Midsummer Reflections
on the US Immigration Debate

by George Caffentzis

"No, no!" said the Queen, "Sentence first-verdict afterwards."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the sentence first!"
"Hold your tongue!" said the Queen, turning purple.
"I won't!" said Alice .
"Off with her head!" the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

-Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson),
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

The great "Si Se Puede" demonstrations of immigrant workers and their supporters between March 25th and May Day caused many opponents of immigrant rights to step back and reassess the configuration of forces. This hiatus in the struggle over immigration legislation (which might continue until the November elections) gives us time to review the different strategies with respect to the mobility of capital and labor power that are now in the field. I will do just that briefly in the following presentation.

These strategies are often not clearly formulated because immigration politics (as with other legislatively defined "issues" ) poses incomplete questions that often get confusing answers. Thus in the debates in Congress there are "trade" discussions taking place in one committee while immigration issues are being hotly debated in another, as if the cross-border movement of, say, corn and Mexican nurses' labor power are commodities that can be reasonably discussed independently of each other. But this lack of a sense of totality affects anti-capitalist movements as well, since they too have become increasingly "single issue" efforts for reasons both too complicated and too embarrassing for us to deal with here. That is why it is important to see that if we are discussing immigration (movement across borders) we need to ask: immigration of capital or labor power? After all, there is an enormous movement of financial instruments (from "hard cash," to stocks and bonds, to derivatives) as well as machinery and raw material immigrating across international borders, much of it in violation of the laws of the receiving and/or sending states. Indeed, not asking about the movement of capital when discussing immigration is like discussing pregnancy without mentioning insemination. For capital without labor power cannot produce profits.

One way to structure the field of discourse on immigration is through the following set of binaries that form the matrix of strategies available to the working class+ and Capital in Table 1.

In this presentation I will briefly discuss each of these strategies, and assess what class position and desire each one expresses.

A: The True Neoliberal Position

A truly "neoliberal" policy mix would be best described by (A), but such a mix is not seriously proposed by any but the most utopian of capitalist planners (like, for example, the intellectuals at the UNDP or the Benthamite provocateurs at The Economist or the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal). The realization of this strategy would be that mythical state of "the equalization of the rates of profit across various spheres of production" that Marx envisioned in Capital, Vol. III with respect to flow of capital and labor power. The movement of capital in such an ideal state would be determined by a number of conditions: (1) "completely free trade within the society in question;" (2) "the development of a credit system;" (3) ""the various spheres of production have been subordinated by capitalists;" (4) "a high population density" (Marx 1981: 298). The conditions for labor powers in this ideal state are:

-the abolition of all laws that prevent workers from moving from one sphere of production to another or from one local seat of production to another.

-Indifference of the workers to the content of his work.

-Greatest possible reduction of work in all spheres of production to simple labor.

-Disappearance of all prejudices of trade and craft among the workers. Finally and especially,

-the subjection of the worker to the capitalist mode of production (Marx 1981: 298).

Why has the country with the most "advanced capitalist development" and where the worker is most "subjected to the capitalist mode of production" been loath to advance to this ideal state of profit equalization? This resistance is clearly related to the capitalist recognition that the creation of divisions among workers is one of the most powerful weapons in the class struggle. As Silvia Federici has often pointed out, the wage is not just a quantity of money, nor does it simply measure the value of labor power, the wage creates divisions (especially between waged and unwaged) and hierarchies among workers (especially between high and low waged workers) (Federici 2004). These divisions are naturalized into sexism, racism, ageism, etc. In other words, the neoliberal dream of capitalism embodied in strategy (A) is its own nightmare, for such a thoroughly neoliberal state would rob Capital of what makes the continual decomposition of the working class possible. Capital must run from its ideal (while pretending to ardently desire it…but in the ever deferred future) in order to preserve its own reality. It runs from its ideal because one of the best ways to impose wage differentials is through the creation of borders and various (ever changing) restrictions in the movement of labor power. In fact, as recent experience has shown, the very increase in capital's mobility leads to increasing impoverishment in newly "developed zones" due to "new enclosures" and consequently it increases the need to migrate to higher wage areas. When this need meets border restrictions, desperation increases, divisions within the working class multiply and even a revival of slavery becomes possible.

B: The Default Position

The combination of neoliberal "trade" (or high capital mobility) policies with increasingly restrictive immigration policies, (B), best expresses the dominant political strategy of US Capital. That is why it has become the "default" position of the US government from the Reagan to the George H. W. Bush, to the Clinton to the George W. Bush Administrations. This policy is neoliberal as far as traditional export commodities are concerned along with the flow of various forms of monetary capital, "intellectual property" and "services," but it is formally "protectionist" as far as labor power is concerned. In other words, "neoliberalism" is a bit of a misnomer (or at least a bad approximation) when used to refer to the dominant US economic policy from the 1980s to today.

The endless fatuous double-talk concerning "free trade," "liberal values," etc. that comes from the supporters of US Capital's default agenda essentially tries to cover up this doctrinal inconsistency. One can see how it works out in practice with the case of Mexico. Strategy B brings together the NAFTA of 1994 with the "Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act" of 1996 and the two pending immigration reform bills of 2006. NAFTA stripped Mexico of capital controls and of prohibitions on foreigners purchasing land. It also made possible the tariff-less flow of US goods (especially corn) into Mexico that threatens the livelihood of millions of peasants. This "agreement" was clearly in the interests of capitalists in the US, who had previously looked south and saw land, resources and "investment opportunities," but could not access them due to the legal restrictions imposed by the Mexican Constitution of 1917. NAFTA required the death of the Mexican Constitution and President Salinas obliged by killing it in order to integrate Mexican capital with its world-dominating northern cousin.

On the other side, NAFTA's dramatic consequences for Mexican workers including the collapse of their real wages and the struggle to prevent the loss of their agricultural land precipitated their rush to the border by the millions. These immigrants arrive there only to be met by the increasing draconian immigration laws that now even threaten to criminalize their very existence. Even if they manage to cross the border alive and to escape the maze of menacing Minutemen, National Guard troops and Border Patrol officers, the subterranean life that follows in the US is designed to make the possibility of struggling on the job or in society so dangerous and costly that only the most foolhardy would try. And yet, Capital wants them to come to work, as long as they are as "subjugated to the capitalist mode of production" as the bulk of their native-born colleagues and they forswear any participation in the remaining workers' movement in the US. In fact, the immigrants' need for a wage is matched by capitalists' lust for their labor power, as long as the undocumented workers are willing to accept conditions of wage slavery and become the butt of US-born workers' hatred!

This mixed regime is designed to put all the power in the capitalists' hands vis-a-vis workers: on the one side, the neoliberal functioning of capital movements makes the threat of shifting US-based production sites abroad credible (hence frightening US-born workers with unemployment if they demand "too much" ) and, on the other side, the draconian immigration laws transform undocumented workers in the US into criminals (hence dissuading them from putting up any struggle that would bring attention to themselves). Together the capitalists get the best possible world for themselves and the worst possible world for workers with strategy (B).

C: The Anti-Globalization Strategy

Over the last decade a movement has formed in response to this "best of all capitalist worlds." It has resisted capitalist initiatives to establish neoliberal trade agreements like NAFTA and to intensify the repression of immigrants (both documented and undocumented). It is known (among other things) as "the anti-globalization" (or here in Italy as the "No Global") movement and has many different organizational nodes. As with Capital, such a movement often does not have a single strategy, but unlike US Capital it does not have a forum like the Congress to present to itself its own divisions and contradictions. However, if there is a dominant strategy concerning the issues we have been discussing, it is (C), where "No Borders" organizations meet with "No Global" ones. Even the old AFL-CIO's official strategy is a version of (C), since the union confederation has been fighting the neoliberal trade agreements like NAFTA since the early 1990s while it finally moved to support amnesty for undocumented immigrants and to defend their rights to unionize since 2000.

To get a sense of the kind of legislation immigrant rights organizations in the US have been fighting for, consider some of the "principles" of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), a typical human rights organization in this area:

*Future immigrants should be able to come [to the US] legally and safely, have access to permanent residency, and not fear criminal prosecution for unlawful entry or exit. *Immigrant workers' rights should be promoted and protected; employer sanctions and the criminalization of work must be ended. Labor laws should be strictly enforced, and immigrant workers should have the freedom to join unions to improve wages and working conditions. *All immigrants should have access to all public services and benefits including driver licenses, higher education, and health care. *We need foreign policies that address the root causes of migration, such as sustainable development and fair trade agreements with other countries (NNIRR 2006).

In other words, the phrase "immigrant workers" should be understood with the emphasis on "workers," hence immigrant workers should be accorded workers' rights and not just immigrants' rights. In NNIRR's utopia the distinction between immigrant and native will be a historical and not a juridical one.

This policy mix (C) is designed to counter Capital's power as guaranteed by (B). The restrictions on capital movements are supposed to lessen employers' threats to move production abroad if the workers "demand too much" while the free movement for labor power is supposed to give immigrant workers the rights to organize, protest and strike for higher pay and better working conditions without fear of being criminalized and deported. The No Borders-No Global alliance's hope is that if its policy mix is turned into law, the power relations between Capital and workers would be reversed and "revolutionized."

D: The "Nationalist" Proletarian Strategy

There are many US workers, however, who are suspicious of the No Borders-No Global resolution of the dilemmas of the class struggle and almost instinctively support policy mix (D). They want to stop capital from escaping to other parts of the planet (thus they are enemies of globalization), but they do not believe that opening up the local labor market to the free movement of fellow workers from around the world will empower them. On the contrary, they share the vision of the Minuteman Project and look across the Rio Grande to see millions of competitors who want to take their jobs and are willing to work for a much lower wage than they are. Though this segment of the US working class is large, but it gets little overt political support on the Left (where their anti-immigration politics is rejected as racist verging on fascist) while the Right uses their votes but rejects their position (since their anti-free trade and "isolationist" sentiments alienates the neo-liberals and neo-cons in the Republican Party).

Strategy (D) seems to have the least political possibility of being applied simply because US Capital is not likely to accept a general limitation either on its own mobility or on the entrance of "foreign" capital into the US . To do this, e.g., to put a block on say the Chinese government purchasing of US Treasury bonds, would precipitate a major financial crisis in the US (and perhaps in the rest of the world). On the contrary, US Capital is more likely to compromise with forces supporting the free movement of labor power, i.e., move in the direction of strategy A rather than D. That is why the Bush Administration is willing to fight wars across the planet to support the free flow of capital (otherwise called in the propaganda, "democracy" and "liberty"). Cruelly for them, the supporters of the "nationalist" strategy in the proletariat seem doomed to fight these wars promoting neoliberal globalization for their "betters," even though it undermines their own strategy!

A further problem with male workers who clamor for putting strategy (D) policies into action is that they too are caught in a trap. In the past they had a wife at home to care for their reproduction, but this arrangement was ended for most by the 1980s. Since then they are often in a situation where they depend upon undocumented immigrants to "take care," from childcare, to prostitution, to elder care, to hospital work. If the (mostly female) immigrant reproduction workers did not "take care," then no one else would. So they have to hope that their harsh rhetoric of exclusion would not be totally successful, otherwise there would be no one there to reproduce them!

Conclusion

This brief midsummer review of the strategies in the field surrounding the debate over immigration legislation shows that there is an inter-class debate among workers and capitalists in the US that is far from resolution. This sense of indeterminancy pervades the field, to the point that the House and Senate leadership took an unprecedented (and embarrassing) decision. After passing their separate immigration laws, these august bodies have decided to hold public hearings on immigration after the fact. In so doing, they acknowledged that the issue of immigration and the "Si Se Puede" demos have caused them to reverse the classic logic of representation. In the past, hearings came first, legislation followed; in these postmodern, nomadic times, legislation is passed and the hearings follow! Is the Queen of Hearts presiding over the US Congress?

Parma, Italy June 1, 2006

Notes

I will not address at any length in this presentation the much-disputed question: who is "in" the US working class? I suppose the very pertinence of the question makes the adjective "Janus-faced" when applied to the US working class so apt. But we should remind ourselves that the US working class ought not be considered simply as the total of the employed workers laboring in the territorial US for a number of reasons.

First, there are many "unemployed" people who are definitely working "for" US capital, both within and outside of the territorial US, producing and reproducing the labor power US Capital purchases.

Second, US capital is global in operation and it exploits workers throughout the planet (but then again, what makes some part of capital, US capital?) Moreover, given the perpetual (almost structural) trade deficit, the workers producing commodities exported to the US or those doing service work via the Internet or telephone system for companies and clients in the US could equally be seen as "in" the US working class. On the other side, given the enormous impact that workers' remittances from the US to certain Latin American and Caribbean countries has on these nations' GNP, should these workers be considered simply as extensions of the these nations' proletariat?

Bibliography

Federici, Silvia 2004. Caliban and the Witch. New York: Autonomedia.

Marx, Karl 1981. Capital, Vol. III. London: Penguin.

National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) 2006. Principles. http://www.nnirr.org/about/about_mission.html.