David Bacon - The other face of globalization (also in Español and Français)

David Bacon - For over fifteen years, David Bacon has been a documentary photographer, covering labor movements, immigration, and international politics. His background as a labor organizer with UFW, UEW, ILGW, and other unions, gives Bacon a unique perspective on migration, and the struggle for worker's rights.

This blog also available in Español and Français.

Because of the political and economic crisis they create, free trade policies produce more migration to the United States, while more production leaves at the same time, looking for low wages across the border. Through bailout and loan conditions, the U.S. government enforces a low-wage policy on the Mexican economy, with the Mexican government's active cooperation.

From the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920 through the early 1970s, the Mexican government encouraged economic development by Mexican producers, making products for sale in Mexico. Foreign investment was strictly limited. But under pressure from an accumulating foreign debt, the Mexican government created an investment climate that depends on a vast number of low wage earners.

Well before NAFTA's passage, the disparity between U.S. and Mexican wages was growing. Mexican salaries were a third of those in the U.S. up to the 1970s. They are now less than an eighth, even a 12th or 15th, even during a period in which U.S. wages have declined in buying power. As a result, by 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Labor had received claims for NAFTA-related unemployment assistance from 507,000 workers.

Over the last two decades, the income of Mexican workers has lost 76% of its purchasing power. Under pressure from foreign lenders, the Mexican government has ended subsidies on the prices of basic necessities, including gasoline, electricity, bus fares, tortillas and milk, which have risen dramatically. It estimates that 40 million people live in poverty, and 25 million in extreme poverty.

NAFTA accelerated the export of capital, not the export of goods and services. Mexico was a laboratory for economic reforms that have transformed the economies of developing countries, away from policies encouraging national development, towards ones opening up the economy for transnational investors.

In countries like Mexico, with mixed economies, a large percentage of workers historically were employed by state enterprises. Unions had their greatest strength in the state sector. Over the last ten years, most important Mexican labor struggles have been fought over the privatization of that sector, by workers at airlines, railroads, telephone system, and many other industries. Mexico's new president, Enrique Calderon, says the privatization of electricity and oil are the most important goals of his new administration.

Privatization, and the other reforms transforming Mexico's economy, displace people and create migration. The same process is taking place all over the world. Migrant Rights International estimates that over 170 million people today live outside of the countries in which they were born, overwhelmingly moving from developing countries to developed ones.

When undocumented migrants arrive in the US, they become part of a workforce with conditions and wages at the bottom, denied the most basic rights - no unemployment insurance, no medical care, no social benefits of any kind. They have no right to a job. Not only can they be fired at a moment's notice, like most workers, but the very act of working for them is a crime. They are denied the right to be a resident of a stable community. And the irony is that they often wind up working for the same corporations whose operations in their countries of origin are part of the reason why they're here to begin with.

Today most immigration is spontaneous, but there are already many visa categories employers use to bring workers to the U.S. as contract laborers, often called guest workers. They have programs for high tech and healthcare workers, farm workers, garment workers, and others. And often the workers displaced by these programs, or threatened with displacement, as in Silicon Valley, are other immigrants who lose jobs with higher wages and job security.

Workers often have to go thousands of dollars into debt to come to the US under contract. To repay the debt, they work long hours and take dangerous risks.

When any worker stands up for better conditions or organizes a union, she or he can be easily fired, immigrant or not. But when a contract worker is fired, he or she not only loses their job, but their ability to stay in the country. That effectively gives the employer the power to deport as well as fire workers, and makes people in these programs vulnerable.

That's why employers are making proposals for new programs. Congress is now debating an enormous expansion, in which employers would recruit hundreds of thousands of contract laborers every year. Behind these proposals are some of the largest industries in the US - the National Assn of Chain Drugstores (think Wal-Mart) or the American Meat Institute. Democrats and Republicans both propose new guest worker programs

These industry-based visa programs are all based on the idea that immigration law should be used to supply workers to employers.Washington's current immigration proposals all assume that immigrants should not be the equals of those around them, or have the same rights.

US immigration policy doesn't deter the flow of migrants across the border. Its basic function is defining the status of people once they're here. A policy based on supplying workers to industry, at a price it wants to pay, has inequality built into it from the beginning. It denies community. It undermines workplace rights. It inhibits the development of families and culture.

Other alternatives are urgently needed. In 1999 the AFL-CIO proposed a freedom agenda that included legalization, repeal of employer sanctions, increased availability of family reunification visas, and enforcement of workplace rights. Community coalitions around the country have proposals that advance immigrant rights without tying them to guest worker or enforcement schemes.

Instead of promoting a bitter fight over jobs, Congress should make reducing unemployment Federal policy. People will still cross the border, looking for work, so increasing the number of green cards, or resident visas, would ease the pressure to cross illegally, and give migrants a status more equal to everyone else. People could reunite families without waiting decades.

Meanwhile, changing US trade and economic policies abroad would decrease the pressure for migration. Treaties like NAFTA boost privatization of manufacturing and services, promoting poverty and low wages as incentives for corporate investment, and, which lead to declining wages and huge layoffs. Where do we think those affected will go?

A strong coalition between immigrants rights groups, churches, unions, civil rights organizations and working families can build a movement powerful enough to win legal status and rights for migrants and jobs and better wages for everyone.

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