One doesn't quite get this happy impression by reading, for instance, _Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor_ by Peter Kwong.
***** ...From Kirkus Reviews , November 1, 1997 ...Kwong's central thesis is that illegal immigration must be understood as a labor issue. Aliens have always filled the demand for cheap labor in this country, and powerful economic forces exploiting this supply of labor are no less present today than in the past. From the produce fields of California to New York's sweatshops, employers depend on illegals not only to keep their labor costs down, but also as a key weapon in the fight against a strong labor movement. The established unions have been worse than useless in response to this tactic, with their institutionalized and isolated leadership able to think of nothing beyond ``Buy American'' campaigns. Legislation to curb immigration is popular but expensive and relatively ineffective, and employers have wielded political clout to insure that laws prohibiting the hiring of illegals are easy to violate and rarely enforced. Kwong leaves no doubt that the fundamental cause of the trade in illegal immigrants is not the greediness of the foreign snakeheads, but rather that of American capitalists who demand labor so cheap, only illegals can provide it. Ultimately, the only hope Kwong sees for improving this situation is a renewed and committed labor movement--a very dim hope indeed. *****
Have you read the book?
I think that some union leaders have come to see that immigrants can and should be organized, but I don't think that they have gone so far as to embrace them all, legal _or illegal_. And what of rank-and-file workers? What do they think?
A look at the conditions of agricultural workers -- wages have not improved for the last couple of decades, and in fact they have generally steeply declined -- says a lot about this thorny question. Lots of workers are still fighting for toilets in the field, decent housing with hot water & good plumbing, and the like. We see that in Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere. In manufacturing, lots of undocumented workers must be working for small sweatshops subcontracting for large corporations. How do unions meaningfully represent such workers?
>There is no contradiction
>between anti-WTO politics and organizing foreign-born
>workers in the U.S.
Depends. I'm not alarmed as Rakesh seems to be. In fact, I think the only thing we get out of the campaign may be simply lots of cacophonous noises against "globalization" -- same as before, and nothing of substance may happen (I think, whatever their respective positions are, many people are over-excited about the "Battle of Seattle"). I'm open-minded about how things will go -- I myself took part in a small local demo -- but I agree with Martin Hart-Landsberg. Allow me to forward another PEN-L post by him:
***** Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 20:24:01 -0800 (PST) From: Martin Hart-Landsberg <marty at lclark.edu> To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu Subject: [PEN-L:14594] Re: RE: Sid Schniad on China and the WTO
<snip> I think that directing the movement into reform efforts is a mistake. I personally would want people to oppose the IMF and not see the IMF becoming part of poverty reduction as it proposes to do as an advance. I personally want people to oppose the WTO and not see a WTO with some labor and environmental side agreements as an advance. In other words, I think we have the opportunity to build a radical, anti-capitalist movement and I do not want to see it become side tracked. And I should add that while it is the WTO and the IMF that have mobilized people we should work to develop the movement to look beyond these institutions towards capitalism. Said differently we want to encourage the movement to begin to look at the structures of power and capitalist logic as it operates in this country, not just as it is expressed in these institutions.
So, if people were upset and marching in Washington because they correctly saw that MNCs think only about profits and could care less about workers and the environment and they opposed the WTO because they saw how it strengthened capitalist efforts, then we in this country should work to mobilize people to demand that workers rights and the environment be better protected in this country. If Clinton says that these are important rights and the WTO should take them up we should demand that he and the Congress pass laws that defend these rights in this country. That is the best way to sharpen the issue and struggle. And to build a movement that can defend worker rights in this country. And we should work to mobilize people to support similar struggles in other countries. In other words it is our duty to bring the key issues into sharp focus. <snip>
Marty Hart-Landsberg *****
Yoshie