We have to ask the question: Who benefits from open borders? Well, desperate Latinos seeking a better life for themselves and their families clearly benefit. But so does the overclass which delights in having a buyer’s market for its labor.
In capitalist logic, the more surplus labor there is, the more difficult it will be for the workers who have jobs to organize. The harder it is for them to organize, the easier it is for capital to dictate its own terms and to do with its workers as it pleases. So two parties benefit–what might described as a Latino underclass and the American overclass. Who pays the penalty? The American worker in the middle.
I know this is complicated, and I am very sympathetic to the plight of desperate Latinos and others looking for something better in America. Who am I to tell them what they should want or not want. But as I see it now they have to find another way because insofar as they weaken the cause of American labor, they weaken the cause for workers everywhere. As one of the growers famously said during the United Farm Workers boycott in the seventies, "We don’t own our slaves anymore, we rent ’em." And you make slaves of workers you no longer own by firing and replacing them everytime they speak up to say what the boss doesn’t want to hear.
After reconstruction, some southern plantation owners started importing Chinese "coolies" to work in the fields so that the now "rented" former slaves couldn’t get any bargaining power. Open borders–and now outsourcing–follows the same logic. Insuring that there is a significant surplus of workers for the available jobs always works to the advantage of employers and to the disadvantage of workers, and that basic fact has to be understood. And ultimately the solution lies in finding policies that ensure that workers in their negotiations with employers.
So let’s try to understand immigration policy in the light of a fairly crude metaphor: If you’re in a lifeboat with fifty people on it, and if the boat is filled to such a point that the addition of one more person will cause the boat to sink and everyone in the boat to drown, the decision is clear. You and the people on the boat would be forced to refuse to let anybody else on. Perhaps some on the boat would chose to give up their place so that someone in the water could take it, and that would be a noble gesture. But there would be no nobility in making a decision in which everyone drowns. Nothing could be clearer; it’s tragic, but that’s the way it is.
Now from the point of view of somebody in the water, it doesn’t
matter. Such a person in his deperation would be willing to risk sinking the boat because he has nothing to lose. And that’s why when he tries to clamber on, the people on the boat have to respond to the threat forcefully. It’s a terrible thing to have to do, but it has to be done. To save the fifty, the one must be refused. The people on the boat might have a serious case of survivor’s guilt once they get home, and maybe they should, but the fact remains that trying to absorb anymore survivors sinks the boat, and the fifty people who had a fighting chance would have no chance. But sometimes the nice, feel-good thing to do is not the right thing to do.
So does the analogy hold when we start talking about immigration policy to the U.S.? It’s not as clear because how do you know when you’ve reached that point when everybody is a loser? When do structural or tactical considerations trump considerations of compassion? The ambiguity there makes it harder to frame a clear response, but the basic principle remains: We need to support those who have a fighting chance in their battle with exploitative employers.
In any country where there is an organized labor movement, workers have a fighting chance. Since the Reagan administration, the overclass in this country has been waging a concerted and very successful campaign against organized labor, and labor needs all the support it can get. It’s not dead, but it’s drowning, and open borders (and outsourcing, which has the same effect) is the flood in which it’s sinking.
We need to frame the problem of desperate Latinos coming into this country differently. We cannot accuse American workers of being mean-spirited if they refuse to let them in. Rather the challenge for the Latinos is to stay where they are and get organized there, and if a strong labor movement is allowed to develop in the U.S., it will be its responsibility to do what it can to help its brothers and sisters south of the border. But in the long run, neither they nor anyone else is well-served if everyone is kept weak.
Right now an open border policy serves the overclass in the U.S. and the overclass in Mexico. The Mexican and other overclass Latinos hope that the most discontented workers in their country
leave rather than stay and organize. Having an open border to the
north to relieve internal pressure suits them just fine, and having open borders relieves pressure in the U.S. by weakening the bargaining power of American workers who want to fight for decent jobs.
All of us have an obligation to give workers in this country a fighting chance and in the long run to do what we can to support workers in other countries to do the same. But no one is served so long as we let the overclass employers both here and abroad to dictate the terms as they watch delightedly as workers fight among themselves for the limited spots available.
So for me, that’s the overriding principle: Workers have to be given a fighting chance, and if that means closing the borders, so be it. I don’t like it; on one level it’s not fair. But the burden of solving world poverty should not be put on the backs of American workers, but on the backs of the plutocrats in the countries that keep their people oppressed.
That being said, I’m not for the Frist plan of rounding up illegals and deporting them. But I am for tightening up the borders and finding a more effective way to deal with the pressure to outsource jobs. This is a big, big problem, and like so much else, we’re just sitting back and letting the overclass dictate in the terms intoning piously their freemarket theology to justify what works so well to benefit them. We’re only just beginning to feel the pain, and it’s going to affect so called white collar workers as much as it has already affected blue collar workers. It’s going to get worse if we people in he middle don’t figure out some way to wake up from the hypnotic spell cast by overclass propaganda and get organized to take our country back.
Update: See this article about the fissuring labor movenet which just adds to the problems working people are facing as they are fighting this seemingly losing battle with hyper-mobile capital.
Leave a Reply