Background for our seminar Nov.17,2017.
Dr. Duane E. Campbell,
April 19, 2017
In spite of the economic boon for the wealthy, working
people in the U.S. have yet to receive a significant improvement in their
standard of living for over 30 years. At
the same time, democratic forces are once again confronted with anti immigrant
campaigns- this time fostered and promoted by a President of the U.S.
As socialists, we stand with and among the US working class
in opposition to the rule of the transnational corporations and their
exploitation of the economy and their despoliation of our lives, our society
and our environment.
We are currently experiencing a
major restructuring of the global economy directed by the transnational
corporations to produce profits for their corporate owners. The impoverishment of the vast majority of
people in pursuit of profits for a small minority has pushed millions to
migrant in search of food, jobs, and security.
Global capitalism produces global migration. Along with wars NAFTA and other “Free Trade” deals each produce a
new waves of migration.
Socialists support the rights of working people to organize,
to form unions, and to protect their rights and to advance their interests.
Unions have always been an important part of how socialists seek to make our
economic justice principles come alive.
Working people- gathered together and exploited in the capitalist
workplace-are well positioned to fight their common exploitation.
Current immigration laws and practices, imposed upon us all by
the corporations and their control of our government, often prevent working
class unity by dividing workers against each other and by creating categories of workers with few
rights to organize and thus to protect their own interests.
The neoliberal capitalist
economic system now being created by the relentless merging of the world's markets also impoverishes the majority of U.S.
workers. The
average U.S. worker has experienced a decline in their real wages since
1979. Quality industrial jobs have moved
to low wage, anti union areas in the U.S. and to Mexico, China, Singapore,
Vietnam, India and other nations. At
present the U.S. has no significant controls on capital flight. Indeed, the US government subsidizes some corporations to
move jobs to Honduras, El Salvador, and the
Caribbean.
The economic restructuring of
Asia, Africa, and Latin America has pushed millions to migrate to the U.S. and
Europe in search of a decent standard of living. In the two decades leading up to 2008, the U.S. experienced a major increase in
immigration matching the immigration
influx to the US of the period
from 1890-1910. The large scale
immigration was largely from Asia and Latin America. It has changed the ethnic and cultural make up of the labor
force and the working class in many states and urban areas.
At the same time in both
Europe and the U.S., among others, we see an intensification of narrow economic
nationalism and the blaming of immigrants for the economic troubles of
capitalism.
U.S. economic policy (called neoliberal capitalism) promotes the movement of capital and goods
across borders to increase profits while at the same time it increases barriers to worker mobility . Since 2004 there has been a militarization of
the US- Mexican border, a proposal to build a wall, and the significant
increase in in arrests and internal enforcement threatening immigrant labor. The
result is a situation in which workers on both sides of this border and around
the world have been disempowered and impoverished.
In the current
climate the economic forces of global corporate capitalism (neoliberal
capitalism) are unrestrained. Corporations encourage the movement of
capital, and thus jobs, to low wage areas. When workers attempt to exercise
their power against these conditions via forming unions and organizing to withhold
labor, their efforts are easily undermined by repression and the ever-looming threat of factories moving
overseas. Labor unions and even local
governments lose their power to hold capital accountable and all workers are
forced to accept ever worsening wages and working conditions.
Current border enforcement makes exploitation
possible by dividing the global working class into competing sectors and thus
inhibiting the possibility of building a
united working class movement.
As socialists, as internationalists, we know that rather than
building walls and more prisons, what
would really help workers to raise wages and improve living conditions is much stricter enforcement of
worker protection and anti-discrimination laws including the right to form
democratic unions.
Contrary to the Trump Administration narrative, immigrants create
new jobs in the US by, buying homes, spending their income and paying
taxes. A legal flow of immigrants based
upon workforce demand will strengthen the U.S. economy by keeping productivity
high and countering the negative impacts of the aging U.S. populations.
Threats by employers who use immigration status to keep workers from
organizing unions or protesting illegal conditions should be a crime.
When there's no punishment for violating labor rights, workers have no
rights. We should prohibit immigration
enforcement during labor disputes or against workers who complain about illegal
conditions.
The problem with our economy is not immigration; the problem is our
broken immigration laws that allow business to exploit workers who lack legal
status, driving down wages for all workers.
If every immigrant were allowed to participate in our system, pay their
dues, and become a citizen, we could block the corporation’s exploitation and
eliminate the two-tiered workforce while building a united labor movement that
raises wages and living standards for all workers.
In the end, we need an immigration policy that brings people
together instead of pitting workers
against each other. We need an immigration policy that benefits migrants,
their home communities, and working people here in the U.S. And we
need a national policy that limits U.S. military and economic interventions in
other parts of the world.
As socialists we support reforms that would grant immediate
permanent resident status to all current undocumented workers and their
children and that would establish an expeditious and non punitive route to
citizenship for these workers and their families.
As socialists, we struggle for a system that produces security, not
insecurity. We need a commitment to equality and equal status for all.
We need to make it easier for workers to organize and protect themselves
through unions. All workers must have full labor rights, including the right to
organize, the right to protest unjust labor conditions, the right to change
employers, and the right to form unions of their choice. We will
work with immigrant rights organizations to promote family reunification, to
halt deportations, to demilitarize our borders, and to help all of our
children- regardless of legal status- to realize the dream of attaining a
university education.
The Immigrants’ Rights Committee of DSA is working to defend the
rights of all workers and working families in the U.S. Their current project is to support the work
of Cosecha in promoting a Day Without Immigrants ( Un Dia Sin Inmigrantes) https://www.lahuelga.com for May 1, 2017. We request your support in locations around
the country. You can contact our
committee at antiracism@dsausa.org
A working paper of the Immigrants’ Rights Committee of DSA.
Suggestions are welcome. Please send them to campd22702@gmail.com
http://www.dsausa.org/socialists_and_immigration_dl
http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2017/04/socialists-and-immigration.html
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