Why the Attacks on Illegal Immigration?

[the last donut of the night]

The recent Arizona crack-down on Latino immigrants has led me to think. If "illegal labor" is much more profitable than regular labor, then why does the American bourgeoisie attack it so much? Is it more than a way of dividing workers by race?

[Nolan]

It will make it even easier that it already is for bosses to keep illegals in line.

[The Ben G]

Because half of americans are near to braindead and need a reason to get mad.

[bcbm]

undocumented labor is profitable to an extent but at a certain point it becomes problematic for the forces of order due to various social pressures. it is also important to realize, and the case of arizona makes this especially clear, that the expansion of state powers for use against undocumented workers also means an expansion of state powers against us all.

[Crusade]

undocumented labor is profitable to an extent but at a certain point it becomes problematic for the forces of order due to various social pressures. it is also important to realize, and the case of arizona makes this especially clear, that the expansion of state powers for use against undocumented workers also means an expansion of state powers against us all.

But Alex Jones supports this bill. Alex Jones is for liberty. What the hell is going on? I'm so confused.

[jake williams]

It's sort of a mix of factors and a covergence of interests. A HUGE part of it though is that the more "illegal" illegal immigration is, the more terrified illegal immigrants are going to be, especially to organize - and they're going to be there anyway. In fact it's not well known but there are a lot of ambiguous-status immigrants in Canada, including a massive part of Ontario's agricultural labour. Deportation threats are the main weapon against labour organizing, and since that's the big fear, that's really useful.

There's lots else going on too though. It's partly being used just to scapegoat - you're not losing your job because of capitalism, you're losing it because of Mexicans. I know in Canada there are migrant worker programs set up which are a lot uglier for workers in some cases even than working here illegally, there are probably people who are trying to funnel workers into that. Another thing which isn't discussed enough is how much money "security companies", for example Blackwater, are trying to make with militarizing the US-Mexico border. And then a lot of it is even sincere security concern on the part of the ruling class.

But it is complex. I don't know if human traffickers make enough money to be pushing to keep it illegal, but it's conceivable. And then on the other hand I'm sure there are lots of businessmen who do want liberalized US-Mexico immigration.

ed:+

There's something else that needs to be kept in mind. Capitalism, as is pretty well understood, depends on a "reserve army of the unemployed", of poor disenfranchised people without many options and willing to work for very low wages, tragically and violently forced to betray their class allies. NAFTA virtually destroyed the Mexican agricultural economy, and it's pretty clear that the resultant Mexican labour surplus forms a large part of this "reserve army" (as does, for example, black prison labour).

However, this is only up to a point. So many people can only suffer so much. To play their role they have to lay at a difficult balance. Such a population can quite easily become pretty dangerous to capitalism, especially if it can become organized, even though capitalism depends on it for its own existence.

[Agnapostate]

Yes. If anti-immigrant populist resentments can be exploited by capitalists, workers can be divided, preventing their victories in class conflict.

[Devrim]

The recent Arizona crack-down on Latino immigrants has led me to think. If "illegal labor" is much more profitable than regular labor, then why does the American bourgeoisie attack it so much? Is it more than a way of dividing workers by race?

Illegal labour is profitable precisely because it is attacked. Whether it is more profitable or not depends on the sector, obviously it would not be at all profitable to give workers extensive training to do a technically demanding job, only to find them deported the next week.

The fact that the illegal labourer is worried about the prospect of being deported means that he will accept worse conditions than people who are not in such a desperate situation would. This is turn effects the value of the whole labour force, and drives down wages overall.

Devrim