Re: Immigration laws (Junaid Alam)

["dmschanoes" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom--

Real wages for US workers began declining in 1973, and this had little to do
with immigration and/or the willingness or availability of Chinese, Indian,
Mexican to work for less wages.  It had everything to do with a sustained
decline in the rate of profit, in the rate of return on investment.

This truly initiates an assault by the bourgeoisie on the wages, work rules,
and living standards of the working class, internationally.  1973 is marked
by two critical indicators of this assault:  1. The overthrow of Allende by
the US sponsored military and 2.OPEC.  If OPEC didn't exist, the US would
have invented it.  OPEC did exist, and the US still had to invent it.
Through OPEC 1, the US bourgeoisie launches what is essentially a trade war,
beggaring its neighbors  in combination with draining their wealth through
the mechanism of oil prices.  OPEC and Monetarism are the practical and
ideological pillars of  capital's crusaders.

The oil money flooding the US banks does nothing to mitigate the assault on
US wage levels  However, the flood of oil money does permit the US
bourgeoisie to engage in considerable financial investments in the
developing world while beginning the "rationalization," --- dismantling-- of
its labor force through elimination of some of its industrial capacity.

In 1979/1980, another round of assaults is launched, trumpeted by OPEC 2,
and this too has little to do with immigrant labor.  It has everything to do
with another decline in the rate of return, and this round of assaults
reduces the wages, the numbers, the organization of workers, eliminates more
"fixed" capital, redistributes wealth upward by attacking the rural and
urban poor, and drives Latin America into a decade of immiseration carried
out both at the point of the bayonet and the spread in interest points.

Wage rates and the role of  immigration are determined by the needs of
capital, and the class struggle so generated.

dms



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