Re: Immigration laws and multiple labor markets (was: Re: SocialImperialism [O' Lincoln]

["David Schanoes" <Schanoes@xxxxxxx>]

Immigration laws, and the enforcement thereof, are reflections of the
economy's need for access to, and need to expel, labor from the
production process.  Depending on the expansion or contraction of
capital, we get one or the other, or sometimes both-- the continuous
migration and employment of labor despite stepped up enforcement of
sanctions.

Let's recall the Reagan era drive to criminalize employment of
immigrants, and the failue of that law to stem the demand, and the
supply, of such labor.

It is the permeability of the system, despite its manifest attempts to
control immigration that is critical.  Lou Paulsen states that if
Mexican labor was free to cross the border, US wages would fall.  Well,
this is exactly what has taken place over the past 30 years.  And with
the enforcement of some sanctions, and the growth of the maquilladoras,
US wages still fell.  The Reagan era was not just a lost decade in Latin
America, but in the US as well.

Today, the penetration of Mexican agriculture by the demands of
advanced capitalism embodied in the Nafta accords,  including the
purchase of production and processing facilities by the US agriculture,
forces more of the landed population into the migratory stream-- and US
wages will continue to fall, both in the particular arenas for
industrial workers as a whole as more and more are unemployed, and in
the general arena as more and more of the US population is forced into
lower paying jobs.

dms


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