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Economist Paul Krugman is "proud
of America's immigrant history, and grateful that the door was
open when my grandparents fled Russia."
Now, however, he argues that
the U.S. should close its door on the poor huddled masses, warning,
"We need to do something about immigration, and soon,"
in a New York Times op-ed on March 27-the same day the
Senate opened debate on immigration reform.
Krugman cites "serious,
nonpartisan research" revealing "some uncomfortable
facts about the economics of modern immigration, and immigration
from Mexico in particular."
In reality, the foreign-born
population today remains under its historic high point of 15
percent a century ago, when Krugman's grandparents presumably
emigrated to the U.S.
But Krugman claims that the
current pool of Mexican migrants reduces wages for unskilled
native-born workers, citing a recent Harvard study estimating
that "high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent
more if it weren't for Mexican immigration."
Krugman neatly sidesteps another
"uncomfortable fact": the federal minimum wage, unchanged
by Congress for eight years, fell to its lowest level in 56 years
in 2005-to just 32 percent of the average wage for private sector
workers-surely exercising a greater downward pressure on wages than that of Mexican
workers.
In addition, he claims, "low-skill
immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the benefits
they receive," threatening to "unravel" America's
(suddenly generous) welfare state.
Yet, according to the National
Conference of State Legislators in 2005, immigrants pay on average
$1,800 in taxes in excess of their "cost" in
government services.
Krugman's argument, furthermore,
fails to account for the millions in unpaid taxes, thanks to
Bush's tax cuts, from extremely wealthy, native-born Americans.
His anti-immigrant stance showcases
the bankruptcy of the "liberal" flank in the current
immigration debate now supposedly "raging" on Capitol
Hill.
Senator Hillary Clinton helped
raise the level of melodrama last week, accusing Republicans
of promoting legislation that would criminalize "even Jesus
himself," while Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid threatened
to filibuster Republican legislation raising the crime level
of undocumented immigration to felony status.
Yet back in 2003, Clinton told
WABC, "People have to stop employing illegal immigrants."
She also went on record supporting "at least a visa ID,
some kind of entry-and-exit ID. And ... we might have to move
towards an ID system even for citizens."
Politicians of both parties
face a similar dilemma: balancing their search for votes among
Red State conservatives with the growing Latino vote, 40 percent
of which went to Bush in 2004.
Both Democrats and Republicans
have already opportunistically agreed to limit the parameters
of debate to varying degrees of "enhancing border security"
and the desirability of guest worker programs-both assuring certain
deportation for Mexican workers.
Linda Chavez-Thompson, AFL-CIO
Executive Vice President, recently argued that "all"
bills in Congress "fail to protect even the most basic rights
of immigrant workers and their families."
Wholesale amnesty is not in
the cards on either side. Also missing is the notion that foreign-born
workers hold the potential to raise working-class wages
through their own struggles for union organization.
Immigrant workers have played
a key role in advancing the labor movement historically, from
the battle for the eight-hour day that led to the 1886 Haymarket
Square massacre to the United Farm Workers, a self-organized
movement that finally unionized California's migrant farm workers
in the 1960s.
According to the Pew Hispanic
Center, undocumented immigrants make up 24 percent of all workers
currently employed in farming occupations, 17 percent in cleaning,
14 percent in construction and 12 percent in food preparation.
Their potential for organizing
is far greater today than 100 years ago, when the American Federation
of Labor's president Samuel Gompers routinely described immigrant
labor as "garbage".
In 2000, the AFL-CIO finally
reversed its long-standing opposition to undocumented immigrants,
supporting amnesty and the right to organize into unions.
Now it is time for the labor
movement to make good on this promise to the hundreds of thousands
of Mexican-American workers who have been demonstrating across
the country, demanding legalization, in recent weeks.
CounterPunch
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CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
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