By Maria Martinez, Laura Garcia, and Sal Sandoval

American exceptionalism frames today’s immigration debate. Americans believe that immigration to the U.S. proves the universality of the nation’s liberal democratic principles and we resist examining the role American imperialism has played in the global structures of migration. Instead, we think of immigration as a unidirectional phenomenon in which the hapless poor of the world clamor at the gates of wealthier nations (Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects). If American exceptionalism frames the ideological debate on immigration, global capitalism frames the current economic reality.

Global capitalism has generated a crisis of social reproduction (survival) for millions of people around the globe. Increasing poverty, inequality, marginality, and deprivation are the dark underside of the global capitalist system. Mexico, at the center of the immigration debate, prominently illustrates the global crisis of survival. The technological revolution that followed advancements in manufacturing after World War II offered new opportunities in Mexico for American investors seeking to introduce high technology and use local labor. From the 1920s through the early 1970s, the Mexican government spurred economic growth by a model of import-substitution industrialization (ISI) which protected and promoted the development of national industries by Mexican producers making products for sale in Mexico.

Under pressure from an accumulating foreign debt, however, Mexican economic policy began to change. Government businesses were sold to private investors. U.S. companies were allowed to own land and factories anywhere in Mexico. Mexico became a laboratory for the economic reforms that have transformed the economies of developing countries, moving those countries away from policies that encourage national development toward ones that open up the economy for transnational investors. To that end, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was created to facilitate the formation of a single continental market in which goods, services, and money could freely cross the borders between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

As predicted by NAFTA’s opponents, the agreement devastated both U.S. and Mexican workers. According to the 2001 report “NAFTA at Seven” published by the Economic Policy Institute, “NAFTA eliminated 766,030 actual and potential U.S. jobs between 1994 and 2000 because of the rapid growth in the net U.S. export deficit with Mexico and Canada”. In “Rethinking the NAFTA Record” the Institute of Policy Studies reported that between the time NAFTA took effect in 1994 and May 2002, the U.S Department of Labor certified 403,000 U.S. workers for NAFTA-TAA benefits because the treaty cost them their jobs. Studies also found that exports don’t always produce jobs. In his book, Children of the NAFTA Wars, David Bacon reported that in the five industries that account for most exports to Mexico – electrical equipment, machinery, transportation equipment, chemicals, and primary metals – more than 1.5 million jobs disappeared from 1980 to 1995, while exports by these industries increased. U.S. corn exports to Mexico in June 1994 increased 525 percent over the previous year, further undermining Mexican small farmers who grow corn for domestic consumption. According to Mexican government reports that track population movements within its national borders, some three million small farmers and their families have been displaced from the land, unable to compete with U.S. corporate agribusiness.

Mexican President Vicente Fox (2000 to 2006) left the economy of his country stalled with a notable increase in unemployment, extreme income polarity, and few remaining opportunities. A recent World Bank report compared Mexico to Botswana, Africa in terms of economic inequality. According to this study, the Mexican economy demonstrated its capacity to generate wealth, but in the past few years however, it regressed in the form of its distribution, and it experienced a decline in the real purchasing power of its inhabitants. Fifty million Mexicans live on the equivalent of $1.00 a day, and in 2006 alone the interest payment on the debt of $26 billion was the highest in history. The Fox government consolidated Mexico as the tenth largest economy of the world, but it fell to 70th place in terms of per capita income ($6,790.00), and to 80th place if the income is measured by the real purchasing capacity – a level comparable to Botswana. (Nativo Lopez, “A Question of Strategy and Tactics – What's Next for the Immigrant Rights Movement?”, 2006)

More Mexicans have been systematically expelled from their national territory to the U.S. during the Fox Presidency than anytime in the history of the two countries. The Mexican government has documented that 430,000 to 500,000 Mexicans entered the U.S. surreptitiously annually over the past six years – Fox’s presidential term. The PAN’s Felipe Calderon has repeatedly crowed that he has no intention of tinkering with the terms of NAFTA or doing anything to protect the Mexican small farmer.

Despite the fact that immigration is driven by economic and political violence at the hands of transnational corporations and the governments that enthrone them, in the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security, the news media, and the politicians redefine the immigration issue to turn immigrant workers from victims into criminals. These forces have attempted to rally the American people to support the criminalization of immigrant workers as a solution to the growing anger of all workers in this country over the corporate attack on their living standards, the basic necessities of life, and the corporate looting of the country’s finances.

Where is the immigration movement today?

Discussion of the question begins by assuming that this motion – which can be characterized as spontaneous, political, social, economic, historic and revolutionary – is all at the same time a “movement”. Assuming it is a movement, or probably more accurately a movement in formation, it can be said to be generally confused, disorganized and isolated, with some sections extremely vulnerable. It is equally true however, that this “movement” is of national significance not only because it is big and growing, but more importantly, because it is a worldwide testament to the effects of the global transformation underway.

In assessing the immigration movement, we need to first understand that there are several sections of the movement that, at different times, begrudgingly, unite for a march or a conference, but whose interests can be different. One section of the movement is organized around getting legislation passed. It is all about compromise, not about a solution. Here the leadership of the churches, unions, and many organizations are vying to impose their compromised views on the rest of the movement.

Another section is that of immigrant rights groups, coalitions, immigrant membership organizations, and hometown associations. They are starting to split because their leadership is telling them they must compromise. Within this section are immigrants themselves. Their movement, or struggle, is for survival, which means resisting attacks on many fronts such as access to education, healthcare, job security, working conditions, deportation procedures, and the most basic rights, like housing. A compromise for them is not so easy.

A domestic worker expresses her frustration within her own coalition, and the movement in general, when she states that these organizations want to speak for her and control her political activities to fit within their framework. She says that immigrants are being robbed and terrorized by the state, “Every time they pull us over and take our cars – “es un robo!” These voices are being stifled by those fighting and speaking for them. Another woman said, “las uniones ni hacen ni dejan ha-cer”.

This section cannot accept a compromise and survive. They are more isolated than any other sector. They do not need more organizations or speakers. They need an outlet for their voices.

Revolutionaries emerging

There is no single mass organization to unite the scattered and varied struggles around immigrant issues. The absence of a cohesive national organization has made it difficult for anyone to claim leadership of this diverse movement, although organizations have tried, including the Democratic Party.

The immigrant rights movement relies instead on coalitions and networks or loosely connected autonomous groups deeply rooted in their respective areas, and in working class communities. This of, course, means that in the mainstream they are often invisible. They rely on small newspapers, internet listservs, blogs, and informal networks. Yet among these hundreds of organizations are thousands of dedicated and politically conscious revolutionaries who prefer this organizational form as a way to ensure political independence.

The confusion and disunity within the movement is reflective of the contradiction between resistance consciousness and the bourgeois aim of compromise, on the one hand; and the demands of the most vulnerable whose needs cannot be met by compromise or reform, on the other. This confusion and disunity, not only reveals a vacuum of ideas, but also the strivings for political independence and a real solution. So the most advanced sections of the movement are calling for full legalization.

Questions Before the Movement

The next question for revolutionaries is: What is our next step? What should we advocate? What is one step forward from full legalization? Does legalization address the causes of immigration? Does it create jobs on either side of the border? Will it increase or slow down the declining living standards on either side of the border? Will it curb corporate exploitation, or limit NAFTA in any way? Is it a call the class can rally around? We know that the abolition of private property is the ultimate conclusion, but how do we articulate this within this motion? What is the practical solution? No borders? A transnational wage?

We have to recognize that NAFTA did more to tear down borders and jeopardize American sovereignty than any immigrant. NAFTA did not create globalization, but it showed the governing classes of both developed and developing countries how globalization could be used to disconnect themselves from the constraints and obligations, imposed democratically or otherwise, by their national communities. The only way to end the immigration debate is to complete the integration process begun by NAFTA – no borders.

Maria Elena Martinez is a member of the editorial board of Tribuno del Pueblo, Laura Garcia is the Editor the Tribuno del Pueblo, Sal Sandoval M.D. is a member Tribuno del Pueblo Editorial Board.

 

September.2007.Vol17.Ed5
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