IMMIGRANTS STEAL JOBS? WHAT A LIE

By Rebeca Toledo

Each of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates has his own anti-immigration policy.

Bill Clinton has thrown money at the Immigration and Naturalization Service to beef up the border patrol between the United States and Mexico. Pat Buchanan is calling for a five-year ban on immigration and a barbed-wired fence along the U.S./Mexico border.

Bob Dole wants to set more limits on immigration. Lamar Alexander wants a new arm of the military to patrol the border.

And don't forget the Democrats and Republicans in Congress who are now taking up legislation to restrict immigration more severely than at any time since 1920.

What do they all have in common? They are all pushing the same racist myths about immigration.

Myth #1: Immigrants take jobs away from U.S. workers.

Truth #1: In a 1994 study entitled "Setting the Record Straight on Immigration and Immigrants," the Urban Institute in Washington reported its conclusions based on an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau figures. The institute reported that immigration actually "increases the labor market opportunities of low-skilled, native workers."

This study and many others indicate that immigrants create more jobs than they take.

Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, usually hold down the most gruesome, taxing jobs. They work the hot fields of the South and Southwest as migrant laborers. They work countless hours in unsafe sweatshops.

They work in restaurants doing the worst jobs. They are domestic workers, usually at the mercy of their bosses.

The only way for U.S. workers to lose their jobs is for U.S. bosses to fire them, lay them off, or shut the company down. Even if immigration were to come to a halt, AT&T, IBM, Kodak and all the other big corporations would still lay off thousands of workers.

Myth #2: Immigrants drain state and social services.

Truth #2: Documentation from the 1990 Census and the Urban Institute shows that under 10 percent of legal immigrants receive welfare. The rate of public assistance for immigrants is 2.3 percent, compared to 3.3 percent for the native-born population.

Moreover, immigrants pay over $70 billion in taxes annually and use only $5.7 billion in public aid.

Myth #3: Immigration, legal or otherwise, is at an all-time high and out of control, especially at the U.S./Mexico border.

Truth #3: A little over 1 million immigrants enter the United States every year. This is about the same as the last historical peak earlier in this century.

Now, however, the foreign-born make up about 8 percent of the population-half as many as back then. Only 40 percent of immigrant workers come from Mexico and Latin America, a ratio unchanged since the 1960s.

Of the 200,000 to 300,000 people who enter and stay in the United States without documents, most entered legally from various countries and overstayed their visas.

LOWERING WAGES, BUSTING UNIONS

So why all the myths?

Workers World Party vice-presidential candidate Gloria La Riva, a Chicana activist living in San Francisco, says: "The government and the capitalist class it serves don't really want to stop immigration. The system needs the labor power of immigrant workers.

"However, the bosses and politicians are scapegoating immigrants, and creating a climate of vicious racism. They are making conditions for immigrants almost intolerable in order to force them into even worse jobs with even lower pay and no benefits.

"By victimizing this one group, they can drive wages down across the board. They can keep new workers out of unions and weaken the labor movement."

La Riva says scapegoating immigrants also keeps the heat off the real criminals: the banks, corporations and bosses, who are wreaking havoc on the living standards of all U.S. workers. She says: "The battle for decent jobs, with decent wages and benefits, is between workers and bosses, not between U.S.-born workers and immigrants.

"The struggle for more social services, instead of less, is between the people and the government of the capitalist class, not between people born in this country and immigrants.

"And if we want to win these struggles," La Riva continues, "workers in the U.S. must embrace immigrant workers and put the bosses on notice that we will not be taken in by racist demagogy."

Of course, the major antidote to layoffs and restructuring is building strong unions that will combat the bosses at every level. Organizing a mass response against cutbacks will also beat them back.

And ultimately, capitalism will fall in favor of a socialist system that meets people's needs and does away with all the artificial borders the capitalists have created.

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