Ruben Vidaurreta

Peter Baird and Ed McCaughan, Beyond the Border: Mexico and the United States Today, New York: North American Congress on Latin America, 1979. Especially section: Beyond the Border, pp. 153-170.

Basic Argument:

The U.S. government with the interests of big business and through the policy of the INS has allowed cheap labor, in the form of immigrants, to cross the border in times of “labor scarcity,” and in times of periodic recessions it has allowed the INS to conduct massive deportations of said immigrants.

Attack on Labor

In the face of growing competition from Europe and Japan, and falling rates of profits in the late 60’s early 70’s U.S. industries had to find means of combating their current problems. In short they did this by (1) shifting labor intensive production to either non-union areas of the U.S., or abroad, where they enjoyed cheaper labor. They also began to (2) replace higher paid male workers with women, and (3) hire illegal immigrant workers. According to AFL-CIO statistics, the result of American runaway shops between 1966 and 1971 were the loss of 900,000 jobs and job opportunities. Those who were hit the hardest were those who were semi-skilled and low wage workers from the apparel, shoe and electronics industries. Most of these people were comprised of latinos, blacks, and poor white women who barely made enough money to subsist. It is important to note that business directly attacked those who were the least organized and least able to defend themselves. In addition business also turned to Mexican immigrants for low-paid controllable labor. We see during this time period that big businesses were turning away from investments in heavy industry and shifting towards labor intensive industries. It is no coincidence that 25% of new jobs that were created from 1976-78 were in the service sector and that most of those were concentrated in the south and southwest close to cheap immigrant labor.

Misdirecting Anger

Facing wage-price freezes and continuing attacks on American workers the AFL-CIO began to blame the loss of jobs on foreign workers and foreign imports. Instead of focusing and targeting their attentions on multinational runaway industries, inflation, job discriminations, speed-ups, massive layoffs and other problems proving to be the real cause of growing American worker’s discontent the AFL-CIO blamed their set of problems on the Mexican immigrants. With domestic problems such as mounting unemployment, workers protests, and anti-war sentiment, Nixon also used Mexican immigrants as scapegoats for the problems of the economy. So in 1971, Nixon appointed retired U.S.M.C. General Leonard Chapman as Commissioner of the INS. Chapman in fueling the anti-Mexican sentiment of the AFL-CIO began to say that unemployment would be reduced by half if the INS could find and deport the three million or so illegal immigrants who were currently holding jobs. Chapman warned the American public that these illegals were responsible for stealing “high-paying” jobs from American workers and forming “power groups to influence American foreign and internal policy.” In 1973 deportations rose 34% from the previous year. Chapman was obviously using highly inflated statistics to assert that they were taking high paying industrial jobs. In fact businesses, who were being hit hard by the deportations, responded by saying that the illegal immigrants were filling only those low paying jobs that “lazy, and more choosy,” American workers refuse to do. Baird and McCaughan argue that the “Mexican immigrant worker in the U.S. is an integral member of the proletariat who is periodically used by the capitalist to generate above-average profits and at the same time strike a blow at the rest of the working class.”

Facts and Fallacies

The most accurate data, at time of this article, of the size, location and impact of undocumented workers on the U.S., comes not from the INS but from a private study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor and conducted by the Linton Co. in 1975. The results were based on interviews conducted by Linton with undocumented immigrants arrested by Border Patrol in 19 U.S. cities. Among other interesting data the Linton study found that these workers held the lowest status and lowest wage jobs and that they worked a longer work week for significantly lower pay than their American counterparts. The study found that undocumented immigrant workers do not compete for jobs with skilled U.S. workers in most industries but instead they compete with the most exploited sector of American workers, those who are semi or unskilled.

The Roots of Exploitation

For undocumented workers it is their limited legal and political status that makes them more vulnerable to exploitation than other workers. “As immigrants they are treated as ‘aliens’ who must work their way up from the bottom and silently assimilate into the dominant culture. As ‘illegals’ they are disenfranchised from the protections won by the labor movement: collective bargaining, minimum wage, health and safety, fair housing, legal recourse etc. Protest brings repression and deportation.” This is why immigrant workers are so desirable to capitalists and it is how the U.S. government can take and estimated “seven times more in taxes and wage deductions from undocumented workers than these workers are able to receive in services.” It is important to note that the effect of large corporation employing undocumented labor is that the low wage, speedup and seasonal character of these jobs becomes more widespread throughout all areas of industry, thus affecting all workers in the sector.

Changing INS Policy

Fearing the possibility of another mass civil rights movement like the black rebellion of the sixties, the Ford administration ordered the INS to lessen its deportation policies while the White House “studied” the immigration problem. The in turn resulted in the INS focusing “more and more on selective raiding of work-places – reflecting a policy of keeping immigrants out of higher paying jobs and corralled into sectors where there was a ‘shortage’ of unskilled workers.” At the same time the passing of the Eilberg Amendment by Congress in 1976 effectively reduced the Mexican immigration quota from some 85,000 to only 40,000 per year.

Feeling towards Labor Shortages

Businesses during this period were making it clear in editorials such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, and The New York Times, that they did not want restrictions put on their cheap labor supply. They were making statements such as saying that “[American] society cannot exist without immigration and without underprivileged labor.” The prestigious Joint Economic Commission of Congress issued a 1978 staff study warning that “today’s labor surplus gradually should give way to labor scarcity, except in sectors and regions with heavy structural unemployment . . . . The projected drop in labor force would be partially offset by a rise in illegal immigration.”

Fight for Rights

In the late seventies undocumented workers began to join with various unions to curb the power of big capitalist. Unions also began to understand how these workers were being used against them. In 1975 the International Longshorement and Warehousemen’s Union stated the following, “Our union will not join in any hysterical reaction which seeks to punish alien workers and make them scapegoat for the failure of employers and big-business oriented administration to make jobs at decent wages for all who want to work. We recognize this anti-alien agitation as another form of the age-old tactic of pitting one group of workers against another to the disadvantage of all.”