Organized Labor

The border between American Maine and British New Brunswick had been in dispute since the American Revolution. British companies were logging white pine for ship masts in the woods south of the St. John. Maine objected. In 1839 it sent militiamen north. They built a blockhouse at the confluence of the Fish and St. John Rivers and claimed the land and the inhabitants south of the St. John for Maine and the United States. A treaty negotiated by Daniel Webster for the United States and Lord Ashburton for Great Britain confirmed this border in 1842.

This, more or less, is how my family became American.

And this has led me to a skepticism toward borders, a view of them as political acts imposed -- often by military force and for economic reasons -- on a deeper human reality.

In discussing the border with Mexico and the question of Mexican immigration, though, we don't need to rely on this humanitarian skepticism, with its personal and ancestral roots. A few considerations can give us a very healthy practical skepticism.

First, the border between Mexico and the United States is not likely ever to be sealed. The level of militarization that would be required for this would be far more expensive than we would ever accept. It might also provide occasion for more brutality than any but a very few among us could stomach. Beyond this, American business is gluttonous for a workforce made pliable by the threat of deportation and so would quietly subvert any genuine attempt to seal the border.

Second, "illegal" Mexican immigrants are here and will not go away, because the border will not be sealed. Crackdowns on them will only drive them deeper into the clutches of the many businesses willing to exploit their fear.

Third, immigration law is not divine. It serves a practical purpose: To secure the United States physically and economically. If immigrants are here and are working "illegally," then the law has failed already in its practical intent and we are left with the practical choice of either cracking down on them -- in which case see our second point -- or of according them all the rights of other workers. Discussions of not "rewarding" illegal behavior are beside the point. They serve only to divide workers from one another. It is, besides, no sin to try to better oneself and one's family.

The law of supply and demand is often cited in calling for crackdowns on "illegal" immigrants; with so many workers, some say, the value of labor must surely drop. But there is nothing at all sure in this. That "law" does not apply in any straightforward way to labor and employment. It was during the boom of the nineteen-twenties that unions were beaten down under the "American Plan," and it was in the midst of the Great Depression, when labor was not in short supply, that they made some of their greatest gains. The according of full rights to immigrant workers of whatever stripe and their consequent ability to unionize would likely spoil the appetite of many American employers for their labor. In other words, the real solution to the supposed ills of an oversupply of labor through immigration would be not crackdowns, but legalization and union organizing.

So we return to the same point to which a humanitarian skepticism brought me. Just as the border between Maine and New Brunswick was a political act imposed on the deeper human reality of family ties, so all the discussion of "illegal" Mexican immigration, of the violation of our border, is imposed on a more fundamental fact: The community of interest between American and immigrant Mexican workers. We all want decent wages, health care for our families, a dignified and reasonably comfortable old age. If we negotiate for these together, we are in a far stronger position than if we are divided into a legitimate unionized sector and a non-union sector heavily dependent on "illegal" workers. We should accept no such divisions, no borders among us.

American corporations are not constrained by our borders. Most of the companies for which we in the building trades work don't cross borders -- yet -- but many of the corporations for which they work do. Many "American" corporations are no longer based in this country. That they then stand quietly by while the politicians who serve them talk of the "problem" of Mexican immigration implies their acceptance, even encouragement, of divisions between American and Mexican workers.

We should see Schwarzenegger's praise of the "Minutemen" as the cynical fear-mongering of a man perfectly happy to take the money of companies that exploit immigrant labor. We should see the Bush administration's proposal of a guest worker program binding a worker to a particular company as arising from a cold calculation that this will exclude unions and devalue work.

We should listen to the late John Paul II, who wrote in On Human Work:

"The most important thing is that the person working away from his native land, whether as a permanent emigrant or as a seasonal worker, should not be placed at a disadvantage in comparison with the other workers in that society in the matter of working rights. Emigration in search of work must in no way become an opportunity for financial or social exploitation."

In no way should the question of "legality" or "illegality" provide that opportunity. In no way should that question keep us from thinking of Mexican workers in this country as we think of each other, as brothers and sisters.