Immigration
My favorite quote in this morning’s Washington Post article on the politics of immigration is the one from Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza: "I’m not sure anybody totally understands this phenomenon. . . . But we are happily stunned." NCLR is the biggest Latino advocacy organization in the country, and I’m sure they’d love to claim credit for the mass demonstrations against the House’s harsh anti-immigrant bill, but they can’t. It seems to be a combination of Spanish-language radio, churches (and the Church), charitable organizations, and genuine grassroots activism.
Meanwhile one of my friends is wondering whether her Irish-Jewish son is going to fail 8th grade because he’s been joining in the mass student protests. (Arlington schools have been taking a hard line, saying that absences will be treated as unexcused even with parental permission.) She’s simultaneously worried about him and proud as can be that he’s standing up for what he believes in. And, by all accounts, these protests were totally student-organized, by IM, mySpace, and cell phones, with no adult involvement.
I’ll be looking closely at the deal that Senate leaders cut today to see what I think of it. I think there are a lot of valid competing desires — wanting to be a land of opportunity, but not wanting to depress low-skilled workers wages’, wanting to minimize disruption in people’s lives, but not wanting to penalize those who played by the rules.
And I’m thinking about trying to juggle my schedule for Monday afternoon so I can join the march on the mall.
For you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
April 6th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Oh, that’s weird, I just posted about this topic too.
April 6th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
– Don’t you see that supporting illegal immigration is a sure way to play into the corporate agenda? Why not agitate for a *living wage* instead? Then we will see just how few legal Americans are available to do these jobs. How do you feel when you are at a family restaurant and all the workers are brown?
– Don’t you see that this bill, like the 1986 amnesty, will do nothing to stem the flow? There are no sanctions against employers. What good is a law that has no enforcement provisions?
– Don’t you see that the people this hurts the most are Americans? Do we want to make them desperate in their own country?
– Don’t you see that this is unfair to legal immigrants? One of my friends waited 15 years to get her green card. This is like a slap in the face to those who played by the rules.
– Don’t you see that the illegals have no interst in assimilating? They don’t care to learn the language… they wave Mexican flags. This goes against the ethic of all prior waves of immigrants.
– Don’t you see that this is an unholy alliance between church, state and commerce and all it will do is create a permanent underclass?
With Democrats like you, who needs Republicans? I am embarrassed to call myself an American.
April 7th, 2006 at 8:07 am
I think that the compromise looks pretty good. Especially when compared to the absolutely extremist, anti-human house bill HR4437.
As for “I don’t get it,” please you must remember that the people who are in this country without documents are human beings too. And they’ve taken great risks for little pay. If there’s a problem it is that corporations and businesses have faced virtually no sanctions whatsoever; in fact many of them actually go and recruit.
Finally, this is something that cannot be stopped by fiat. This kind of migration is happening in every developed and even developing country. It is part and parcel of the kind of economic development and globalization that the US itself has been pushing for the past 50 years. No country — apart from communist era Albania or the Soviet Union — has been able to prevent labor migration as long as their is a demand for labor.
So if there is a problem, it needs to be addressed with that in mind. And resolved in a real way, not in a way that scapegoats the most vulnerable and powerless in our society.
As for effect on wages, there’s a very intersting study that shows immigrants actually are complementary, and do not compete with Americans for jobs. The one negative effect is on US workers without a highschool degree, but even taking that into account, the overall effect is positive. I’ll try to find the cite for that when I get to the office, I have it somewhere.
And finally, what’s most striking about this whole thing is that it’s people who are in areas with the fewest immigrants who believe that immigrants are a danger and threat to the US and US values; those who live in areas with the highest concentration of immigrants don’t see it that way.
Likewise, Reps with fewer than 5,000 undocumented immigrants in their districts were the most likely to vote for the House bill 4437 (the extremist and draconian bill); those with the highest numbers of undocumented imms were the most likely to vote against it http://www.ailf.org/ipc/policybrief/policybrief_2006_playingpolitics.shtml
For the full background on this here is a good post at dailykos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/3/155350/1678
Clearly there are some who are seeing this as nothing but a way to play politics, to scapegoat immigrants for serious problems facing this country, and maybe divert attention from much more pressing issues…
April 7th, 2006 at 9:21 am
here’s a link to a summary of the study I mentioned above about effects on wages and economy:
http://www.usabal.com/news/2006/06Mar13.html
IMMIGRANTS, SKILLS, AND WAGES:
Reassessing the Economic Gains from Immigration
April 7th, 2006 at 9:54 am
I support immigration, and that part is great, but don’t you think guest workers is a terrible idea? It gives such a huge amount of leverage to employers which drives down wages and work safety standards. Do you trust the conference reconcillation? Man, I wish we had a unicameral legislature with proportional representation.
April 7th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
I heard a very interesting commentary on NPR yesterday, pointing out that while the majority of illegal immigrants in recent years have been Mexican, a guest worker program is probably going to result in a lot more immigration from Asia and the Middle East, not Mexico. Wages in Asia and the Middle East are a *lot* lower than they are in Mexico, and once there’s no need to sneak over the border, companies are going to prefer to recruit there, instead of in Mexico.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5328552
April 7th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Elizabeth, while up till now immigrants may not have substantially hurt wages, I think that would change under a guest-worker program. Considerably. And the reason is that it will open the labor market to cut-rate professionals for services that cannot be conveniently outsourced.
I first started thinking about this re nursing several years ago, listening to BBC reports of guest-worker nurses in Britain. I don’t know the wage disparity between guest and domestic nurses in Britain. However, Britain, like the rest of Europe, has trades unions with considerable clout on the government level, and I imagine there’s been some fairly aggressive negotiation to protect domestic nursing. Here, we have no such protection. Currently, US nurses are actually professionally compensated for the grueling work they do. If hospitals are permitted to hire guest-worker nurses for a fraction of the wage they pay domestic nurses, nursing will collapse as a middle-class occupation.
Doctors who provide direct patient care are in a similar situation. So are several kinds of engineer and scientist. I hear they educate political and economic analysts in other parts of the world, too. I think it’s important to keep in mind that we’re not just talking about grape-pickers here.
April 7th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I don’t get it, you lost me when you raise the issue of ‘brown’ people working in a ‘family’ restaurant. Is your intent to say that my children should never be served by a person of color?
Amy, so it’s okay for immigrants to be grape-pickers, but not doctors? The guest worker program that is discussed in this compromise includes labor protections, as well as the quality of portability (meaning that the ability to work in the country is not tied to a particular job, but to a particular worker). That means that employers could not hold the threat of deportation-through-job loss over workers’ heads.
April 7th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
my understanding is that the bill creates a new visa category for unskilled workers, and that the number of immigrants allowed in is in that category. That is where there’s a real shortage of people in the US, for those kinds of jobs. As for the upper end, the article I link to above notes that the upper end immigrants actually stimulate job creation and the US economy.
As for nurses, there is a shortage of nurses in this country and so in major metro areas you have lots of guestworker nurses already, from Philippines, etc.
Landismom’s point is important though. The provisions of the bill call for actual standards and enforcement of standards, unlike now when undocumented workers can be exploited exactly because of their status.
April 7th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
It is good to see high school students getting involved. That said, why couldn’t they have their protests at 4 p.m., after all the schools are out? Then they wouldn’t have to choose between unexcused absences and not participating.
April 7th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
It sounds like the wheels are coming off of the compromise in any case, so it may all be a moot point.
There’s an old line that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. The guest worker provisions do make me nervous, but they’ve got to be better than the status quo of having a huge mass of workers who have no legal standing and so have no leverage against their employers.
There was an interesting article a while back about the huge flow of doctors and nurses out of the Philipines and other low-income countries, and how it meant that those countries were effectively subsidizing the medical system of wealthy countries. I’ll see if I can track it down.
April 7th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
landismom, it matters if the effect is to crash middle-class wages. The grape-picker wages are already sub-living.
Upper-end immigrants currently stimulate growth because they ride on domestic wage scales and pay more in tax dollars than they use in service dollars. However, if a guestworker program allows employers to claim they cannot pay “American” wages for these high-end jobs, which is entirely plausible, they can import a large class of high-end guest workers at a fraction of the current wage. We’d lose the current upper-end-immigrant benefits along with a class of middle-class jobs.
And yes, those countries are subsidizing our medical system, through both education costs and brain drain. However, I’m more concerned about local ability to get a job that lets you do all those mythical things like housebuying and saving for retirement.
April 7th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
People are missing a major aspect of this immigration issue – what will be the cost of low-wage workers on social services? Think long-term – healthcare, social security, etc. This may be cruel, but I would rather pay a worker more so they can afford to pay for their own healthcare and retirement. Lets face facts – low-wage earners will depend on Medicaid, Medicare and social security more than American citizens of middle class simply because of government income guidelines. My middle class relatives used entire savings to pay for home attendants, prescription drugs, etc. while my in-law who immigrated and became a citizen – never worked here, is eligible for social security and medicare, home attendants, etc. These are low-wage workers from an ethnic group (whether discriminated against or not) that tends to stay in low-education, low-paying jobs. Republicans talk of privatizing social security, cutting medicare benefits, but this is completely unrealistic if you allow a high number of low-income workers in the country. Who will support these people and pay for them. I respect Mexican people and realize they are looking for work to feed their family – I am thankful they are protesting peacefully – not like the ethnic riots in France. Another BIG ISSUE – this immigrant issue is directly related to WORLD POVERTY – another topic which the Bush administration snubbed the United Nations. There are alot of politicians, Dem. and Rep, in Washington looking for a quick fix to this problem due to elections.
April 7th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
I have to say that I’m a little nervous also about the guest worker programs. I used to work with quite a few people who were in this country on H1-B visas, and I was somewhat surprised to discover that they many of them felt like indentured servants. Their status in this country was entirely dependent on employment with one, specific company. Thus they were not in any position to complain about anything, because they had no bargaining power. If this was true of relatively well-paid high tech workers, I can’t imagine what it will be like for unskilled workers. On the other hand, undocumented workers currently have zero power to complain about workplace conditions, so perhaps it would be an improvement.
As for “i don’t get it,” yeah, you really don’t get it. The idea that the previous generations of immigrants all learned English and never waived the flags of their native lands is revisionist bullsh*t. Ever been to a Little Italy? Or to a St. Patrick’s Day parade? In any immigrant-heavy community, you will find plenty of people, particularly older people who immigrated as adults, who speak poor or heavily accented English. This is even more true for those immigrants who lacked educational opportunities in their home countries. And those people often worked hard to make sure that their children were educated in their native languages (often via churches) even as they learned English in school. So this utopian ideal that they all quickly and completely abandoned their previous national identities in favor of clear English and rah-rah “I’m an American now” is just bizarre.
April 7th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Some clarifications:
1. I support *legal* immigration. Time was when legal immigrants had to prove that no Americans were available to do the job for which they were being given a green card – AND – that they were being paid wages comparable to what Americans were being paid. Both protections have gone out the window because of lack of enforcement.
2. As Christine said, let us remember that it is not ONLY about people at the lowest end of the wage scale. Once the rules are bent, they will be bent across the board.
3. landismom – no, my point is not at all that your kids can never be served by people of color. But, if things progress as they are going, your kids will be served ONLY by people of color. And that would be a shame.
4. Before the influx of illegals, how did we manage? High school and college kids did many of these jobs and now they too have been priced out of the market.
5. Can you think of any other country that would allow its own workers to be cannibalized by “guest workers”? What a stupid euphemism. If I have guests in my house I don’t expect them to work! The fact that the laws are not being enforced and that this is even being debated proves that the government is now owned by the corporations.
6. Unfortunately too many liberals are locked in an unholy alliance with the corporatocracy.
All I ask is a living wage for all. That is (or should be) the American way!
April 7th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Your last line was a knockout, Elizabeth.
April 7th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
From approximately 1881 to 1921, the only immigrants who could be defined as illegal were Chinese and Japanese immigrants, who were barred in 1881 (the Chinese) and in 1907 (the Japenese, via the Gentleman’s Agreement). Before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1881, no group of immigrants was barred from entry. But until 1921/1924 (the original quota act was revised), if you were of European ancestry and arrived via the eastern ports, you were welcomed as a legal immigrant so long as you didn’t carry a communicable disease (TB in particular). Mexican and South American migration has a trickier history, because Mexican migration back and forth across the border has been a centuries-old phenomenon, pre-dating the existence of the border itself. But to describe today’s migrants as illegal, and to emphasize the newness of this status, is to ignore the fact that the prior grand wave of migration occurred before the concept of restricted US immigration was introduced. Who knows how many of our ancestors might have immigrated illegally if quotas and barriers had existed prior to 1921, blocking (to name the most popular targets of anti-immigrant propoganda) Jews, Slavs, Italians, the Irish, or just non-Protestant Europeans as a whole.
And to believe that this generation of immigrants holds more tightly to its native language or its culture or its ancestral flags than any past generation of immigrants is to reveal oneself to be entirely ignorant of the history of immigration and nativism in this country.
April 7th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
It is interesting that people are resentful of immigrants waving their former countries’ flags when most that I come into contact with feel American. As Americans are we making people choose between cultures when we are all so mixed? I eat so many different ethnic foods – as an American I don’t just eat hamburgers and hotdogs (I know someone will debate that type of food, but it is just an example). Most Americans are so unaware of the American cultural influence globally (whether for good or bad). A college professor of education once told a class in which I was enrolled a very interesting philosophy on how one becomes “American.” This really relates to everyone since unless we are Native American we all immigrated to this country. This theory dates to the start of public education. I only remember a few reasons…He stated that the government figured people were truly American by third generation – english was dominant in the home or native language was lost, there were intercultural marriages and possible interfaith as well; early public schools were indoctrinated with promoting American patriotism to foreign born students. This theory holds true for my family as my ancestors all came through Ellis Island. I am 3rd generation and I can not even relate to anything as Irish-American, Italian American, etc. I feel even if you marry someone from the same family as yourself ethnically things will always merge and change. American culture – I am not sure if I can define it specifically – is a very powerful thing. We are also so global when it comes to travel, news, etc. so it seems rational that people can still identify with the culture they were born into and the one they choose to work or live in a majority of time.
April 8th, 2006 at 1:31 am
I’m watching this discussion with growing incredulity.
You do understand that this isn’t about whether or not immigration is good for the US, right? Or about whether immigrants will be true patriots? Or about legal grape pickers?
This is about playing cleanup on outsourcing. About higher-wage jobs that can’t be done outside the US. All those nice jobs that have gone cheap to India and Singapore — the radiology jobs, and the unionized auto-worker jobs, and the salaried tech support — have one thing in common. You can do them somewhere else and profitably email/phone/import the results to the US. We still have a lot of high-wage jobs here that must be done locally. Surveying, for instance. Nursing. Plumbing. Some kinds of engineering. This is what this round of immigration reform is about. Not about migrant fruitpickers.
Are there live issues to do with illegal migrant workers? Sure, esp. to do with services use and the ability to tax them. But that is not where the money is here, and not where the social import is. If employers are allowed to say, “We can’t compete while paying our surveyors $45K plus benefits, and no Americans are applying at $9.50/hr, so we’d like to invite guest workers to send their CVs” you’ve just left government employment as the sole remaining bulwark of middle-class life here. And if you think things are corrupt now, wait till the only good job is a government job.
April 8th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Christine, this is unrelated, and I don’t know how you might begin to quantify these things, but I think there are many of us 2nd-, 3rd-, 4th-gen Americans who still live a dual life. I’m a 3rd-generation American Jew; my great-grandparents also came in by Ellis Island. Neither Jewishness nor Judaism has melted into the pot. I go to some trouble and expense to educate my daughter as a Jew. (And it does take; she surprised me this afternoon by trying to teach her babysitter the introduction to the Four Questions for Passover, in Hebrew. She’s two, picked it up while I was teaching her 4-year-old friend.) This is true even though I am intermarried and went to public schools. I see similar fidelity to culture and language in local Chinese families. Last week I watched as one of the baristas here shed her American college-girl persona to greet an older Chinese man; the way she stood, her voice, the way their relative status stood out in relief, everything changed, and of course she spoke Chinese to him.
A lot of it may have to do with the strength of the other culture wherever you grew up, as well as the meaning of the culture. I can just about guarantee that if you’d grown up in certain parts of the northeast, you’d feel some identification. You wouldn’t have had any choice. It would’ve been fed to you from babyhood. At this point, too, there’s a funny thing happening — the great-grandchildren are American enough that they don’t have to try to be American. They don’t have to hide anything. There’s little or no stigma attached to being fluent in the other culture. So where the grandparents might have been eager to run away from the old culture, the grandchildren are free to ask questions, dig up lost ways, recognize what can’t be resuscitated and attempt to make something new.
There’s a revival in Yiddish studies, for instance, which is a complete surprise to many remaining native Yiddish speakers. Many of them see no point to it, pointing out that the language sprang from dead circumstances, but that doesn’t seem to stop the enthusiasm, and of course it is turning into something new. But it is, still, something apart from American culture.
April 9th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
It may not be about migrant fruit-pickers, domestic help (eg pool cleaners,gardeners,nannies, or house cleaners), construction workers, or Walmart night-crews where you are in Iowa City, but you can bet your ass that for the 500,000 to 1.5 million Latinos (depending on whose estimate you use) that were marching in the streets of Los Angeles a week ago that’s EXACTLY what this is immigration bill is about. It is those people who keep this city functioning. They are effect almost every part of our lives here in Los Angeles and we all know it.
I haven’t heard what the details of the guest worker program would be, but if it is not a road to U.S. citizenship then it will fail to attract qualified middle-class job seekers (nurses, scientists, techies, etc) just as it failed in Germany.
April 9th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Mieke, illegal ag workers are the current immigration issue here, too, and it’s a major issue. But I think you’re missing my point. The importance of a guest-worker program, when you look at the complexion of the economy, is not whether the night-crew migrants get citizenship. However important it might be to the lives of migrants who are here & their families. As far as the economy goes, they’re here anyway, and they work anyway. The same is not true in industries where they take the H-1B visas seriously. Biomet is not paying Chinese biomechanical engineers in their US labs under the table. If the engineers can’t get the visas, they don’t work.
I don’t think “road to citizenship” is necessarily important in a high-status guest-worker population here. My impression of the H-1B and J crowd is that they’re young, well-educated, mobile, and often from well-off families in wherever they’re from. I don’t think they’re necessarily aiming for citizenship, even when they’ve been here many years. But that’s just my impression.
April 9th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
oh, Mieke, I think I see where we’re talking at cross purposes. I think you’re talking about the bill the protests are aimed at; I’m talking about guest-worker programs generally. I don’t support turning illegal migrant workers into felons.
April 9th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Amy, I have to admit that I agree with your comment: the great-grandchildren are American enough that they don’t have to try to be American. They don’t have to hide anything. There’s little or no stigma attached to being fluent in the other culture. But I question why anyone would need to restrain any culture today. I happen to live in NYC which is a melting pot of culture.
When I spend time with some extended in-laws who were born in Italy I realize how I am an American and not Italian-American. Very few people can truly live in America and keep every single cultural tradition on a daily basis. Some cultures have such a different daily lifestyle that it can conflict with life here. I am not simply speaking about food and language. Yet, I know of only one Italian family that keeps the traditional afternoon dinner and they own their own business for flexibility. In fact, I find that food and language are usually what most immigrants try to preserve the most or maybe it is what they have the most control over.