Common Dreams xenophobia

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

On today's Common Dreams website (a pro-Democratic Party outlet founded by 
nonprofit foundation entrepreneur Don Hazen), there's a completely rancid 
article on immigration written by Thom Hartmann, an Air America radio host 
and author of such groundbreaking books as "Focus Your Energy", which is 
described on his website (http://www.thomhartmann.com/focus.shtml) as a way 
to succeed in business even if you suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. 
Just what suffering humanity has been waiting for. Although I lack the 
patience to do a thorough study of Hartmann-thought, he strikes me as a 
combination of New Age hustler and woozy-headed liberal.

He basically describes "illegal immigration" as a corporatist plot to keep 
the wages of U.S. workers down. In order for him to establish his 
progressive bona fides, he invokes the late Cesar Chavez as an ally:

"The reason why thirty years ago United Farm Workers' Union (UFW) founder 
Caesar Chávez fought against illegal immigration, and the UFW turned in 
illegals during his tenure as president, was because Chávez, like 
progressives since the 1870s, understood the simple reality that labor 
rises and falls in price as a function of availability."

Actually, as Hartmann acknowledges in the very next paragraph, the actions 
were taken against *scabs*: "In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched 
through the Imperial and Coachella Valley to the border of Mexico to 
protest growers' use of illegal aliens as temporary replacement workers 
during a strike."

At any rate, given the sad state of the UFW as documented in the recent LA 
Times series, the last thing one would want to do is build a progressive 
politics based on uncritically accepting whatever Cesar Chavez did.

Hartmann believes that the elevated status of the American working class is 
attributable to some degree by its ability to exclude immigrants from the 
dining table. "[T]hey limited labor-hours by supporting laws that would 
regulate immigration into the United States to a small enough flow that it 
wouldn't dilute the unionized labor pool." Yes, we don't want to dilute our 
precious stock, do we?

Hartmann cites a wikipedia article to back up his argument: "The first laws 
creating a quota for immigrants were passed in the 1920s, in response to a 
sense that the country could no longer absorb large numbers of unskilled 
workers, despite pleas by big business that it wanted the new workers."

This dingbat doesn't seem to understand that this "sense" was driven by 
racism and xenophobia and not out of any desire that native workers get a 
better life.

"The eugenics movement persuaded policy-makers in the United States -- the 
nation of immigrants -- that unrestricted immigration was a serious threat 
to the nation's health. In 1924, the government passed the Johnson Act, 
setting limits on the number of immigrants who could come here from various 
nations. The limits were designed to encourage immigration from northern 
Europe and to discourage immigration from the rest of the world, southern 
Europe included. The law was effective; the number of immigrants plummeted.

"The Johnson Act turned out to be one of the most lethal bills ever passed. 
Fifteen years after its passage, Jews trying to escape from Nazi Germany 
were refused asylum in America. It is not possible to know how many Jews 
would have fled to the United States if they had been welcome. Of the six 
million Jews who died under Hitler, would 10,000 have been saved by a more 
hospitable policy? Would half a million people have been saved?"

Full: http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap04.html

"Continuing along in his racist and ignorant fashion, Hartmann writes:

"At the same time, there are between seven and fifteen million working 
illegal immigrants diluting our labor pool. [Don't you love it how he is so 
fixated on "dilution"? Somehow I am reminded of Jack D. Ripper and his 
worries about "precious bodily fluids" in Dr. Strangelove.]

"If illegal immigrants could no longer work, unions would flourish, the 
minimum wage would rise, and oligarchic nations to our south would have to 
confront and fix their corrupt ways."

Excuse my profanity, but this is unvarnished bullshit.

Unions can only begin to flourish when they understand that all working 
people have the same class interests. Some of the most positive steps 
taking place in the union movement today are the direct result of the 
participation of "illegal immigrants" as this 3/15/2001 Christian Science 
Monitor article demonstrates:

Jerry Dominguez can often be found wandering the streets of New York. On 
this winter afternoon he stops outside a West Side grocery store where a 
Mexican worker is tending buckets of bright flowers.

"How much do you make here, amigo?" he asks. "How many hours do you work here?"

It turns out the worker, whose name is Elias, earns less than the minimum 
wage, but doesn't complain out of fear of deportation. He is exactly what 
Mr. Dominguez is looking for.

The founder of the Mexican-American Workers' Association, Dominguez is on 
the front lines of an unusual union-organizing campaign. His recruits are 
the largely invisible people who work long days and nights for meager pay 
and no benefits - the estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Mexican immigrants like 
Elias who work in New York.

After decades of seeing undocumented immigrants as the enemy of 
working-class Americans - taking valuable jobs - unions are beginning to 
embrace small organizing initiatives among foreign workers in a quest to 
expand union ranks.

Last April, more than 8,000 Los Angeles janitors, mostly undocumented 
Hispanics, joined the Service Employees International Union and won a pay 
increase of 26 percent over three years.

Simultaneously, the powerful AFL-CIO - long one of the groups most 
vociferous about the threat posed by illegal immigrants - reversed its 
position on key issues involving foreign workers. AFL-CIO President John 
Sweeney has called for an amnesty for America's 6 million illegals and an 
end to sanctions against employers who hire them.

Now, some unions are trying to organize undocumented workers by launching 
neighborhood-to-neighborhood campaigns like the one here in New York, 
recalling organizing efforts of 50 years ago.

"They're now going back to the model of making coalitions in communities," 
says Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor expert at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

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