First, we should remember that Democrats and Republicans within the U.S. mainstream share a broad set of values and beliefs. In the global spectrum, they fall pretty close together. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported and helped to orchestrate the global and domestic economic order that has emerged since the 1970s. In broad terms, this has meant privatizations, a shift away from government regulation of industry, cutbacks in government services, and a free trade agenda that has pushed other governments—especially Third World governments—to follow these same policies in more extreme ways.
Domestically, this process has been described as a retreat from the mid-century redistributive government role embodied in the New Deal and the War on Poverty. Although those programs are associated (rightly) with the Democratic Party, the Democrats of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have retreated from the social welfare orientation of their predecessors, at least at the national level.
Internationally, the new consensus is sometimes (not very accurately) called globalization. The philosophy behind it can be seen in the Chicago School of Economics–inspired program implemented in Chile in the 1970s, in the Structural Adjustment Programs (or SAPs) mandated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for the Third World in the 1980s, and in the so-called Washington Consensus prescribed for Latin American and other Third World economies in the 1990s.
Though they have different names, these policy approaches all encompass similar basic principles, sometimes also called “neoliberal” because they draw on some aspects of nineteenth-century liberal economic thought (which is very different from what Americans generally think of as “liberal” in the twentieth century). They call for cutting back government spending on social welfare (including health and education), encouraging the export economy by devaluing currency and ending currency controls and tariffs, eliminating government subsidies for programs for the poor, abolishing price controls, privatizing state-owned enterprises, creating incentives for foreign investors, deregulating industries, and protecting property rights.
In other words, the role of governments in the Third World should be to create optimum conditions for foreign investors, in hopes that investment will bring economic development that will eventually benefit the poor. In the United States these kinds of policies are often called “Reaganomics,” after Ronald Reagan, or “trickle-down economics”: by offering the rich greater ability to increase their wealth, benefits will eventually trickle down to the poor.
Prior to the 1970s, most Latin American countries had followed a very different economic path, one that looked a bit more like the New Deal. The mid-century policies were different from the New Deal because Latin American countries in general had a low level of industrialization, and a lot of emphasis was placed on state-sponsored industrialization. But they were similar to the New Deal in their use of government spending to provide services and employment for the working classes, and implementation of fiscal policies aimed at supporting local development rather than foreign investment.
The most recent embodiments of the neoliberal model have been the free trade agreements that the United States signed with Mexico and Canada in 1994 and those that are currently in progress (agreed upon and approved by the United States, but awaiting final approval by some of the participants) with the Dominican Republic and Central America: NAFTA and CAFTA. The United States has also been pushing for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would spread this agenda through the entire continent. Since 2000, though, the election of leftist governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia has derailed the push for the FTAA.
Neoliberal policies have had profound effects on the populations and social structures of Latin American countries. Living conditions for the poor, who relied on subsidized services and basic goods and on price controls, plummeted as the safety net was dismantled. Free trade was also disastrous for many peasant farmers, who could not compete with the highly mechanized and heavily subsidized U.S. agricultural sector whose products then flooded their country’s markets. While U.S. economic advisers and lenders insisted that Latin American countries end their subsidies to the agricultural sector, U.S. agribusiness continued to receive huge subsidies and benefits from the U.S. government.
Peasants who fled to the already overcrowded cities found the social services and benefits there vanishing. The new maquiladora industries employed some people, but far fewer than had been expected, and often they did not pay a living wage. In addition, popular protest often met with increasing repression. Free-market policies may be associated with democracy in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialized world, but in the Third World, they more commonly come with the disappearance of democratic rights, as in Pinochet’s Chile.
This is the complex of factors—pressed for by both Democratic and Republican administrations—that led to increased out-migration from Latin America at the end of the twentieth century. At the same time, though, both Democratic and Republic administrations were implementing a U.S. version of neoliberalism at home. Welfare reform, privatizations, cutbacks in social services like health and education, attacks on labor unions, deregulation—all of these things were happening in the United States as well, and contributing to the growing gaps in income and wealth in this country.
Despite these broad areas of agreement, policymakers, commentators, and the public at large can often be found hotly debating the issue of immigration. Within the mainstream, the current debate on immigration can be framed by the recent Senate and House bills that propose solutions to the supposed problem of immigration. There are some significant differences between the bills, but there are also some important commonalities. The 2006 Senate bill, known as the Kennedy-McCain proposal, has been called a “comprehensive” proposal because it provides a path for the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country to obtain legal status. In addition, it provides for increased border control and a guest-worker program to regulate future immigration. The House bill is an “enforcement-only” approach that puts much more emphasis on border control: it proposes building a new seven-hundred-mile wall along the southern border, hiring ten thousand new Border Patrol agents, building new detention facilities, and further criminalizing undocumented immigrants and those who employ or aid them.
The Senate bill is the more liberal of the two and enjoys support from a number of liberal advocacy groups—but also from President Bush. Most of its backers are Democrats, though significant numbers of Republicans also support it. The House bill is a Republican-sponsored bill that only small numbers of Democrats have come out in favor of.
Most immigrants’ rights groups argue strongly for the need for a comprehensive reform. Some have come out in support of the Senate bill, believing that it is the best that can be hoped for in the current political climate.1 Others object to the punitive requirements for legalization, and to the notion of a new guest-worker program.2 Unions are similarly divided. The AFL-CIO opposes the Senate plan, arguing that guest-worker programs by their very nature create a group of people who are not full citizens, and who are easily exploited and abused. “It creates a permanent underclass of workers who are unable to fully participate in democracy,” said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. “The plan deepens the potential for abuse and exploitation of these workers, while undermining wages and labor protections for all workers.”3
In contrast, Eliseo Medina, president of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), whose father came to the United States under the bracero program, argues that this guest worker proposal avoids the problematic aspects of earlier programs. He declared the SEIU’s support for the Senate bill. The Change to Win Coalition, which split from the AFL-CIO in 2005 and to which the SEIU now belongs, has not taken an official position on the matter. But some SEIU members disagreed so strongly with their union’s position that they formed a new organization called “No Worker Is Illegal” to press the SEIU to revise its stance. “Guest-worker programs, further militarization of the border, and employer sanctions hurt all workers,” they explain.4
Others point out that a temporary guest-worker program is at odds with the jobs that migrant workers are filling. Only one in ten Mexican workers in the United States holds a temporary or seasonal job. “Rotating temporary workers through permanent jobs is simply not sound policy, and invites non-compliance with the terms of the programme by both migrants and employers,” notes immigration specialist Wayne Cornelius.5
Meanwhile, states and local communities around the United States are discussing or implementing anti-immigrant regulations. Fifty-seven state-level bills were enacted in the first half of 2006. A few of these actually extended some rights to noncitizens, but the majority sought to further marginalize and exclude them. Especially popular were those restricting public benefits and those punishing unauthorized employment.6
Hazelton, Pennsylvania, Vista, California, and Milford, Massachusetts, are only three of dozens of cities that have passed local ordinances aimed against immigrants. The southern California town of Vista (population 72,000) now requires those who hire day laborers to “register with the city, display a certificate in their car windows and present written terms of employment to workers.” Milford revised zoning laws to prevent unrelated adults from sharing housing. Hazelton’s mayor signed the “Illegal Immigration Relief Act” to punish those who do business with, employ, or provide housing for undocumented immigrants.7 In New Hampshire, local police in Hudson and New Ipswich have arrested undocumented immigrants for trespassing. (The courts struck down the charges.) The Arizona legislature passed a similar bill in April, 2006, though it was vetoed by the governor.8
While right-wing talk-show hosts have become notorious for their rather virulent anti-immigrant stances, polls show that in fact significant majorities of the population support the “comprehensive” approach that provides a route to legalization for undocumented immigrants currently in the country as well as increased border control. A Manhattan Institute survey of likely Republican voters found that 72 percent supported a plan along the lines of the Senate proposal.9
Much, however, depends on how the question is framed. A CNN poll commissioned by anti-immigrant commentator Lou Dobbs asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the U.S. government deporting immigrants to the country they came from?” Sixty-seven percent answered, “approve.” When asked whether they wanted to see the number of illegal immigrants increased, decreased, or stay the same, 67 percent said “decreased”—but only 34 percent followed up that they wanted to see all illegal immigrants deported.
Interestingly, the CNN/Dobbs poll found the most dramatic results when it asked, “When someone is arrested, do you think the police should be required to determine whether that person is a U.S. citizen?” and “When someone applies to a social service agency for assistance such as welfare or food stamps, do you think that agency should or should not be required to check whether that person is a citizen and record their citizenship status?” Eighty-three percent answered “yes” to the first, and 91 percent to the second.10
The AFL-CIO enthusiastically promotes Dobbs’s Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas on its “Union Shop” website.11 Dobbs made common cause with the AFL-CIO on issues of outsourcing and free trade, making union representatives frequent guests on his show. He was lauded by AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka, who called his show a “nightly crusade,” and the New York Teacher, which called him “the working chump’s champion.”12
Dobbs parted with the unions, though, when the AFLCIO began to move away from its anti-immigrant stance. Dobbs takes a populist line against immigration, arguing that “big business and labor groups are the beneficiaries of illegal immigration, the true costs are borne by taxpayers and working Americans.”13 “American working men and women are under the most vicious assault from so-called free trade, job outsourcing to cheap foreign labor markets, rising healthcare costs, a failing educational system, massive illegal immigration, and stagnant wages,” Dobbs writes, taking unions to task for failing to protect their members’—and other working people’s—interests.14
Still, despite the popularity of Dobbs and other virulently anti-immigrant media figures, public opinion overall seems to be decidedly less hysterical on the issue than are the voices that make it into the media. The Pew Hispanic Foundation found that 52 percent agreed that immigrants “are a burden because they take jobs, housing, and health-care,” while 41 percent felt that immigrants “strengthen our country with their hard work and talents.” These numbers varied fairly significantly by age, educational level, and economic level, with older people, people with only a high school education or less, and people who reported their personal finances as “only fair/poor” being more likely to feel immigrants were a burden. Interestingly, there was no significant difference between blacks and whites, although Hispanics were much more likely to see immigrants in positive terms.15
The Pew research brought out two additional, illuminating results. First, people who lived in areas with very few immigrants were much more likely to have negative views of immigrants than people who lived in areas with high concentrations of immigrants. In areas with low concentrations of immigrants, a full 67 percent felt that immigrants were a burden and only 27 percent felt that they strengthened the country, whereas in areas with many immigrants, 47 percent felt they were a burden and 48 percent felt they were a benefit.16 This suggests that for many people, anti-immigrant sentiments come less from personal experience than from outside sources.
Second, the poll showed that despite the virulence of anti-immigrant rhetoric on talk shows and elsewhere, very few people, even those who said they were worried about immigrants taking jobs, housing, and health care, really considered the issue to be of major importance. Sixty-two percent said that the presence of immigrants in their communities had not significantly affected public services, and only 27 percent said that immigrants had negatively affected services.17 When asked what the most important problem facing their local community was, 14 percent answered crime and violence, 14 percent said unemployment, and 12 percent said education. Between 5 and 10 percent each chose one of the following: crowding/traffic, roads, infrastructure, and government/politics. Only 4 percent saw immigration as the most important problem.18
Where, then, does the virulence of the debate come from? Why do politicians and commentators seem to think that immigration is such a divisive and hot-button issue, if the American public seems more concerned about traffic and road conditions, to say nothing of crime, unemployment, and education?
I’ll suggest two possible explanations. One is that while large numbers of Americans don’t share in the anti-immigrant fears and sentiments, those who do so feel very strongly and are very vocal. Their voices thus make a large and noisy impact in the public sphere.
The second is that elected officials, and commentators and talk-show hosts, are very much aware of the many Americans who are deeply disturbed by the growing economic inequalities, loss of quality of life, and deterioration of public services that have resulted from economic restructuring in the United States over the past thirty years. An ever-growing segment of the U.S. middle class lives “only a job loss, a medical problem, or an out-of-control credit card away from financial catastrophe.”19
Not only do Americans feel that they are in an economically precarious situation, they also have little faith in their leaders to resolve the issues facing our society. One recent poll asked Americans to rate the level of trust they feel in the country’s institutions. The levels of trust were appallingly low: only 3 percent trusted Congress, 7 percent trusted corporate leaders, 11 percent trusted the media, 24 percent trusted the president, and 29 percent trusted the courts.20 Meanwhile, voter turnout rates in the United States hover between 50 percent and 60 percent—among the lowest in the industrialized world.21
Under such circumstances, it’s not surprising that some members of Congress and the media resort to fearmongering and scapegoating as a way of trying to attract public attention and support. Immigrants present a convenient target. The level of noise, however, seems to be greater than anti-immigrant demagogues’ actual ability to influence public opinion. Between 2000 and 2006, the numbers of Americans who believed that immigrants are a burden on the country did increase, from 38 percent to 52 percent, while those who believed they strengthened the country decreased from 50 percent to 41 percent. Still, between 1997 and 2006 the proportion believing that Latinos work very hard increased from 63 to 80 percent, the proportion believing that they often go on welfare decreased from 55 to 37 percent, and the proportion believing that they significantly increased crime rates decreased from 43 to 33 percent.22
Furthermore, the numbers who believe that immigrants take jobs from Americans has been on a fairly steady decline since 1983, when over 40 percent believed it. Today it’s just 24 percent.23 So it seems that the upsurge in anti-immigrant rhetoric and politicking may have inflamed small numbers of people, but that most people in the country, especially those who live in high-immigration areas, hold more measured views.