[migrawatch-public] Migrant workers: Casualties of neoliberalism

ISR Issue 54, July–August 2007
http://www.isreview.org/issues/54/casualties.shtml

Migrant workers:
Casualties of neoliberalism
By JUSTIN AKERS CHACÓN

In spite of the electoral thrashing of the Republican
Right—who oppose any form of decriminalization of
undocumented immigrants—these forces have still been able
to set the terms of the debate over immigration reform.
The potential now exists for unity with Congressional
Democrats to implement what has come to be called
"comprehensive immigration reform." Despite its neutral
façade, this phrase implies a very specific formula when
annunciated by the Bush administration or the bipartisan
architects of current proposals in Congress.1 This
represents Corporate America's blueprint for the
comprehensive restructuring of North American labor under
the aegis of immigration policy.

This includes the realization of a mass "guest-worker"
labor importation program, increased militarization of the
border, and a martial campaign of "attrition through
enforcement" to corral, expel, or reclassify the existing
undocumented population as a transient and subordinate
workforce. In the words of security chief Michael
Chertoff, immigration reform must include "stronger border
security, effective interior enforcement and a
temporary-worker program."2 Reform—a term normally used to
imply progress—has come to signify regression in modern
political parlance.3

Corporate immigration restructuring seeks to sever
immigrants' historic right to citizenship once and for
all, replacing the process of gradual incorporation of
immigrant workers and their families with a temporary and
revolving dual-labor structure. Rather than acknowledge
and address the failed economic policies that lie at the
root of northward migration, this model is designed to
capitalize on the dislocation of Latin American economies,
particularly Mexico's.

Liberals, for their part, have fallen in line. As Democrat
Ted Kennedy concluded, "Only a bipartisan bill will become
law.… There is a lot of common ground, especially in the
need to strengthen our borders and enforce our laws."4 On
the other hand, the immigrant rights movement—visible and
audible across the country on May 1, offers a completely
different vision for immigration reform.

The impact of neoliberalism on labor migration

In the early spring of 2007, the Bush administration
toured Latin American countries to demonstrate U.S.
interest in the region. According to Mark Weisbrot of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, the primary goal
was "to send a message to traditional elites who have lost
power to leftist governments in Argentina, Venezuela,
Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua…to show
that Washington is still fighting to get them back."5

Bush also shored up support for friendly regimes pivotal
to the expansion of continental free trade, leading him
through Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Uruguay, and Brazil.
Reaffirming his commitment to the strategy of development
through corporate expansion, Bush acknowledged the "root
causes of social injustice and poverty" that are pushing
workers, farmers, and the poor to migrate, offering as a
solution the need for more U.S.-style capitalism.

Latin America needs capitalism for the campesino, a true
capitalism that permits those with nothing to improve
themselves with hard work and dedication, and for this
reason the United States is helping to strengthen Latin
American economies that are opening up to the world.6

In other words, Bush's strategy to address poverty is the
continuation and extension of the same policies that have
been the dominant economic model in the region for the
last twenty years, and the catalyst for mass migration.
These policies, referred to collectively as neoliberal
capitalism, have been responsible for one of history's
greatest transfers of wealth from poor to rich nations
(and from the working classes to the ruling classes) ever
witnessed in human history. Since 1980, for instance, it
hasbeen calculated that over $4.6 trillion dollars have
flowed from poor to wealthy nations through these
policies.7

A decade after the passage of comprehensive free-trade
policies (such as the North American Free Trade Agreement,
or NAFTA) inequality between the rich and poor in Latin
America has also skyrocketed. The richest one-tenth of the
population of Latin America and the Caribbean earns 48
percent of total income, while the poorest tenth earns
only 1.6 percent, making it the most unequal region in the
world.8

Mass poverty has predictably induced mass migration.
According to the World Bank, over four million Latin
American workers migrated to the north between the years
2000 and 2005, with two million leaving Mexico alone for
the United States.9 Mexico is today the world's largest
population exporter.

Neoliberalism in Mexico (with the passage of NAFTA) was
designed to induce a painful shock treatment into the
economy, with the rapid transition to open markets, the
abolition of tariffs and subsidies, and the reduction of
social spending.10 Nowhere in the 700-plus pages of NAFTA
text was there a plan to address the land loss,
deindustrialization, and impoverishment that would
immediately result in those sectors of the economy made
vulnerable by exposure to the world market.11

While there is a deafening silence in the immigration
debate about why workers are uprooting themselves south of
the border, industries are lining up in droves to cash in
on the immigration criminalization, one of the new growth
industries in the U.S. economy.

U.S. immigration policy diverges significantly from that
of NAFTA member Canada, which has the world's highest
immigration rate per capita, and is expected to be the
sole source of population growth in the coming decades.12
Without immigrants, the country would find itself facing
severe labor shortages and other economic problems, much
like its southern neighbor. Rather than criminalize
immigrants, Canadian policy prioritizes economic
migration, and allows for residency and a three-year path
to citizenship for the roughly 200,000 immigrant workers
and refugees that enter the country each year.13

For the millions of undocumented workers/economic refugees
in the United States, the welcome and reception has been
less hospitable, even though they provide a similar
service. In contrast, at virtually the same time that
NAFTA was passed, the U.S. government began funneling tens
of billions of dollars to build a technologically
reinforced border wall.14 Legal access to the U.S. labor
market is highly prohibitive for low-skilled workers. Most
workers avoid the current costly, exploitative, and
prohibitive temporary worker programs (such as the H-2A
program for agriculture and H-2B for miscellaneous skilled
or unskilled labor), which deprive the worker of the means
to change jobs, negotiate wages in good faith, remain in
the country to work for extended periods, or establish
permanent residency.15 As for permanent work visas for
unskilled workers, the U.S. government only distributes
5,000 per year on a global scale. Of these, only two went
to Mexicans in 2005, closing the door for the overwhelming
majority of prospective "legal" migrants.16 Since legal
access is closed, a substantial undocumented population
has resulted.

Migrant workers: Casualties of a failed economic model

Like other Latin American economies' experience with
neoliberal restructuring, the projected "boom" never
materialized for Mexico's majority. To enter NAFTA, Mexico
had to devalue the peso, and renegotiate its pre-1994 debt
through a series of "structural adjustment programs"
negotiated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In
exchange for a $20 billion loan from the United States,

Government businesses were sold to private investors and
U.S. companies were allowed to own land and factories
anywhere in Mexico without Mexican partners. Prices of
basic goods were decontrolled and government subsidies on
food and basic services for workers and the poor were cut
or ended. By 1998, CONASUPO, a system of state run stores
that sold basic food items like tortillas and milk at
subsidized prices had been closed.17

According to the plan's architects, the abolition of
tariffs and constitutional protections forbidding foreign
ownership of Mexico's resources would open the door to
massive foreign direct investment. Investments in
industries tied to export to the U.S. market (cash crops
and manufactured goods) would create new jobs, which would
offset those lost in industries unable to compete with
larger multinational firms. To maintain cash reserves (to
pay down debts and ensure future loans) the Mexican state
downsized its welfare system. The painful transition from
a "protected economy" to free trade was to be temporary,
giving way to renewed economic growth that would lift the
conditions of all Mexicans.
The economy grew initially, due to the increased volume of
trade with the passage of NAFTA and a massive influx of
foreign capital. But massive trade and government deficits
triggered by a peso devaluation produced an economic
collapse in 1995, prompting severe austerity measures and
an IMF-U.S. bailout. The current accounts deficit
ballooned from $6 billion in 1989 to more than $20 billion
in 1993.18 Mexico's interest payments on its foreign debt
was $14 billion—twice the value of its oil exports.19 This
produced a modest recovery; but by the late 1990s, growth
rates had begun to flatten.

Capital, both foreign and domestic, has played a parasitic
role throughout the "restructuring" process, dismantling
the Mexican state sector and reducing the Mexican worker
(on both sides of the border) to a hyper-exploitable
commodity. Mexico's state-owned portion of the economy,
once considered the bastion of Mexico's traditional
workforce, has disappeared through privatization. Between
the years 1982 and 2000, the number of state-owned firms
plummeted from 1,100 to about 200.20 Mexico's oil, one of
the few state-owned resources remaining, is responsible
for maintaining the largest share of state revenue, which
accounts for 40 percent of the federal budget, and which
has been declining in both reserves and production levels
in recent years.21

Simultaneously, the downsizing of the state sector has
been accompanied by the privatization and selling off of
state-protected indigenous land holdings (ejidos),
encouraging land consolidation and displacement by
capital-rich growers in the countryside.

Privatization of the state sector was largely beneficial
to Mexico's capitalist class, strengthening existing
oligopolies or creating new ones. As the Los Angeles Times
described it, "Instead of breaking up public enterprises
to spark competition, the government simply transferred
them to new owners."22 Conducted through the crony
capitalism of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI),
billionaires in Mexico were created overnight. Mexican
monopolies now dominate telecommunications, television,
beer, cement, and a host of other industries. In 2006,
Mexico received $19 billion in foreign direct
investment.23 The United States accounts for 66 percent of
all foreign direct investment in Mexico, concentrated in
manufacturing, financial services, and retail.24

Most of the growth in the export sector has been
concentrated in the maquiladora sector: foreign-owned
manufacturing and agricultural complexes set up within
Mexico to assemble and manufacture finished goods, which
receive a third of all foreign investment.25 What began as
a trickle turned into a flood (after the passage of NAFTA)
of corporations moving in to take advantage of Mexican
labor in Mexico; 80 percent of maquiladoras are U.S.
owned, and 80 percent of all components imported are from
U.S. companies (about 26,000 U.S.-based companies supply
raw materials).26 The maquiladoras declined in the early
years of the new century as investment flowed into new
areas of cheap labor, primarily China, but this proved a
temporary decline. As of 2007, there are more than 2,800
maquiladoras throughout Mexico, with a workforce of 1.2
million workers, producing goods primarily for U.S.
markets.27 By 2012, the number of exporting plants is
expected to rise to more than 3,000, with maquiladora
employment growing to more than 1.44 million from today's
1.23 million, according to projections from Global
Insight. The value of goods produced are projected to
reach $128 billion per year by 2008.28

According to Foreign Direct Investment magazine, which
charts capital exports from the maquiladoras,
"Manufacturing exports virtually quadrupled between the
first five years of the 1990s and the first three years of
the new decade to top $113 billion [of goods produced per
year]. With such explosive growth, this sector's share in
the total exports of the largest exporting firms grew from
42 percent in the early 1990s to 56 percent in the first
few years of the new millennium."29

Underpinning corporate profitability in the maquiladora
zones are the low wages of Mexican workers, which range
from between $37 and $60 for every forty-eight-hour
workweek.30 According to one study, low-wage production in
Mexico adds as much as 25 percent of the value added to
the finished goods sold back to U.S. markets.31 This is
due to the role that the Mexican government plays in
keeping the industry union free. As Ojeda and Hennessy
observe,

Among the incentives the Mexican Government offers foreign
investors is "labor peace," and unions controlled by
companies and the government play a key role here.
Companies often buy union protection through collective
agreements that shield them against workers' attempts to
establish authentic collective contracts.32

The abysmal wages in the maquiladoras have lowered the
wage threshold across the whole manufacturing sector in
Mexico. According to a recent study by Oxfam, "some
studies show that the real wages in 2004 were less than in
1994."33 Meanwhile, the minimum wage ($5–$6 per day) in
2003 was the same as it was in 1973.34 This on top of the
already 67 percent decrease in real wages experienced by
Mexican workers between 1982 and 1991, as neoliberal
reforms were phased into the Mexican economy, and stable,
manufacturing jobs and sustainable wages evaporated.35
Mexico's wages are the most eroded of all Latin American
countries over the last two decades, with half of all
workers (and 90 percent of agricultural workers) making
less than the minimum wage.36 This helps explain why over
90 percent of maquiladora products return to the United
States—Mexican workers cannot afford the products that
they make.37

The opening of markets has contributed to industrial
decline in Mexico outside the maquiladoras. First,
uncompetitive industries have disappeared entirely. This
has occurred primarily through the opening of the retail
sector to the global retail market, controlled by none
other than Wal-Mart. The U.S.-based company is now the
largest retailer and private employer in Mexico, with 884
stores, restaurants, and other units. According to its
sales reports, the company boasted over $15 billion in
Mexican sales in 2005 alone.38 Revenues in 2007 are
expected to reach $21 billion, and the company (under the
name "Walmex") even plans to open its own banks by the
summer.39 Wal-Mart, as a conduit for cheaper consumer
goods produced in China, has contributed to the
underselling of local industries and the decline of much
of Mexico's traditional manufacturing sector.

Second, manufactured goods are tied almost exclusively to
demand in the United States, which absorbs upwards of 90
percent of Mexico's annual exports.40 Therefore, when the
U.S. economy is pinched, the Mexican economy screams.
Maquiladora jobs, for example, declined sharply from 2000
to 2002 during the last recession. Production contracted
30 percent and employment shrank 20 percent, a loss of
290,000 jobs as demand shrunk.41

In spite of the rebound of the maquiladoras, the number of
manufacturing jobs overall has declined from a high of 4.1
million in 2000 to 3.5 million in 2004.42 Another 515,000
manufacturing jobs were lost by 2005.43

Neoliberal policies in Mexico have redistributed wealth
from the poor to the already-rich. A March 2006 report by
the World Bank claims that since NAFTA was enacted, 62
percent of the economically active population in Mexico
has become impoverished.44 While the poorest 10 percent of
the population earns only 1.5 percent of the total Mexican
income, the richest 10 percent makes 42.8 percent, a
reality witnessed by the growth of Mexico's burgeoning
billionaires club, which has risen from two to ten over
the last decade, many making their fortunes in the corrupt
sell-off of the state sector.45

The decline in manufacturing jobs coincides with a rise in
poor, landless campesinos. Recent developments show the
tumultuous consequences of this transition in Mexico's
southern regions, where the people are increasingly
pressed to make one of three dire choices: starve, revolt,
or migrate. According to Garrett Brown, Coordinator of the
Maquiladora Health and Safety Support Network:

In the Mexican countryside, 2 million farmers have been
driven off the land by subsidized U.S. imports. Imports of
U.S. corn have increased from 2.7 to 6.1 million metric
tons over the last 10 years, while the price of corn for
Mexican farmers has dropped by 70 percent. Starvation has
literally emptied out rural villages of everyone but the
old and very young.46

The Mayan heartland of Chiapas is both the cauldron of the
Zapatista uprising and a state that is exporting on
average 165 chiapanecos (people from Chiapas) to the north
each day.47 Small and subsistence farmers in this region
are unable to compete with U.S.-grown corn, which has
flooded local markets. The abolition of Article 27 of the
Mexican Constitution, which designated the state as
guardian of the small farmer, eliminated the protections,
price controls, and subsidies that had previously
sustained the now-migrant diaspora.
Internally displaced Mexicans not absorbed by the vast
informal economies in the larger cities (day labor, street
vending and performance, "black market" activities, etc.),
or in the maquiladoras (which they increasingly bypass),
cross into the U.S. to find work.48 It is estimated that
the Mexican economy cannot absorb 250,000 of those new
workers entering the market each year.49 In other words,
those not absorbed into Mexico's economy enter the ranks
of Mexico's reserve army of labor, increasingly
bottlenecked in the militarized border regions with the
hopes of finding work in the north, where wages are
higher. Absorption of displaced workers into Mexico's
informal economy and annual out-migration to the U.S.
conceals the real rate of unemployment and underemployment
in Mexico, which is annually registered at an artificially
low rate (about 4–5 percent).50 It is estimated that
two-thirds of all undocumented Mexican migrants in the
U.S. arrived after NAFTA went into effect in 1994.51

This "excess workforce" can be tabulated by the rate of
out-migration. Lauro López Sanchez, an assistant secretary
of the Mexican Interior Ministry, has stated that 850,000
Mexicans were apprehended and deported trying to cross
into the United States in 2005, while about 350,000 made
it to their destinations.52 That number increases when
migrants from Central America and other migrant-sending
nations are included.

A recent survey published in the San Diego Union Tribune,
affirms the character of the migrants, both in relation to
the Mexican economy and that of the United States. Based
on interviews with 1,700 Mexicans living in the United
States in May 2006,

fifty-five percent said they were unemployed in Mexico.
Thirty-nine percent said they earned no more than $400 a
month in Mexico. Once they crossed the border, 51 percent
found jobs within a month of their arrival in the United
States. Thirty-eight percent were working in less than two
weeks. Their average pay was $900 a month.53

The mass out-migration from Mexico is not the result of a
demographic explosion. Mexico's birth rate is declining at
a rapid clip; now at 2.2 births per woman, it is hovering
just around the "replacement rate" to maintain the
stability of the current population.54 Structurally driven
poverty is pushing displaced Mexican workers into the U.S.
economy, where they are desperately needed to replace its
declining workforce. According to government figures, the
current fertility rate in the U.S. is 2.1 births per
family, which is the current rate of replacement to
maintain the existing population. Based solely on birth
rates of the currently native-born, this rate is expected
to decrease below the rate of replacement over the next
two decades, sustained otherwise by immigration and the
higher fertility rates of the younger Latino population as
a whole.55 The U.S. Census Bureau projects that based on
the current, native-born population by 2050, one out of
every five Americans will be over age 65, making the U.S.
population as a whole much older than that of Florida
today. The elderly will be more numerous than children,
with the population 65 and over outnumbering those 14 and
younger by more than 13 million.56
Mexico not only provides U.S. employers with highly
productive workers toiling for low wages on both sides of
the border, it is furnishing a graying U.S. population
with one of its most precious resources: its children. In
2005 alone, for instance, 7,000 minors crossed into the
United States, unaccompanied by adults, and another 40
percent of migrants in the same period were women.57 Once
in the country, immigrants not only furnish employers with
cheap labor, but undocumented workers make a
disproportionate contribution to the tax system without
receiving benefits in return.58 This is the reality behind
which the pundits have successfully scripted the U.S. as
the victim of an inexorable human torrent from the south.

The hemorrhaging of Mexico's workers is not the result of
a natural or inexplicable phenomenon, but rather what
economist David Harvey has described as "accumulation
through dispossession."59 In other words, rather than
productive growth, wealth has been transferred from the
poor to the rich through the sweeping abolition of
redistributive mechanisms. Migration is not a choice as
much as a survival mechanism induced by crisis, one that
benefits economic interests on both sides of the border.

Why migrant labor is profitable

Capitalists rely on borders as a means to regulate and
restrict the movement of labor, a rule that is not applied
equally to the flow of capital. Through the manipulation
of immigration policy labor can be stratified on the basis
of nationality, creating special categories of workers
that are denied access to democratic rights. By
disassociating the factors that cause migration from the
act of migration, capitalists attempt to absolve
themselves of any culpability and take advantage of the
vulnerability of a desperate group of workers.

The act of migration is criminalized not to halt the flow
of labor, but to control its flow, and to ensure that
migrant labor remains cheap and pliant. That doesn't mean
that the politics of immigration law correspond exactly
with the changing needs of capital. In any case, even
restrictive immigration laws can be gotten around when
necessary for the employers. As Ronald Reagan once
publicly declared, "No regulation or law should be allowed
if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of
harvesters."60 He later went on to lead the charge for
border militarization when the political winds shifted.

Migrant workers are a select group, requiring physical
capabilities that allow them to withstand the rigors of
precarious and demanding journeys in order to reach
worksites, not to mention the demanding physical labor of
the work itself. Migrants tend to be of prime working age,
with over half of all migrants between the ages of 18 and
29, making it the youngest and most productive section of
the workforce.61 In addition, the initial costs associated
with the reproduction of these laborers—the food, shelter,
education, and health care required to raise a child into
a worker—are incurred by the family (and to a lesser
extent the state) from which they emigrate. The migrants
and their families also absorb the high costs associated
with migration.62

Once in the country, the wages of migrant workers are
spent not only in the local economy, but a large portion
is remitted to Mexico, providing hard currency for the
Mexican government and much-needed funds for families back
home. In 2006, Mexican immigrants repatriated an
astounding $24 billion.63 Not only has this infusion of
wealth overtaken tourism to become the nation's
second-biggest source of foreign income (after oil), it
now acts as a replacement fund for the fading state
welfare system for poor Mexicans. The Mexican government
has precipitously decreased the share of national wealth
allocated for social spending, as part of the
restructuring process, to a mere 10 percent of gross
domestic product.64 According to a recent survey, at least
four million families are now sustained by remittances
from loved ones in the U.S., and at least one-third of
them would live in poverty without the cash lifelines.65
Remittances are also a lifeline to the Mexican federal
government, as they provide "international reserves to the
central bank that serve to maintain the relative stability
of the peso in relation to the dollar, that is to say,
[they help] prevent devaluation."66

The Mexican government has fallen in line with support for
a permanent guest-worker program in the United States. A
formalized labor importation system designed to absorb
displaced workers within the region contributes to the
economic and political stability of Mexico. President
Felipe Calderón's immigration policies within Mexico
dovetail with Bush's; he has his own plans to militarize
Mexico's southern border, which are considered too
"porous," and to implement a formal guest-worker program
for Central American migrants, as part of a plan to
control labor migration both to and through Mexico.67

U.S. banks, cashing in on immigrant workers in the through
fees on accounts and money transfers, now own a majority
of Mexican banks. By 2000, U.S. financial corporations
owned twenty-four of Mexico's thirty banks.68 As of 2005,
foreign investors (mostly from the U.S.) had a 90 percent
controlling share of Mexico's financial institutions. With
the boom in remittances (thought to total nearly $100
billion during the presidency of Vicente Fox), coupled
with gradual deregulatory practices initiated since the
last "bailout" of 1995, investors can now expect about a
20 percent rate of return from Mexican banks.69

The high productivity and low wages of non-citizen
laborers also fits into the context of increasing global
competition, and the intensive efforts of the U.S.
government to actively aid corporations in the procurement
of labor laws that bestow optimal comparative advantage.
Since 2000, U.S. productivity rates have risen markedly
higher than their European Union counterparts, fueled by
the fact that U.S.-based workers (citizen and non-citizen)
are working harder and longer for the same or less pay.
According to the Economist, the weekly real wage of a
typical American worker dropped or stagnated between 2001
and 2006, while labor productivity increased by 15 percent
over the same period.70 Taking advantage of disempowered
workers is part of the same general strategy to lower the
standard of living for all workers.

Further militarization of immigration policy

The bipartisan "war on terror," a comprehensive plan to
expand and project military power to advance corporate
interests around the globe, has been turned inward through
the aegis of immigration policy. Pentagon planners and
defense industry pitchmen have been able to successfully
recast traditional, economic immigration as a national
security threat, leading to the increased militarization
of the border and of labor itself. To centralize efforts,
immigration enforcement agencies and national security
"first-responders" have been merged into the Department of
Homeland Security.

While entrusted to contain "domestic terrorism," the
agency has directed its energies toward undocumented
workers. Despite the fact that researchers have concluded
that as a group "undocumented workers are statistically
less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes,"
they have received all the focus.71 A May 2007 study
released by Syracuse University has concluded "that out of
more than 800,000 cases filed in federal courts by the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since 2004, only
twelve were related to terrorism. Another 112 cases were
filed using national security charges." All told, about 87
percent of those charged were undocumented workers and
students. The report concluded,

Despite the repeated statement by the DHS that stopping
terrorism and preventing serious crime are its core
missions, the record shows that since the DHS was
established in the wake of 9/11/2001, most of the agency's
actual work recorded in the Immigration Courts has focused
on traditional immigration matters.

The numbers of charges associated with "national security"
and "terrorism" have actually dropped since the creation
of the DHS.
For fiscal years 1994 to 1996, national security charges
made up 0.031 percent of all immigration charges. For
fiscal 2004 to 2006, such cases represented 0.014 percent.
Regarding terrorism charges, the percentage of cases filed
represented 0.009 percent during fiscal years 1994–1996. A
decade later, that percentage also dropped to 0.0015
percent.72

The latest stage of border militarization is embodied in
the "Secure Border Initiative," which has augmented
previous strategies73 with increases in the number of
agents and personnel, detention facilities, military
technology, and the deployment of 6,000 National Guard
troops.74 In the fall of 2006, the U.S. Congress approved
the construction of another 700 miles of border wall to
consummate the far Right's cry for one barrier across the
contiguous 1,970 miles shared by the two countries. On the
other hand, Republican immigration hawks in the Senate
Homeland Security Committee are working feverishly to
stall and subvert the implementation of parallel border
enforcement policies with Canada. Perhaps unaware that the
number of Mexican workers, shoppers, and relatives who
legally cross the border each day dwarfs the number of
both U.S. and Canadian crossers, Republican Senator Susan
Collins complained that "for many Maine residents, quick
and easy border crossing is essential…. They need access
to vital services, travel to their jobs, attend church,
and visit family and friends."75
Along the Mexican side, this policy has forced people to
cross the border through dangerously remote and hazardous
regions in deserts and mountainous terrain, or into the
equally dangerous underworld of human smuggling—through
ports of entry in container cargo. This strategy has
created a human rights tragedy, as more than 4,000 men,
women, and children have died in the act of looking for
work. In fact, there is a grisly correlation between the
increased funding of this strategy and the dramatic
increase in deaths. Funding for border enforcement has
increased from $1.3 billion in 1994 to $7.3 billion in
2005. Over that same period of time, the yearly number of
deaths has mushroomed from 23 to 473.76 Yet, unauthorized
crossing rates have remained relatively constant since
1995, indicating that the forces pushing the flow of
migration are more profound than the barriers seeking to
arrest it.77

The focus on the border as the last line of "national
defense" has ushered in a new boom in spending. According
to Pacifica radio host and author Deepa Fernandes,
spending on "national defense projects" has skyrocketed,
from $13 billion in 2000 to more than $50 billion in 2006,
a 300 percent increase.78 Contracts for border spending
have attracted a swarm of defense sector lobbyists, eager
to cash in. In 2003, over 490 firms employed 2,260
lobbyists specifically for the task of influencing the
outcomes of homeland security-related policy (four times
more than defense-related legislation); 82 percent of
lobbyists were government officials targeting their former
agency or government office.79

While engineers build up the border wall, recent migration
rates have dipped in the first quarter of 2007, but not
because of more wall construction efforts. Staying true to
the law of economics—and not politics—border crossings
have declined by 30 percent in 2006 due to the cooling
U.S. economy. While the Bush administration is already
taking credit, economists have identified that fewer jobs,
especially in the long-booming construction industry are
the real reason. Dawn McLaren, a research economist at
Arizona State's School of Business, has been tracking the
relation between employment trends and migration over the
last decade. Her studies have identified that every time
border apprehensions have declined, the economy slowed
about twelve months later. "About a year before a
recession, or a down cycle, there was a slowdown in the
number of arrests" on the border, she concluded.80 Fewer
people cross because immigrants quickly discover through
the grapevine that jobs are becoming scarce. The border
doesn't really prevent migration, it only serves to
criminalize it.

Inside the country, migrant workers have been subjected to
an extensive campaign of repression in the wake of the May
1, 2006, mass immigrant rights protests. A seemingly
arbitrary campaign of raids has been conducted across the
country in workplaces and communities populated with
immigrant workers. Paramilitary in nature, with names like
Operation Return to Sender and the National Fugitive
Operations Program, more than 200,000 people have been
deported to date, with the stated goal of the expulsion of
over 600,000 people overall in the coming years.81

These sweeps, allegedly to round up immigrants who are
"criminal aliens" and those who have received deportation
orders, have mostly netted laborers using false working
papers and collateral arrests, those who have committed no
crime but were apprehended in the course of the raids and
sweeps.82 The campaign to raid, detain, and deport some
immigrants is designed to instill fear in the immigrant
community. The practice fits the definition of state
terrorism.83

The federal government's campaign against undocumented
workers is not aimed at deporting all undocumented
immigrants. In addition to being red meat to appease the
far Right, the raids dovetail with Bush's plans to
transform future migrants from "undocumented" (with
limited freedom of movement, membership in unions, and
permanent residence) to "guest workers" (with no freedom
of movement, right to join unions, or permanent
residence). The aim is to create a class of powerless and
subservient laborers and to leverage their poor conditions
to drive down conditions for all workers.

Guest workers: The new Jim Crow

Guest workers are attractive to big business because they
are unfree labor. Their restricted and temporary status
makes them a captive workforce, precluded from legally
exercising proven forms of leverage used to negotiate
better conditions of work. They cannot move freely between
jobs, join unions, or participate in work stoppages. They
cannot protest, register their discontent through voting,
or utilize any other tools that the working class has
historically employed to raise wages and improve their
lives under capitalism. Under the guest-worker program
(whether blue or white collar), workers are bound to their
employer, who retains the right to terminate the
contract—their job—at will. This makes their presence
subject to the whims of their bosses, who can take
advantage of their vulnerability to ensure passive
compliance.

Keeping workers pinned under these conditions ensures a
maximum rate of exploitation. As guest workers affect the
whole structure of an industry and can affect competition
between businesses, employers in key industries come to
"largely rely upon the extraordinarily vulnerable guest
workers for the bulk of [their] labor, [which creates] a
race to the bottom in terms of wages to be paid."84

According to a recent study of contemporary guest-worker
programs conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center in
March 2007,

Under the current system, called the H-2 program,
employers brought about 121,000 guest workers into the
United States in 2005—approximately 32,000 for
agricultural work and another 89,000 for jobs in forestry,
seafood processing, landscaping, construction, and other
non-agricultural industries.85

The report enumerates the negative features of the program
that hurt both immigrant and native-born workers:
• The demand for extortive fees from potential guest
workers, since they must be offered work by a U.S. company
and are recruited by "contractors" in the sending nations;
• The relation of power by which employers—not the
worker—decides whether a worker can come and whether a
worker can stay. At any time the employer can terminate
the contract, thus nullifying the right of the worker to
remain in the country, rendering them "illegal";

• The inability to address grievances against abuse or
fraud (except to terminate the contract and return to
their home country);

• Lack of protections for guest workers from local law
enforcement;

• The use of "blacklists" to isolate and remove workers
who speak out against bad conditions or engage in any form
of collective organizing. For instance, the North Carolina
Growers Association circulated an "ineligible for rehire"
report in 1997 that listed more than 1,000 names of
"undesirable" guest workers;

• The manipulation of the rate of work, including
underemployment and the denial of overtime;

• Lack of access to federally funded legal services;

• Dramatically high rates of sexual harassment and sexual
abuse;

• Higher rates of accidents and poorer working conditions
in "guest-worker industries."

The new corporate preference for guest workers over
undocumented workers is reflected in the fact that the
latter have had the ability to leave exploitative jobs and
join unions. Despite their vulnerable status, they have
proven themselves potential lightning rods of trade-union
resurgence, "as UNITE has found with laundry workers
nationwide, the Roofers Union with home-construction
workers in Arizona, Laborers with asbestos remediation
workers in New York and New Jersey, and SEIU with its
Justice for Janitors campaign."86

Current guest-worker proposals seek to extend captive
labor into industries across the economy. Looking at
current pro-guest-worker program organizations reveal the
forces behind the effort. The Essential Worker Immigration
Coalition, an executive committee of U.S. manufacturing
and service industries that rely on immigrant labor,
"supports reform of U.S. immigration policy to facilitate
a sustainable workforce for the American economy while
ensuring our national security and prosperity."87

If the defenders of corporate interests have locked arms
to defile the concept of amnesty, there is good reason.
The last amnesty led to an increase in wages for all
workers. According to the San Diego Union Tribune,

History shows that wages rise after undocumented workers
are legalized, as they did after the government offered
amnesty to 2.7 million undocumented workers in 1986.
Within five years, real wages of formerly undocumented
workers rose an average of 15 percent, according to the
U.S. Department of Labor. Wages for many of the jobs had
been declining prior to legalization. Wages would also
rise for native-born workers or legal immigrants who work
in similar jobs. A University of California Los Angeles
study five years ago estimated that if undocumented
workers were legalized, wages for all workers would rise
by about 5 percent in agriculture, 2.75 percent in
services and 2.5 percent in manufacturing.88

The anti-union bias has penetrated the heart of current
U.S. immigration enforcement. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled in the Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB case
that undocumented workers who are fired for union
activities are not entitled to be reinstated or to back
pay (under the provisions of the National Labor Relations
Act) if they are without papers, even if their firing is
itself illegal.89 According to the Mexican-American Legal
Defense Fund the case has

encouraged unscrupulous employers to engage in retaliation
against unauthorized workers who claim violations of their
workplace rights, and to make more claims that these
workers are unprotected by any labor laws. This in turn
has a chilling effect on workers' enforcement of their
remaining workplace rights. Court rulings that diminish
protections for the undocumented encourage employers to
hire and take advantage of undocumented workers,
undermining immigration law enforcement. Finally,
employers who would follow the labor and employment laws
are harmed when their competitors are allowed to flout the
law without suffering consequences.90
The state's escalating role as anti-union enforcers in the
immigrant working class became all too apparent in the
massive raids at the Swift & Company meatpacking plants in
December 2006. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) agency virtually shut the unionized meatpacker down,
arresting 1,282 workers, all of them with Spanish and
indigenous surnames. The United Food and Commercial
Workers Union, which represents 10,000 workers in the
company declared that ICE agents "marched into plants with
military weapons, herding, segregating, and terrorizing
workers" in an attempt to prevent further organizing.91

One doesn't need to look beyond the nearest roadside farm
to see the predatory consequences of guest-worker
programs. After failed attempts to unionize guest workers
during the era of the Bracero Program, labor activist
Ernesto Galarza observed that employer opposition backed
by the active support of local and federal authorities
rendered any claim that temporary workers had rights or
protections "meaningless language."92 The long-term
effects of any new program will be the same, albeit beyond
the fields. Such a program will lower the wage threshold
across all productive industries, and leverage captive
labor against unionized workers, a phenomenon referred to
as the "Bracero benchmark," as wages in farmwork
deteriorated to below the levels that existed prior to the
introduction of the program.93
In the final analysis, the pursuit of a new, expanded
guest-worker program is the outgrowth of Corporate
America's efforts to press forward with the neoliberal
restructuring of North American capitalism. A major
component of this strategy is the restructuring of the
U.S. labor markets, or more pointedly, a continuation of
the war on unions and the living standards of North
American workers. Along with union-busting law firms,
two-tiered employment schemes, victimization of union
organizers, and outsourcing of union jobs, the
guest-worker strategy is the next front of the "employer's
offensive." This stark reality has been recognized by some
in the labor movement, but tragically, organized
resistance remains tepid at best. Nevertheless, the
AFL-CIO has identified that,

Such a system will create a disenfranchised underclass of
workers. That is not only morally indefensible, it is
economically nonsensical. We've had plenty of bad
experiences with such shortsighted answers to a
complicated problem…. This means that everyone who is
admitted to work must immediately be on a track toward
permanent residency or citizenship.94

Rather than accept the corporate diktats embodied in the
current immigration proposal, a whole new vision for
immigration reform is needed.
Another vision for immigration in the twenty-first century

The rapid erosion of the conditions of life for
undocumented migrants in the United States poses a threat
to the basic human rights of all peoples. The freedom to
move, work, and live—free of harassment, violence, and
privation—is diminishing for an increasing sector of
working America, which will ultimately lower the bar for
the rest. In different form but similar content, this
regressive course is reviving elements of the most
insidious and discredited labor systems of the past.

An alternative vision for immigration is desperately
needed; one based on the international realities created
by the ascendancy of neoliberal capitalism. Capitalist
globalization amounts to the creation of a borderless
world for capital, "nothing more than internal transfers
from one division of a U.S.-based transnational
corporation to another division," but relies on the use of
border walls and restrictive policies to curtail the
movement of workers and to prevent the creation of a
transnational workforce capable of organizing across
borders.95 According to Beatriz Maya, director of the Farm
Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC, AFL-CIO) immigrant
rights campaign,

What is the message we want to give to Latin America? That
we need them to come to work but we don't want them to
stay and be a part of this community? The U.S. will be
host to millions of workers who would form a permanent,
even if rotating, underclass of people who have no rights
and no path to citizenship. We propose the development of
a Freedom Visa, with freedom to travel and work with full
rights and dignity for all workers.96

As North American capitalism expands its control over the
Americas, the conditions for all workers will continue to
erode unless we fight for our own globalization, the right
to free movement for all workers, without border walls.
This is a precondition for the solidarity that will be
required to fight the corporate agenda embedded in NAFTA
and other free-trade policies. Furthermore, U.S.-born
workers must fight for full equality and integration of
immigrant workers in this country as a precondition for
rebuilding the trade-union movement, and achieving any
form of social justice in the years to come.
In the United States, the ongoing struggle over
immigration reveals the widening class divide in U.S.
society, and holds the future for all working people in
the balance. Corporate America is gearing up for a long
and bitter struggle. So should those who stand for
equality and justice. The mass movement born out of the
May Day marches of 2006 and 2007 has given us a different
vision—one worth fighting for.

Justin Akers Chacón is co-author, with Mike Davis, of No
One Is Illegal: Fighting Violence and State Repression on
the U.S.-Mexico Border (Haymarket Books, 2006), and is a
frequent contributor to the ISR on immigrant rights.
1 Such as the House bill H.R. 1645 (STRIVE Act) and the
pending Senate Immigration Proposal (referred to as the
"Grand Bargain").

2 Cited in David Bacon, "The real political purpose of the
ICE raids," New American Media, March 30, 2007.

3 Such as in "welfare reform," or "tax reform."

4 "Kennedy response to Bush's immigration speech," press
release, April 8, 2007,

http://kennedy.senate.gov/newsroom/press_release.cfm?id=3f088959-a3e9-4ddb-a8cb-c06a9bbd0b24.

5 Kelly Hearn, "Chávez a step behind Bush's Latin tour,"
Washington Times, March 13, 2007.

6 David Brooks, "Bush se suma a 'la causa de la justicia
social' en América Latina," La Jornada, March 6, 2007.

7 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 162.

8 From a World Bank study, "Inequality in Latin America
and the Caribbean: Breaking with History?" October 7,
2003.http://

wbln0018.worldbank.org/LAC/LAC.nsf/ECADocByUnid/4112F1114F594B4B85256DB3005DB262?Opendocument.

9 Roberto Gonzalez Amador and David Brooks, "México, el
mayor expulsor de migrantes del planeta, dice el BM," La
Jornada, April 16, 2007.

10 For a comprehensive explanation of neoliberalism, see
Eric Toussaint, Your Money or Your Life: The Tyranny of
Global Finance (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005).

11 See NAFTA Text, Including Supplemental Agreements,
(Chicago: CCH Publishing ,1994).

12 "Immigration fuels Canada's growth," Guardian, March
14, 2007.

13 Elisabeth Smick, "Backgrounder on Canada's immigration
policy," Council on Foreign Relations, July 6, 2006.

14 It is estimated that the border wall will cost $7
billion while the "smart border," will run up to $30
billion. See Andres Oppenheimer, "Better uses for border
fence money," Miami Herald, November 25, 2006.

15 Southern Poverty Law Center, "Close to slavery:
Guest-worker programs in the United States," March 2007.

16 Julia Preston, "Rules collide with reality in the
immigration debate," New York Times, May 26, 2006.

17 Martha Ojeda and Rosemary Hennessy eds., NAFTA from
Below: Maquiladora Workers, Farmers and Indigenous
Communities Speak Out on the Impact of Free Trade in
Mexico (San Antonio: Coalition for Justice in the
Maquiladoras, 2006).

18 Joseph A. Whitt, Jr., "The Mexican peso crisis,"
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta,

http://www.frbatlanta.org/filelegacydocs/

J_whi811.pdf.

19 Jorge G. Castañeda, The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for
the U.S. (New York: The New Press, 1995), 199.

20 Harvey, 101.

21 Elisabeth Malkin, "Output falling in oil-rich Mexico,
and politics gets the blame," International Herald
Tribune, March 9, 2007.

22 Marla Dickerson, "Mexico's stubborn lack of choices,"
Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2006.

23 Luis Rojas, "Foreign investment in Mexico up 66 pct in
1st qtr," Reuters, May 23, 2007.

24 "In Mexico, 1Q direct foreign investment jumps by 66
percent over same period last year," San Diego Union
Tribune, May 23, 2007.

25 Diane Lindquist, "Maquiladora industry is resilient,
expert says," San Diego Union Tribune, January 28, 2006.

26 "International trade: Mexico's maquiladora decline
affects U.S.-Mexico border communities and trade; Recovery
depends in part on Mexico's actions," U.S. General
Accounting Office Report, July 2003.

27 Jesus Cañas, Roberto Coronado, and Robert W. Gilmer,
"Maquiladora recovery: Lessons for the future," Southwest
Economy, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, March/April 2007.

28 David Hendricks, "Global Eepansion: Industrial parks
bring manufacturing back to Mexico," April 12, 2007,

http://www.expansionmanagement.com/smo/newsviewer/default.asp?cmd=articledetail&articleid=18568&st=3.

29 "TNCs stand firm despite FDI slide," Foreign Direct
Investment, October 20, 2004.

30 Brian Chasnoff, "Profit and poverty: Mexico's
maquiladoras," Daily Texan Online, February 2, 2004.

31 Based on a 2001 study produced by the San Diego
Dialogue, a cross-border research group based at the
University of California, San Diego,

http://www.sandiegodialogue.org/Report/June01/pg4.html.

32 Ojeda and Hennessy, 6.

33 Sanjay Suri, "Free trade enslaving poor countries," IPS
News, March 20, 2007.

34 Ojeda and Hennessy, 4–5.

35 Kim Moody, "Harvest of empire: Immigrant workers in the
U.S. pt.1," Against the Current, March/April 2007, 12.

36 Patricia Muñoz Rios, "Salarios en Mexico, entre los
peores del mundo," La Jornada, February 8, 2006.

37 U.S. General Accounting Office Report, 24.

38 See Wal-Mart's Web site at

http://www.walmartmexico.com.mx/.

39 "Wal-Mart's Mexican empire steadily advances," Frontera
NorteSur (FNS) Online, Center for Latin American and
Border Studies, New Mexico State University, May 9, 2007,

http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2007/may18-07/Wal-Mart.htm.

40 Elisabeth Malkin, "World business briefing Americas:
Mexico, economic growth surges," New York Times, February
17, 2005.

41 Tyche Hendricks, "On the border, maquiladoras," San
Francisco Chronicle, November 25, 2005.

42 Louis Uchitelle, "NAFTA should have stopped illegal
immigration, right?" New York Times, February 18, 2007.

43 "Youth migration on the rise," FNS Online, January 10,
2006, http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/cgi-bin/datacgi/

database.cgi?file=Issues&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0399.

44 Gina-Marie Cheeseman, "Free trade agreements spur
immigration," Onlinejournal.com, March 15, 2007.

45 See Marla Dickenson, "49 billion is Slim's pickings in
Mexico," Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2007,

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/

publish/article_1851.shtml.

46 Based on a speech given by Garrett Brown at the
Immigrant

Workers in Construction Conference, Center to Protect
Workers' Rights, Sacramento, California, April 12, 2007,

http://bordervoz.org/featuredarticle28.html.

47 Martín Vargas, "Chiapas vapuleado por la migración,"
Cuatro Poder (a Chiapas-based newspaper), March 20, 2007.

48 Because wages have been so depressed in the maquiladora
sector, most able-bodied migrants with enough money to
cover smuggling fees, prefer to cross into the U.S.,
creating periodic labor shortages in the maquiladora
zones.

49 León Bendesky, "Economía de la migración," La Jornada,
May 28, 2007.

50 See Jonathon Clark, "Unemployment statistics don't tell
the real story in Mexico," Miami Herald (Mexico Edition),
June 11, 2005.

51 Brown.

52 "New deportation numbers quoted," FNS Online, April 7,
2006, http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/immi.html.

53 S. Lynne Walker, "Flow of money from Mexicans in the
U.S. counters pressure to control migration," San Diego
Union Tribune, February 7, 2006.

54 Shannon O'Neil, "Will we have enough workers?" Los
Angeles Times, April 5, 2007.

55 Jennifer Cheeseman Day, "National population
projections," U.S. Census Bureau,

http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/natproj.html.

56 Phillip Longman, The Empty Cradle: How Falling
Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About
It (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 18.

57 Juan Balboa, "En el sexenio foxista, 3.4 millones de
mexicanos expulsados a EU," La Jornada, April 3, 2007.

58 See Mike Davis and Justin Akers Chacón, No One Is
Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the
U.S.-Mexico Border (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006).

59 Harvey, 159.

60 Fareed Zakaria, "America's new Know-Nothings,"
Newsweek, May 28, 2007.

61 "Survey of Mexican migrants," Pew Hispanic Center,
March 2, 2005,

http://www.pewtrusts.com/pdf/PHC_migrant_survey_030205.pdf.

62 "Pew Hispanic Center Report: Unemployment plays small
role in spurring Mexican migration to U.S.," Pew Hispanic
Center,

December 6, 2005,

http://pewhispanic.org/newsroom/releases/release.php?ReleaseID=37.

63 "Banks leap across borders," FNS Online, November 21,
2006,

http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2006/december01-06/

banks.htm.

64 "Mexico's urban poor work harder for less," World Bank,
August 27, 2005,

http://www.citymayors.com/society/mexico_poor.html.

65 Walker, "Flow of money."

66 Bendesky, "Economía de la migración."

67 "Calderón reveals Mexico's new immigration reforms,"
Associated Press, March 2, 2007.

68 Cited in Harvey, 103.

69 "Banks leap across borders," FNS Online, November 21,
2006.

70 "More pain than gain: Many workers are missing out on
the rewards of globalization," Economist, September 16,
2006.

71 Sebastian Mallaby, "The low risk from immigrants:
Off-target priorities for homeland defense," Washington
Post, May 28, 2007.

72 Norberto Santana, Jr. "Report questions DHS focus on
immigration," Orange County Register, May 28, 2007.

73 See Justin Akers Chacón, "Operation Gatekeeper:
Militarizing the border," International Socialist Review
18, June–July 2001.

74 "Fact sheet: Secure border initiative update,"
Department of Homeland Security, August 23, 2006,

http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_1158351496818.shtm.

75 Chris Strohm, "Senators offer bill to delay security
rules for Canadian border," National Journal's Technology
Daily, May 29, 2007. For a discussion of the number of
daily border crossers, see "International trade: Mexico's
maquiladora decline affects U.S.-Mexico border communities
and trade; recovery depends in part on Mexico's actions,"
U.S. General Accounting Office, July 2003,

http://www.govexec.com

/story_page.cfm?articleid=37043&dcn=todaysnews.

76 See "Life and death on the border," Socialist Worker,

http://socialistworker.org/2006-2/603/603_07_BorderCharts.shtml.

77 Spencer S. Hsu, "Immigration arrests down 8 percent for
year," Washington Post, October 31, 2006.

78 Deepa Fernandes, Targeted: Homeland Security and the
Business of Immigration (New York: Seven Stories Press,
2007), 174.

79 Ibid., 179.

80 Seattle Times news services, "Illegal crossings echo
U.S. economic health," May 29, 2007.

81 See Department of Homeland Security, "An assessment of
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement's
fugitive operations teams," March 5, 2007,

http://www.dhs.gov/xoig/assets/mgmtrpts/

OIG_07-34_Mar07.pdf.

82 An estimated one-third of arrests are "collateral." See
Sandra Dibble, "Religious leaders want end to raids'
'collateral arrests,'" San Diego Union Tribune, April 6,
2007.

83 For an interesting analysis of terrorism, see "The
definition of terrorism," Guardian, May 7, 2001.

84 "Close to slavery: Guest worker programs in the United
States," Southern Poverty Law Center,

http://www.splcenter.org/pdf/static/SPLCguestworker.pdf,

20.

85 Ibid., 3.

86 David Moberg, "The road to citizenship: Immigrants and
unions get on the same bus," In These Times, September 9,
2003.

87 See Essential Worker Immigration Coalition,

http://www.ewic.org/. For white-collar workers, see

http://www.competeamerica.org/.

88 Dean Calbreath, "Undocumented workers carry big stick,"
San Diego Union Tribune, September 5, 2006.

89 See Sharon Smith, "Why an injury to one is an injury to
all," Socialist Worker, May 4, 2007.

90 "Used and abused: The treatment of undocumented victims
of labor law violations since Hoffman Plastic Compounds v.
NLRB," Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational
Fund, January 2003.

91 "UFCW condemns immigration raid," Press Associates,
December 22, 2006.

92 Ernesto Galarza, Merchants of Labor: The Mexican
Bracero Story (Santa Barbara: McNally and Lofton, 1964),
24.

93 Davis and Akers Chacón,143.

94 John J. Sweeney and Pablo Alvarado, "Guest workers: a
worn-out labor idea," Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2007.

95 Brown.

96 "Bush's proposal encouraging but falls short," Farm
Labor Organizing Committee, May 17, 006,

http://www.ggjalliance.org/

news.php?id=32.

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