Ddebate immigration policy
Brand, H.
In the Fall 1993 issue of Dissent we printed an article by Richard Rothstein on immigration issues. Following are two responses to that piece and a reply by Rothstein. We welcome further reader...
...He also lists policies that, if adopted, would in time limit immigration...
...It is this exploitation, not the immigrants as such, that much of American labor has always perceived as a threat to its living standards...
...Baird didn't merely pay low wages...
...Employer commitment to providing housing, "especially for migrant families," has decreased...
...But why would Piore "limit" immigration...
...Reading Rothstein, one doesn't get a sense of the gravity of the problem...
...Native workers, including increasing numbers of African Americans, reject such jobs because they hold them to be degrading...
...Piore advances a much more considered view of immigration...
...Graham favored a "responsible restrictionism...
...less than 1 percent were inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration...
...To imply, as the report does, that the oversupply of migrant farmworkers contributes to their "horrendous working conditions" is to shift the blame away from agribusiness...
...Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers, in a bitter statement appended to the "Report of the Commission on Agricultural Workers" (of which she is a member), asserts, "With their political influence, agribusiness has reversed hard-won reforms made through legislation by preventing adequate funding of enforcement or, as in the case of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board of California, influencing the appointments so they are employer dominated, thereby perverting and preventing the purpose of this law to encourage the organization of farm workers...
...406 • DISSENT...
...The migrant worker has a different perspective: he or she considers his or her stay but temporary, and aims to accumulate the resources to buy land or establish a small business upon returning home...
...and if so, by what means...
...The party of course opposed exclusion on grounds of race or nationality and stood for free asylum for persons persecuted on religious or political grounds...
...Sweatshops are businesses that habitually violate wage-andhour laws and safety and health laws...
...For the American left there are normative issues as well, which Rothstein ignores: should immigration, especially of poverty-stricken persons, be restricted at all...
...EDS...
...But self-enforcement requires vigilant and powerful labor organizations...
...I know from experience in our social service ministries that over the past ten to twelve years we are aware of greater numbers of farmworkers in all levels of poverty," he said...
...Citing New York City's success in turning garbage collection and street cleaning into sought-after occupations, he argues that the removal of adverse job characteristics would make hitherto secondary jobs attractive to native workers, and thus limit immigration...
...According to the "Report of the Commission on Agricultural Workers" (November 1992), annual earnings of farm worker families have frequently fallen well below federal poverty levels...
...At its core, American immigration policy is a cheap-labor policy...
...Rothstein's in essence parallels it...
...A witness before the commission, a director of the Casa de Amigos center in Visalia, California, testified that the average farm worker was worse off today than ten years ago...
...For example, he mentions sweatshops in garment manufacturing...
...Yet the exploitation of immigrant labor lies at the center of the immigration problem...
...labor market...
...True, great and powerful unions were created during the 1930s in the midst of mass unemployment...
...Thus, "upscale life-styles" are maintained at a price not made visible by Rothstein...
...Piore would nevertheless "limit" immigration...
...In sum, vast numbers of immigrant (and for that matter native) secondaryjobholders cannot be sure of their entitlement to old-age pensions, let alone help to pay for those of retiring native workers...
...Graham held the party's 1910 position to be still sound: "the left may well return to it...
...Graham favored restriction also on more fundamental grounds: he held that "social reconstruction at home could only be successfully pursued if the action was adequately protected from disruptive inflows of labor and capital . . . and other devices for postponing internal reorganization...
...Rothstein mentions Zoe Baird in arguing that immigrant workers enable middle-class women to hold jobs outside the household...
...she deprived her employee of retirement benefits by not paying Social Security tax...
...Most immi404 • DISSENT Arguments grant workers take menial, ill-paid jobs—jobs that offer neither security nor career opportunities...
...Nor can farm workers readily exit from agriculture...
...Citing N.Y...
...They also fail to keep adequate payroll records, a failure for which there are no monetary penalties...
...Rothstein briefly notes the low wages for which immigrants often work but is not otherwise concerned with their working conditions...
...H. Brand In his article "Immigration Dilemmas," Richard Rothstein essentially argues (1) the impracticability of controlling immigration and (2) the economic advantages immigration confers upon American society...
...He would do so by seeking to abolish the adverse characteristics of jobs to which migrant workers are relegated...
...But there are thousands of Zoe Bairds...
...Hourly wage rates for nonfarm work are often lower than farm work wage rates...
...The assumption may be weak, but the idea he expressed retains its moral sting...
...He wrote, "The promise of equal opportunity cannot be kept without sealing off the labor market to the unchecked access of Third World manpower...
...Rothstein devotes several paragraphs to how immigrant workers will help pay, via payroll deductions, active workers' old-age pensions...
...He wants a tight labor market, with labor in short supply, such a labor market being "more conducive to social progress than a loose one...
...But the enforcement statistics presented in the GAO's report on New York City sweatshops are astounding: one example must suffice here...
...The desire may be thwarted, a return may not be feasible...
...It is true that an oversupply of workers makes it easier for employers to cheapen labor...
...If Eugene Debs once cried that to restrict the immigration of "the exploited" was "utterly unsocialistic, reactionary, and in truth outrageous," he did so on the assumption that labor was strong enough to combat that threat...
...Unemployment and chronic underemployment remain high...
...Nationwide statistics on sweatshops don't exist, but the General Accounting Office (GAO) studied sweatshops in New York City in 1988-1989 and called them "a local example of a nationwide problem...
...The strong commitment to farm work that [agricultural workers] . . . exhibit reflects the poor conditions in other SUMMER • 1994 • 405 Arguments immigrant-dominated occupations and a realistic appraisal of their ability to compete in the mainstream U.S...
...Fundamental change in the political climate is necessary before a revitalized labor movement can reemerge, making the improvements in labor standards that Piore urges feasible, and immigration control a minor concern...
...Such employers, when inspected, are invariably cited for violating minimum-wage and overtime regulations...
...But this development was dependent upon a highly favorable political and legislative climate...
...Adequate funding of enforcement would surely be very costly...
...It is the dual structure of jobs that gives the impetus to immigration to the United States (and other industrial countries...
...It means not only that workers are underpaid but also that the employer does not pay Social Security tax...
...We welcome further reader correspondence...
...He aligned himself with the position of the old Socialist party, which, in 1910, advocated legislation preventing the immigration of strikebreakers, contract laborers, and the mass immigration of workers "brought about by the employing classes for the purpose of weakening the organization of American labor, and of lowering the standard of life of American workers...
...Rothstein discusses the growth in the demand for fresh fruit and vegetables associated with "upscale life-styles," but the migrant farmworkers' "life-styles" form no part of his discussion...
...The prospect for self-enforcement of decent working conditions seems remote...
...Piore would rely on rigorous enforcement of labor laws to improve working conditions and job characteristics, and thereby in time limit immigration...
...Large-scale immigration jeopardizes this goal...
...Increasing employer reliance on farm labor contractors "has resulted in deteriorating working and living conditions" for many migrant farm workers...
...Large proportions of the establishments were found in violation of labor and health and safety laws...
...It is worth recalling two articles that appeared in the Summer 1980 Dissent, one by Otis Graham, "Illegal Immigration and the Left," the other by Michael Piore, "Another View of Migrant Workers...
...Furthermore, granted the economic advantages of immigration, what price must immigrants pay to create them...
...But the rate of return of migrant workers remains quite high...
...Mobility between immigrant and non-immigrant-dominated . . . occupations is . . . difficult...
...self-enforcement would be a partial alternative...
...Like Rothstein, Piore would do so principally by improving working conditions: raising the minimum wage, facilitating union organization, tightening health and safety standards, and so on...
...State Department of Labor officials, the GAO reported that of the 7,000 apparel firms in the city, 4,500 are sweatshops, employing more than 50,000 workers...
...layoffs from nonfarm jobs are frequent...
...During the 1980s, only 6 percent of the estimated 17,000 apparel and restaurant establishments were inspected by the Wage-Hour Division...
Vol. 41 • July 1994 • No. 3
