5-23-05, 10:23am
Historically, the radical left has been a leading force against apartheid regimes, leading the campaign to divest from South Africa and now leading the fight to end the apartheid regime in Israel which has seen Israel viciously repress the Arab majority, denying the Palestinians of their most basic rights, slaughtering civilians with impunity, and now constructing a massive barrier to separate Israelis from Palestinians. The radical left in the United States has been slower to protest the apartheid barrier in its own backyard, stretching from sea to shining sea, dividing the first world from the third world, just as Israel’s separation barrier does. The apartheid barrier I am referring to is, of course, the US-Mexican border.
The separation barrier along the US-Mexican border might not initially be perceived as serving to institute an apartheid regime because the ethnically homogenous nation-state is such a key principle in the European understanding of political geography that is dominant in the United States. Obviously, the US is not ethnically homogenous as the countries of Western Europe, largely do to its history as nation of settlers and immigrants, but also owing to the fact that throughout American history ruling elites have found it expedient to import cheap nonwhite labor in order to increase profits and to drive down the wages of the white working class. Regardless of the actual diversity of American society, however, the traditional western conception of the nation-state remains dominant.
Because of this conception, the barriers between US and Mexican territory do not strike many Americans as unnatural, and they do not bother to ask ‘who are these barriers designed to keep out?’ To answer the question, the barriers along the US-Mexican border have been constructed to keep Hispanics and others impoverished people from the third world from entering the US.
The US’ immigration policies certainly seem to meet the commonly accepted definition of apartheid: the policy of separating or segregating one group from another, or of denying a particular group opportunities or rights. The conditions of poverty that are forcing people to immigrate exist mostly because of the United States’ policy of exporting its capitalist system globally, but while the US led process of globalization has loosened restrictions placed on the movement of capital, it has not loosened restrictions on the movement of people; there are as many or more restrictions on immigration today than there have ever been before. America’s immigration policies ignore fundamental rights of non-American citizens, including the right to unrestricted movement and the right of refugees of poverty to seek out economic opportunity, and instead cater to the interests of private power, who benefit from policies that force Mexicans to stay at home and work for $0.50 an hour instead of immigrating to the US and working for $5.50 an hour. Keeping citizens of the third world from entering first world countries with higher labor standards is certainly in the interest of multinational corporations and others benefiting from capitalist globalization. However, the ruling class also has some economic interest in illegal immigration because these immigrants can fill the role once designated to Black slaves; they can be forced to labor cheaply in jobs that cannot be exported, such as in the service sector, increasing profits and driving down the market wages of the American working class. Because these immigrants are undocumented, they are not free and have no rights, and can be forced to live in horrendous conditions (1). If they attempt to report employer abuse or illegally low wages they can be instantly deported. For this reason, the International Labor Organization classifies undocumented immigrants in such conditions as living in conditions of modern-day slavery. However, while corporate capitalists certainly see some unlawful immigration necessary, only a limited number of ‘illegal’ immigrants are needed to undercut American wages in the domestic sector; too many and they may start to wield power and become dangerous.
If business has an interest in some illegal immigration, how can the anti-immigrant movement be explained? The American ruling class may not have a direct interest in opposing immigration, but they have an interest in a an anti-immigrant movement, one that may entice the working class and give them an appropriate scapegoat for their declining living standard so that they do not organize against their real oppressor, corporate capitalists. The attempt to turn rightwing labor against immigration has largely been successful, and, along with nativists and supremacists, they now form the core of the anti-immigrant movement.
The anti-immigrant movement usually makes bases its arguments on unbridled racism and xenophobia, warning that the US is being ‘devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens’ and that ‘future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures,’ to borrow two quotes from the Minutemen Project (2). Occasionally, however, the anti-immigrant movement will argue that immigrants are the reason for the declining living standard in the American working class. This is quite absurd and is frankly irrational. While it is true that undocumented immigrants working in conditions of near slavery will undercut wages, it is precisely due to the racist immigration policies in the US that such conditions exist.
The more fundamental flaw in this argument, however, shows clearly the pathetic state of US labor; the argument assumes that only capitalist markets can determine wages, and thus, it is important to forcibly expel anyone seeking to enter the job force who might drive down the market wage. Any labor movement that makes that assertion is not a labor movement; it’s an employers’ movement. (3)
How should the left and left-wing labor movement approach the immigration debate? First off, labor needs to unite to repeal NAFTA, raise the minimum wage, and fight corporations instead of attacking its third world proletariat counterparts in an act of cannibalism. Then, it should tear down the border and abolish the racist nation-state system, and organize an international labor movement to oppose global capitalism. Internationally, there are only several million corporate elites; there are billions of poor and downtrodden laborers, and as soon as workers of the world truly unite and stop letting business elites divide them into these arbitrary cantons, they could become a force to be reckoned with.
(1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/americas_florida_tomato_picker/html/1.stm (2) http://www.minutemanproject.com/AboutMMP.html (3) For a more in depth analysis of rightwing labor and immigration, view my article published at LaborNet http://www.labornet.org/news/0405/labrimig.htm
