Why US unions should embrace ‘undocumented’ migrants

Workers’ resistance can beat Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans

May Day march in 2006 in Los Angeles (Photo: Wikimedia commons)

By Yuri Prasad
Sunday 17 November 2024  

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of “undocumented” migrants is a threat not only to those in the United States without legal status. It’s a knife against the throat of all workers.

The far right president-elect wants to deport two million people within his first 24 hours, and a further 11 million early in his term. That means initiating mass round-ups of anyone that looks like they might be from Mexico or beyond.

It would mean a massive expansion of the militarised state, complete with internment camps and secret police. It would also require a mass movement of right wing militia to help in the task.

Such a vast network of racism would not confine itself to searching out hidden migrants. It would smash those who stand against racism and be hostile to the unions who fight for workers to have more.

Both the left and many liberals have reacted with horror at the plans. But it was the Democrats that initiated many of the policies that Trump wants to ramp up.

Back in the early 1990s, it was president Bill Clinton that presided over the first big increase in border enforcement. A decade later, it was president Barak Obama that ensured over 2 million people were deported.

And it was Kamala Harris that talked of her “tough” record on illegal immigration, attacking Trump for not building enough of his promised wall with Mexico.

The Democrats wrongly conceded that immigration is a problem—that poor migrants are the enemy of the “indigenous” working class.

Like all capitalists, the party recognised that racism serves a useful function for the system. It acts to divide and rule. But unlike Trump, the Democrats also understood that migration serves capital.

First, undocumented workers fill millions of the lowest paid jobs in the United States. The undocumented perform 57 percent of all jobs in agriculture, for example.

Second, because of their vulnerability, unorganised “illegal” workers are the easiest to exploit. They are less likely to unionise and more likely to scatter when faced with authorities.

Third, bosses use illegal migration as a way of disciplining all workers. Firms often threaten to sack workers demanding higher pay, saying they will replace them with cheaper ones.

Some trade unionists point to such threats when they call for immigration controls. But accepting this apparent threat as real does half the bosses work for them. Instead, the US labour movement needs to embrace a different, earlier tradition.

In 1910-15, more than 15 million people moved to the US, about equal to the number of immigrants in the previous 40 years. Rather than shun them, radicals made it their business to help migrants organise.

Recently arrived workers were at the core of a new wave of trade unionism that spread through factories, mills and mines across the country. The victories that followed benefited all workers, no matter where they were from.

In the late 1960s, Mexican and Filipino farm workers in California struck for five years for better working conditions and wages. The eventual victory of the Delano Grape Strike led to the formation of the United Farm Workers union.

And in the 1990s, Los Angeles was at the centre of a massive unionisation drive that gave rise to the Justice For Janitors campaign. The local Federation of Labor recruited 90,000 new members in 1999 alone.

Throughout 2006 there were swathes of huge protests against the increasing repression of migrants. This climaxed on May Day, with as many as 700,000 taking to the streets.

The one-day strike, led by Latino workers, highlighted the role migrant labour plays in the US. It was a day without workers—it showed the power of all labour organising together.

These strikes and organisational examples helped break the myth that immigrants are a threat to organised labour. The lesson that migrant workers are fighters is one the US left needs to spread once again.