is comparable to protecting indentured servitude. After a brief back and forth about the issue, I had to tap out, because her points were good ones, and I really don't know enough about illegal immigration to properly argue.

Today, Tom Tomorrow's blog had a reprint of his thoughts on the issue of illegal immigration and the president's idea that the illegal immigrants are good for doing the job Americans won't do. Here's the post, in full. It summarizes my friend's points pretty well. In short, the president wants to give illegal immigrants a "temporary worker" status, which would allow them to work in this country without without application of U.S. labor laws to their status. So they'd still be overworked and desparately underpaid and the risk of deportation would only be lifted in the thinnest way. Put like that, I can't deny that's a problem. Certainly I could never advocate a new age of slavery in this country, nor could I advocate any law that allows corporations like Walmart to violate labor laws any more than they already do.

Still, there's something that bothers me about all of this. There were hundreds of thousands of people marching in the protest against HR 4437. These people weren't Bush supporters (the Bush=Nazi signs that some were carrying gave that away) and they weren't ignorant, well-meaning middle classers, either. These people were immigrants. Many of them, I'm certain, were illegal immigrants. Clearly there's a reason people come to this country illegally, despite the dangers and the shit working conditions. If I knew what that reason was, I'd write it here. The rhetoric of "opportunity" and "land of freedom" springs to mind, beaten into me as it was when I was a kid. Maybe the promise that their children will be American citizens, protected by our laws, if they're born on our soil.

On a deeper level, this isn't about illegal immigrants or immigrants, at all, but the American worker. It's about big corporations finding a loophole in American labor laws so they can pay their workers nothing and keep all the extra money for themselves. Clearly, the president's men shouldn't be allowed to exploit that loophole. But at the same time, the proposed wall around America to keep illegal immigrants out somehow doesn't seem right, either. Not because it would be ineffective (although it would) but because it misidentifies the threat to our working class. It isn't the Mexicans. It's the businesses and the corporations who abuse their workers because they know they can always find someone who will work for less. This practice isn't limited to illegal immigrants. Abuse of legal unskilled laborers is not as uncommon as we want to believe, and while there are laws in place to protect those laborers, the punishment for violating them is usually a slap-on-the-wrist fine.

Tom Tomorrow has a quote on his blog that sums up my thoughts on this issue nicely:

“Society is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others - I don’t care whether you call it capitalism or communism -it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.”- Cesar Chavez

The argument that the way to protect illegal immigrants from abuse by large corporations is to kick them out of the country and build a wall, and the suggestion that laws that make illegal immigration a more criminal offense is wrong, because it strips the rights of people who already have no power, while leaving intact the power of the people committing abuse. Until we turn our eyes inward and enforce already existing labor laws with real consequences, it won't matter if the worker is American or not. She will still be abused.