Post by Moses on May 23, 2005 19:48:41 GMT -5
Fast Track to the Past
By David Bacon
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 23 May 2005
Oakland, CA - Proposals for a new temporary worker program are popular in corporate America, and President Bush has been their main proponent since early in his first term. Bush, who opposes legalization for undocumented workers currently in the US, calls instead for linking “willing employees with willing employers."
Corporate pressure for these programs has grown so strong that even bipartisan proposals for immigration reform now include them. The word in Washington DC is that no immigration reform is worth discussing unless corporate America gets what it wants. Last week, a new bipartisan bill was introduced by Senators Edward Kennedy and John McCain that includes a program even larger than that proposed by Bush.
The President's program calls for 300,000 people to be given temporary visas for three years, renewable for another three. It was adopted point-for-point from a report written by Daniel T. Griswold for the conservative Cato Institute in 2002. The Kennedy/McCain bill calls for 400,000 temporary visas.
The Cato report, Bush's proposal, and the bipartisan bill all incorporate demands by the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, grouping together 36 of the US's largest trade and manufacturers' associations, headed by the US Chamber of Commerce. This organization includes the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (think Wal-Mart), the American Health Care Association, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, the National Retail Federation, and the Associated Builders and Contractors.
These industries are already heavily dependent on immigrant labor. In fact, if Mexicans in the US disappeared tomorrow, as imagined by the current movie “A Day Without Mexicans," their operations would quickly grind to a halt.
Since these industries already have an immigrant workforce, why do they want workers on temporary visas? Despite their claims, there is no great shortage of workers in the US, immigrant or native-born. But today's immigrants are actively organizing unions and fighting for better conditions. There is a shortage of workers at the low wages industry would like to pay.
Temporary worker proposals are not new. In fact, they're a fast track to the past. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers were contracted to come to the US from 1942 to 1964, to work in the fields and on the railroads. The “bracero" program was abusive to the workers involved, who were kept in military-style barracks, paid low wages, and sent home if they complained. Resident workers didn't like it either, because when they tried to strike, they were easily replaced. Growers kept wages low, and when they were through with the “braceros," they just sent them somewhere else.
Eventually Mexican-American activists, including Cesar Chavez and Ernesto Galarza, fought successfully to end it. Chavez later said that organizing the United Farm Workers, a union overwhelmingly made up of immigrants, would never have been possible if the program hadn't been stopped. According to the UFW's Mark Grossman, “Chavez believed agribusiness' chief farm labor strategy for decades was maintaining a surplus labor supply to keep wages and benefits depressed, and fight unionization."
Today there are still a few limited programs like that old one. The workers brought to the US incur massive debt to finance the trip north. They're recruited by contractors with blacklists, who retaliate against people who defend their rights. When temporary workers get fired and sent back, they can lose their homes and land.
Some surveys claim undocumented workers here in the US like the idea of temporary visas. But a choice between becoming a “bracero" or risking death by crossing the desert illegally is no choice at all. One well-respected organization of Mexican immigrants, the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations “disapproves of the Bush initiative for temporary or 'guest' workers because it doesn't guarantee respect for labor and human rights." Instead, the organization calls for legalizing current undocumented workers. Ventura Gutierrez, head of the Union Sin Fronteras, a group of veterans of the original “bracero" program, says “people who lived through the old program know the abuse they will cause."
Real immigration reform could encourage immigrants to form stable families and communities in the US. But temporary workers cannot do this, since they have no right to live with their families, to develop their culture, including religion and music, and no right to housing and healthcare or to political representation. All that counts is their ability to work. When the work is done, so are they.
Seven years ago, American unions came out on the side of immigrants, agreeing to fight for equality and legalization for the 10 million undocumented already here. If unions support temporary worker programs, this goal will be harder to reach. Unions voted to seek the end of employer sanctions, a law that makes it a crime for an undocumented worker to a hold job and is frequently used to bust labor organizing efforts. Bush and the new bipartisan bill call for keeping employer sanctions, and increasing the penalties, as a means to force undocumented immigrants to enroll as temporary workers.
The flow of migrants into the US will not stop as long as huge differences persist between the world's rich and poor. Over 130 million people today live outside the countries in which they were born. Employers would like to channel this flow into temporary worker programs, putting them into competition with their current workforce, whether all at once or over time. What other advantage can these programs give them?
Instead of increasing job competition and pitting one group of low-wage workers against another, the needs of all low-wage workers could be considered instead. African-American and other minority communities need more jobs and training. Immigrant workers would benefit from legalization, permanent residence visas, and stronger defense of their rights.
One bill, by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Houston), takes this approach. Getting it passed might not be easy, and might take time. It might require demonstrations, marches and visits to Congressional offices.
But a real solution, benefiting all workers, is worth fighting for.
David Bacon is a California photojournalist who documents labor, migration and globalization. His book The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the US/Mexico Border was published last year by University of California Press.