Roundup — Elvira Arellano, Deepa Fernandes, Progressive Populism

Like many of you, I've been transfixed by Elvira Arellano and her son Saul ever since I started following their story almost exactly one year ago (on WBAI community-supported radio, of course). With a humbleness of spirit and yet a palpable moral force, Arellano has courageously stepped up to her historical moment and has become a galvanizing symbol of migrant-family rights and the New Sanctuary Movement; which is obviously why the Feds were so eager to get rid of her. In the wake of her deportation, WBAI's Deepa Fernandes has been doing her usual excellent job on her show Wakeup Call, giving the story extensive coverage this morning. Free Speech Radio News also has more details, including clips of Ms. Arellano's final speech before her deportation and a first-hand account of the actual arrest.

Here's some of what Deepa wrote in a recent op-ed piece on immigration:

There is a crisis in America, but its not immigrants who are to blame.

And a law-enforcement model of dealing with immigration is certainly not working. As quickly as the country finds grounds to arrest, lock up and then deport a non-citizen, there are thousands more immigrants entering, both with papers and without papers. And don’t be fooled into believing that it is only the ‘illegals’ that are being arrested and deported. The detention arsenal of the government targets green card holders, foreign students and guest workers just as aggressively.

So I start from this question—simple and easy: Why are immigrants coming to the U.S.?

Sure, some may be coming here hoping for riches, hoping to make it big, hoping for the American Dream. But the overwhelming majority is not. Some immigrants come because they are fleeing persecution; some to study; and still more come to be reunited with their family. But what connects many immigrants is that they simply cannot make enough money for their family to survive in their home country.

I have spent years researching immigration policies and talking about immigration with citizens and migrants alike. While some immigrants certainly do aspire to stay permanently in the U.S., many wish they could have remained in their home country and earned a living wage there.

But trade policies like NAFTA, CAFTA and free trade agreements with many Caribbean and Asian countries, coupled with IMF and World Bank policies that have gutted social welfare programs in many of these countries have forced millions into migratory patterns to eek out a living. When their village or rural town becomes unviable, most people move to the nearest big city. Cities in all these countries are far from able to provide meaningful employment for the masses and the migration continues until a decent paying job can be found. In this part of the hemisphere, that place is the United States.

Simultaneously, U.S. workers have suffered because employers can hire, en-masse, a workforce that has few rights, no benefits and accepts paltry wages. But somehow, this exploitation of undocumented workers has been transformed into the idea that immigrants are the ones to blame for “taking” plum “American” jobs.

So here’s my solution. Let’s go to the root cause of the problem. Let’s deal with why people can’t stay in their home country and earn a fair wage, and lets then look at why there is a race to the bottom for wages and job conditions here in the U.S. In sum, the domestic immigration problem should be tackled through trade and labor policies.

Left field, I know.

Almost like saying lets drop the war on drugs law-enforcement model and apply a public health strategy to deal with people caught up selling and using drugs. Imagine if we could end, or at the very least massively reform, NAFTA, CAFTA and all the free trade agreements the U.S. has with other nations. Let’s push for fair trade or even take some of the huge budget that is spent on militarizing the southern border (because let’s be real, it hasn’t worked and more money for stadium lights, unmanned drones and border patrol agents is not going to stop people coming in search of work) and lets invest in jobs that will keep people where they want to be: in their home country. If one could earn $7-10 an hour in Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica, Peru etc, you watch the flow of undocumented immigrants dry up. And while this may seem a pipe dream, with political will, it is possible.

But fixing trade policies alone is not enough. We also seriously need to tackle the way in which corporate America has built its profit base by forcing down wages and gutting worker benefits in this country. Imagine a world in which the minimum wage was $10 an hour. And no, this does not mean that prices need to rise enormously, it means that CEO pay and shareholder profits need to drop. It means that the gap between the very rich and working people needs to lessen. Because it is not that immigrants are doing the jobs that no Americans will do, it’s that immigrants are doing the jobs that no Americans can afford to do.

I totally agree.

And I see transnational unionization as a key element in the fight for migrant rights. Corporations have gone over the heads of nation-states, and so must unions. Indeed I see unions at the crux of a huge spectrum of progressive issues, from immigration to healthcare to sustainable development. I believe that the mortal weakness of unions in the US is one of the fundemental causes of many of our social ills; the ruling class has done a bang-up job of sabotaging progressive populism ever since the end of World War II and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, using every nefarious trick in the book of -isms to keep the working class divided and the middle class disengaged and uninformed and the ruling class running their deadly hustles from the shadows. Personally I don't believe it will be possible for US society as a whole to turn any progressive corners until its union movement is thoroughly revitalized and reconstituted in a 21st century mold. I don't really believe in any progressive movement that's not strongly rooted in the working-class and in economic populism.

For example, the fake-news media loves deadly industrial accidents as opportunities for morbid sensationalism and Emmy-winning tears, but the obvious dots remain unconnected in all too many people's heads: weak unions = unsafe conditions = worker deaths. There is no ambiguity in this equation. Quaker Dave and Arianna Huffington point to dirty politics and bad journalism, which are certainly parts of the problem here; but as I see it, unions are even more fundamental to the picture. Politicians and their patrons and their media lackeys will not do the right thing just because it's right; that's not how power structures behave. The only force that is structurally capable of coercing mining companies (and other industrial corporations) to go all out for worker safety, fair compensation, and proper healthcare, is strong unionization. Only unions organized by and for the workers will put human safety at the top of the agenda and leave the bottom line where it belongs, at the bottom. I mean, it's ridiculous, this mine in Crandall Canyon, Utah, is so unsound that 3 rescuers got killed tunneling and the entire tunneling rescue operation has been suspended; that's how much of a joke worker safety is to management. These incidents are not freak accidents, they are predictable results of a half-century of persistent union-busting.

~ ~ ~

On a separate note, speaking of Quaker Dave, be sure to see the latest at Daily Darfur.

Also, if you haven't been reading Ann's blog Beautiful, Also, Are The Souls Of My Black Sisters, you're missing some of the best writing that I'm currently aware of in the blogosphere.

Over at Ill Doctrine, Jay has put together a tribute of 10 Max Roach clips.

Finally, allow me to turn once again to Deepa Fernandes to finish off this post with some thoughts on progressive media:

Comments

[Yolanda Carrington]

This needs to be repeated again and again:

The only force that is structurally capable of coercing mining companies (and other industrial corporations) to go all out for worker safety, fair compensation, and proper healthcare, is strong unionization. Only unions organized by and for the workers will put human safety at the top of the agenda and leave the bottom line where it belongs, at the bottom[...] These incidents are not freak accidents, they are predictable results of a half-century of persistent union-busting.

This is the gospel truth. And I think the move toward a mass popular movement is inevitable, especially since the American Dream middle class is on its last legs, the national infrastructure is falling apart, and we have no idea when the endless war will finally end. I see a hard rain coming. We better get ready.

[donna darko]

great article and post.

[Kai]

Yolanda, yes I agree the Dream is coming apart at the seams, in many ways. Should be interesting, to say the least.

Donna, thanks for the good word. Deepa Fernandes rocks.

[R. Mildred]

I am having serious problems with Quakerdave's blog, the daily darfur blog says that it's been deleted, and Quakerdave's blog proper only shows ONE single blog post, irregardless of what I click on in the blog (it goes to other blogs without any trouble if I click their links), archives, one post and comments, main page, one post and comments, I click on the "more recent post" button from the bottom of that post and I end up at the same post again, with comments.

And I can only even get the post (about that boy who died for lack of dental care) if I click the stop loading button before teh post proper is replaced by a long list of google ad style links trying to help me with taxes (!?) - with comments from teh original post underneath that.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Kai]

R. Mildred, damn you're right. I don't know what happened, it looks like Dave split. I guess I should update the post...

[Yolanda Carrington]

Kai, your post was so good that it loosed me from a horrible writer's block. I've been working on this piece since Wednesday, and it's finally up. Thanks!