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 http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12548.htm

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN


Illegal Workers: the Cons' Secret Weapon 

By Thom Hartmann 

03/29/06 "Baltimore Chronicle" -- -- Conservatives are all atwitter about 
illegal 
immigrants. Some want to give them amnesty. Others want to reinstitute the old 
Bracero program. Others want to build a wall around America, like the 
communists did 
around East Berlin. Some advocate all of the above. 
But none will tell Americans the truth about why we have eleven million illegal 
aliens in this nation now (when it was fewer than 2 million when Reagan came 
into 
office), why they're staying, or why they keep coming. In a word, it's "jobs." 
In 
conservative lexicon, it's "cheap labor to increase corporate profits." 

Recently George W. Bush insulted working Americans by saying that we need 
eleven 
million illegal immigrants here in the United States because (in a slightly 
cleaned-
up version of the more blatantly racist comments of Vicente Fox) there are some 
jobs 
that "American's won't do." As the modern-day Sago miners, and the 1950s Ed 
Norton 
character Art Carney played on the old Jackie Gleason show (who worked in the 
sewers 
of NYC) prove, the reality is that there are virtually no jobs Americans won't 
do - 
for an appropriate paycheck. 

It's really all about breaking the back of the most democratic (and Democratic) 
of 
American institutions - the American middle class. 

One of the tools conservatives have used very successfully over the past 25 
years to 
drive down wages, bust unions, and increase CEO salaries has been to encourage 
illegal immigrant labor in the US. Their technique is transparently simple. 

Conservatives well understand supply and demand. If there's more of something, 
its 
price goes down. If it becomes scarce, its price goes up. 

They also understand that this applies just as readily to labor as it does to 
houses, cars, soybeans, or oil. While the history of much of the progressive 
movement in the United States has been to control the supply of labor (mostly 
through pushing for maximum-hour, right-to-strike, and child-labor laws) to 
thus be 
able to bargain decent wages for working people, the history of conservative 
America 
has, from its earliest days grounded in slavery and indentured workers from 
Europe, 
been to increase the supply of labor and drive down its cost. 

In the 1980s, for example, the increasing supply of labor (both from 
Reagan-allowed 
consolidations eliminating redundant jobs, and from illegal immigration, which 
was 
around 3 million illegals by the time Reagan left office) fed massive 
union-busting 
in industry sectors from those directly hit with illegal immigrant labor (like 
construction and agriculture) to those who only felt its fallout but 
nonetheless 
were pressed (like coal mining). In part, because of these national downward 
pressures on organized labor, the miners who died in the International Coal 
Group's 
Sago Mine didn't have union protection. 

Indeed, as the International Coal Group's June 2005 form S-A/1 filing notes 
about 
one of their other recent mine acquisitions: ".assets are high quality reserves 
strategically located in Appalachia and the Illinois Basin, are union free, 
have 
limited reclamation liabilities and are substantially free of other legacy 
liabilities." Similarly, it's estimated that the construction industry enhanced 
their profits last year by over a billion dollars because the availability of 
illegal immigrant labor has so significantly pushed down the price of 
construction 
labor. 

"Union free" is good for the CEOs and stockholders of giant corporations. 
Reagan 
helped make it possible by reducing enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust and 
similar acts, by making the Labor Department hostile to labor, and by thus 
producing 
an environment into which illegal immigrant labor could step. He busted PATCO 
and 
popularized anti-union rhetoric, at a time when union membership was one of the 
primary boundaries that keep illegal labor out of the marketplace. 

Today, this fundamental economic rule of labor supply and demand is most 
conspicuous 
in the conservative reluctance to stop illegal immigration into the United 
States. 
All those extra (illegal) workers, after all, drive up the supply - and thus 
drive 
down the cost - of labor. Even in areas where there are not high populations of 
illegal immigrants, their presence elsewhere in the American workforce drives 
down 
overall the cost of labor nationwide. And when the cost of labor goes down, 
there's 
more money left over for CEOs and stockholder dividends.

Conservatives can't just come out and say that they are pleased with the 
estimated 
eleven million illegal workers in the United States driving down 
wages.Conservatives 
can't just come out and say that they are pleased with the estimated eleven 
million 
illegal workers in the United States driving down wages. They can't brag that, 
behind oil revenue, Mexico's second largest source of income is money sent home 
from 
illegal "cheap labor" workers in the United States. They can't point out that 
before 
Reagan declared war on working people in 1981 we didn't "need a fence" to keep 
out 
illegal immigrants from the south, in large part because the high rate of 
unionization in America at that time, and enforcement of laws against hiring 
illegal 
immigrants, served as barriers to the entry of illegals into the workforce. 
They 
won't acknowledge the corporate benefits of a workforce whose healthcare is 
paid for 
by taxpayers but whose productivity belongs to their corporate masters. 

But conservative strategists have noticed that the workers - and the voters - 
of the 
United States are getting nervous about nearly 10 percent of our workforce 
being 
both illegal and cheap. This has led conservative commentators and politicians 
to 
resort to classic "wedge issue" rhetoric, exploiting Americans' fears -- while 
working to keep conditions relatively the same as they are today. 

They talk about building fences. They worry out loud about brown-skinned Middle 
Eastern terrorists slipping in amongst the brown-skinned South- and Central 
Americans. They warn us of all the social security money we'll lose if illegals 
have 
to leave the country and stop paying into a system from which they'll never be 
able 
to collect. They even find themselves obligated - catering to both 
working-class 
fears and to the bigots among us - to promote the idea of giant fences around 
the 
country to keep illegals out. (A fence that would, no doubt, tremendously 
profit 
their big contractor friends.) 

At the same time, catering to compassionate Americans who don't realize this is 
all 
about driving up corporate profits and driving down workers' wages, cons like 
Arlen 
Specter are promoting legislation that would decriminalize the illegals 
currently in 
the United States, thus making legal our increased workforce. As Rachel L. 
Swarns 
reported in The New York Times on February 25, 2006: "Advocates for immigrants 
said 
the [Bush/Specter] plan failed to protect the rights of immigrant workers, who 
they 
argue deserve a clear path to citizenship. And the AFL-CIO warned that a guest 
worker program of unlimited scale would depress wages and working conditions 
while 
creating a perpetual underclass of foreign workers."

None of the various con proposals - from a fence to amnesty - address the 
fundamental truth of the situation: Conservatives and the businesses they 
represent 
want to maintain a large, illegal or marginally legal, and thus powerless 
workforce 
in the United States, to keep down the price of labor and help them finally 
destroy 
the union movement - and, thus, that politically pesky middle class. 

The reason for all these lies and obfuscations is simple, and found in the core 
notions of conservatism, articulated from Burke in the late 1700s to Kirk in 
1953 
and Greenspan over the past two decades. It's all about power, and since wealth 
equals power, about the control of wealth in society. 

Conservatives believe that what John Adams called "the rabble" - you and me - 
can't 
really be trusted with governance, and therefore that job should be kept to an 
elite 
few. The big difference between the old-line Burke conservatives and modern 
conservatives is that Burke and the cons of his day felt that an hereditary 
ruling 
class was desirable (because it would inculcate rulers with a sense of 
"noblesse 
oblige"), whereas modern cons like Adams, McKinley, Kirk, and Bush believe that 
the 
ruling class should be more of a meritocracy - rule by the "best." 

And - in the finest tradition of John Calvin (who suggested that wealth was a 
sign 
of God's blessing) - what better indication of "best" could there be than 
"richest"? 
They believe there should be a thin veneer of democracy on these old 
conservative 
notions of aristocracy in order to placate the masses, but are quite certain 
that it 
would be a disaster should the rabble ever actually have a strong say in 
running the 
country.

This is, at its core, why conservatives embrace the idea of eliminating the 
American 
middle class and replacing it with a Dickensian "working poor" class, and are 
working so hard to use illegal immigrant labor as the lever to bring this 
about. 

As the '60's and '70's showed - during the height of the American middle 
class's 
economic and political power - a strong middle class will challenge corporate 
power 
and assert itself economically and politically. This represents a very real 
threat 
to conservative ruling elites. "The people" may even suggest that the most 
elite of 
the elites should pay stiffer taxes on the top end of their income, so that 
money 
can be used to provide the economically most disadvantaged with an opportunity 
to 
become socially and economically mobile. It would reduce the most massive of 
the 
wealth and the power of the most elite of our conservative elites.

Offshoring, union-busting, and nurturing a huge population of illegal workers 
(while 
pretending to be frantic about it and bleating about building fences, fielding 
vigilantes, or offering "amnesty") are the core ways to destroy an economic 
middle 
class, thus ensuring the ongoing political power of the conservative elite 
takeover 
that began with the so-called "Reagan revolution" and continues to this day. 

This is why conservatives who complain about illegal immigration in front of 
the 
cameras won't lift a finger in the halls of congress to pass legislation that 
would 
put employers of illegals into jail. (They may support "tough fines," just so 
long 
as they're high enough to sound like a lot of money to the average working 
stiff but 
low enough to be a "cost of business" for a corporation that gets caught.) 

If Congress were to pass a law that said, quite simply, that the CEO of any 
business 
that was caught employing illegal immigrants went to jail for a year - no 
exceptions 
- then within a month there would be ten million (more or less) people lined up 
at 
the Mexican border trying to get out of the United States. The US unemployment 
rate 
would drop close to zero, and wages would begin to rise. The American middle 
class 
would begin to return to viability, as would the union movement in this nation. 

Legal immigration is a good and healthy thing for a nation, because it is done 
at a 
rate and in a way that allows a country to collectively decide what sort of 
labor/jobs ratios it wants to maintain. Limitless illegal immigration, however, 
leads to the modern-day equivalent of slavery, benefiting only the conservative 
corporate elites. 

Thus, progressives need to begin a new dialogue about immigration in the United 
States. (Similar discussions are already underway in many of the countries of 
Western Europe.) Issues include: 

To what extent should the United States bleed its middle class because Mexico 
is a 
corrupt oligarchy run by a corrupt former Coca-Cola executive?

How do we work out fair and reasonable options for illegal families living and 
working here who have birthed "anchor children" in the US, now citizens of this 
nation? 

How can we ensure "security" along our southern border in an "age of 
terrorism"? (A 
good start may be to stop promulgating policies that cause the world to hate 
us, but 
that's another article.) 

How do we recalibrate our business and tax laws so businesses - particularly 
small 
and middle-sized businesses - can adjust away from depending on a terrified 
"working-
poor-competing-with-even-more-terrified-illegal-labor" workforce and move 
toward 
being able to pay a more robust, domestic, unionized workforce? 

How can progressives join with the few remaining populist Republicans (like Lou 
Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan) to forge an alliance to make this an all-American 
effort 
and not have it further split the nation?

And how can we all collectively work to prevent Bush and Specter from 
re-instituting 
the brutal Bracero "guest worker" program of the last century?

As the anguished mining families in West Virginia show, Bush was wrong when he 
said 
there were jobs Americans "won't do." But in the face of massive illegal 
immigration 
and the union-busting and wage deflation it spawns, there are increasingly jobs 
that 
Americans "can't do" and still maintain a viable lifestyle. 

While some geographically-specific industries (like coal mining) don't appear 
overwhelmed by illegal immigrant labor, its impact on the nation as a whole has 
made 
it easier for union-busting to take place from the construction industry in New 
Mexico to the coal mines of West Virginia. Directly or indirectly, illegal 
immigration affects all working Americans. 

Condemning the frightened working-class white guys organizing citizens' 
militias 
along our southern border, or vilifying those who listen to Limbaugh and are 
convinced that "liberals" are in some sort of collective plot to undermine 
America 
may feel good, but it doesn't address the real problem. Progressives will be 
most 
effective when we reach across the divides created by Bush, Specter, et al, and 
point out how this is really all about corporate conservative efforts to 
replace the 
American middle class with a workforce of "working poor" Americans and 
powerless 
illegal immigrants (or powerless "amnestied" workers) - all so CEOs can fatten 
their 
paychecks and further reward the "conservative" investor class. 

Only then will Mexico and other countries to our south have an incentive to get 
their own houses in order, and will our middle class begin to recover decent 
bargaining power and the living wages that accompany it. 

 
Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host 
of a 
nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show carried on the Air America 
Radio 
network and Sirius. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books include "What 
Would 
Jefferson Do?" and "Ultimate Sacrifice" (co-authored with Lamar Waldron). His 
next 
book, due out this autumn, is "Screwed: The Undeclared War on the Middle Class 
and 
What We Can Do About It." 

Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. 

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