Break the chains

By Pei-Yao Chen, May 2011

During robust economic periods of the past, US corporations and government numbed American workers with concessions afforded by exploiting immigrant labor and robbing the Third World. Recently, however, the government has transformed the country’s war debt and financial crisis into a broad state budgetary crisis, which creates the opportunity for US government to tighten finance capital’ s stranglehold on the US working class through privatization and subcontracting, layoffs, and stripping collective bargaining rights. We are currently witnessing heightened government attacks on the protected sectors of US labor: middle class workers, skilled and unionized labor, government jobs. In this situation, all workers are forced to endure longer hours for less pay and are pitted against each other for dismal working conditions, all the while producing unprecedented wealth for the ruling class. With a government that rescues businesses and aides in maximizing corporate profit at the expense of peoples’ lives, the disillusioned masses are left searching for a radical alternative.

Meanwhile, the immigrants rights movement denies the impact of the crisis on the entire working class. They deny the common interest of workers and instead cut up the class, dividing immigrants and citizen workers. In the face of worsening conditions, this reformist movement scrambles to ally with Big Government and Big Businesses, which both depend on cheap labor. Their strategy? Strengthen the system; beg the all-powerful bourgeois government for more crumbs. Their plan includes nominal expansion of state beneficiaries (citizens, documented) through legalization, just to maintain the exploitation of “good immigrants” who do the dirty work that Americans refuse to stoop to. These demands for pragmatic reforms sprout from a blind faith in bourgeois democratic legalism and only help to strengthen the system by narrowing the broad working class struggle into di visive haggling between differently oppressed sectors within the working class. If these divisive demands are met, they create the illusion of a benevolent state, a functioning capitalist system, stifling the surge of workers who are rising up against rampant exploitation.

The immigrants rights movement, teamed with the liberal media and government, creates breeding grounds for a popular fascist movement within the United States. American workers are searching for the source of their troubles, coming together in anger against their foreign enemy. Short-sighted identity politics has stirred national chauvinism within citizen workers into a frenzy. Innumerable political and social entities are sprouting in these conditions. NumbersUSA is a massive lobbying organization that seeks immigration reforms to stop illegal immigration, propagating a one-to-one relationship between illegal immigration on the one hand (supported by liberal media and politicians), economic hardship and peril for the American people on the other (job shortage, overpopulation, tight budget and too many illegal immigrants).

The Chicago Tribune editorial, ” Arizona Thinks Twice” (April 16, 2011), states:

“Arizona’s one-dimensional, enforcement-only approach ignores the root of illegal immigration: Businesses need workers. When the system fails to provide enough visa o fill the available jobs, employers and workers simply find ways around it. Those needs should drive the immigration system.”

The Tribune‘ s pro-slavery stance fuels fascist’ s misdirected resentment toward immigrant workers. NumbersUSA blogger Jeremy Beck responds:

“In Illinois, the Tribune’s home state, about 588,500people looking fora job can’t find one. Maybe the Tribune assumes none of them want any of the jobs currently held by illegal workers. The paper is unclear on that point but clear that immigration policies should be driven by the demands of the labor market. That would·certainly be a welcome change for disadvantaged workers.”

NumbersUSA blogger Jeremy Robb points out the contradictions between the white liberal media and the white working class reactionaries:

“You probably already know that the New York Times is one of our most bitter foes. They have singled us out for attack in several editorials. Our flaw in their eyes? We want immigration to go down and to enforce current law, and they want immigration to go way up while rewarding those who break the law.”

The clearest emerging form of “grassroots fascism” is the Tea Party, a popular movement that focuses attacks on the state, calls for severe reduction of social spending, moratorium on immigration, and demands more states’ rights. They pride themselves on their anti-establishment facade, their disorganized populist vibrancy. They pretend to represent the heart of America, seemingly free from the stale professionalism of the traditional political elite. The Tea Party movement is an ominous new formation, but would not take root without the divisive identity politics of the immigrant rights movement. At a time when multiracial unity within the working class is crucial, identity politics and immigrants rights reformists are ready tools for the ruling class, deepening the division among workers.

Immigrant Rights spokesperson, David Bacon, frames the primary question faced by U.S. society as “Do we or do we not like slaves?” He highlights the suffering of immigrant workers and limits the cause to their status, ignoring the worsening conditions of documented workers. Bacon holds undocumented immigrants up as model workers. White and black working people are hurting, but are left out of the picture. This pro-slavery stance deepens racism, widening the rift between documented and undocumented workers.

Because of the bitter competition between workers and perceived threat of immigrants, American workers continue to demand repressive anti-immigrant reforms, seeking to militarize the border and strengthen the criminalization of immigrant workers. It is this fear-fueled racism that creates continued popular support for Employer Sanctions, passed through the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. David Bacon and trade unions limit their half-hearted criticism of Employer Sanctions to the difficulties of increasing union membership, but do not call for its repeal. Instead, they praise the modern slave law, pointing to the great work that immigrants are doing under the criminalization of Employer Sanctions. He calls for non-enforcement of immigration law: no raids, no deportations, no employer sanctions. The identity groups’ call for legalization only expands the criminalization of undocumented workers, by giving a token number of immigrant workers amnesty. This only encourages more illegal immigration because employers will continue to seek the cheapest labor.

For national chauvinists, the immigrants provide a facile new enemy to galvanize a discontented working class. Every fascism requires an internal enemy; identity politics and the immigrants rights movement are building the platform for fascists to stand on.