Amy Traub is Associate Director of Research for the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy . She recently completed a report, Principals for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class: A Primer for Policymakers and Advocates .
Listening to President Bush’s latest pronouncements on immigration, it’s easy to spot him speaking to the interests of big corporations: That’s the part about a guest worker program to ensure a constant supply of low-wage labor in the United States. It’s also easy to see where the president plays to the xenophobic fears of his right-wing base: That’s the rest of the speech, focused from top to bottom on cracking down and banishing all undocumented immigrants from our pristine shores.
But where do ordinary Americans fit in?
We’re just trying to gain or hold onto a middle-class standard of living: pay the mortgage, hang onto a job with decent pay and benefits, and hope there’s still Social Security around by the time we retire. Thirty-six million immigrants, including more than 10 million undocumented immigrants, living and working in the United States have a powerful impact on our ability to do those things.
But it’s not only Bush who’s leaving the middle class out. Other than some very valid critiques of policies that violate immigrants’ fundamental human rights, progressives haven’t had much to say on this issue. That means when it comes to immigration, we’re largely passing up the opportunity to address the vast majority of Americans who are middle class or aspire to be.
Instead, it’s the anti-immigrant right that is most directly speaking to the middle class. They base their pitch on fear and half-truths: “Immigrants take jobs from Americans;” “Illegal aliens pay no taxes, and freeload off the public services paid for by U.S. citizens.”
The fact is, the most comprehensive study ever conducted of immigrants’ economic activity, a 1997 report by the National Research Council, concluded that over time, immigrants and their offspring are a net tax benefit to the United States, paying more than they ever use in services. More recent research demonstrates that because new immigrants tend to be younger than the U.S. population as a whole and have more of their working years ahead of them, they help to shore up the expected shortfall in Social Security, a vital program for the middle class. Consumer spending and the creation of small business by immigrants further boosts the economy and supports the middle class and aspiring middle class.
Because immigrants contribute to our economic well-being, it would be shortsighted to attempt to shut immigrants out or undertake mass deportation. But that doesn’t mean the immigration status quo effectively serves the interests of the middle class.
The right is onto something when they recognize that undocumented immigrants, in particular, pose a threat to the expansion and strength of the middle class—but they’re wrong about the reasons why. While there’s no consensus among economists that the mere presence of immigrants negatively affects the wages and working conditions of American workers, there is evidence that undocumented workers’ inability to defend their rights in the workplace contributes to a race to the bottom that hurts many Americans who aspire to a middle-class standard of living.
The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case alleging that Mohawk Industries, the nation’s largest carpet manufacturer, hired hundreds of undocumented workers in a deliberate conspiracy to drive down wages. Earlier this year, the nation’s largest employer, Wal-Mart, settled a case alleging that its cleaning contractors hired—and systematically underpaid—undocumented workers, even locking them in and forcing them to sleep in the backs of stores.
It doesn’t take an economist to recognize that when jobs with wages and working conditions like this proliferate in the U.S, the security of the middle class is at risk. If employers can hire undocumented workers and get away with paying them less than minimum wage, denying them overtime pay, refusing to provide necessary safety equipment or following other costly labor regulations, they save a fortune on labor costs over hiring U.S. citizens who are more secure in their rights. And if undocumented workers get restive, ask for raises or try to organize a union? Unlike U.S. citizens, you can threaten to have them deported.
Under these circumstances, undocumented immigrants are on the road to becoming a permanent underclass, undermining middle-class wages and working conditions, because they don’t have the means to enforce their own rights in the workplace. But, by making sure workplace laws—from the minimum wage to the right to organize a union—truly apply to all workers, we can bring undocumented immigrants into the economic mainstream and help level the playing field for other workers. Middle-class and aspiring middle-class Americans should support workplace rights for immigrants not just out of compassion for mistreated immigrants, but because they want to preserve their own job standards and the opportunity to improve them.
For too long, progressives have treated immigration as a third rail issue—touch it and get burned by one interest group or another. But we’re only trapped in that box if we accept the conservative, “us against them” framework of fear that pits low-wage workers against recent immigrants. As progressives, we should proceed from a perspective of optimism about the American dream, and reject the conservative notion that if we allow too many people to participate in that dream, it will somehow be destroyed. The progressive values that have always underpinned the growth and prosperity of the American middle class—solidarity, fair competition and equal treatment under the law—can be the basis for an immigration policy that will continue to promote a healthy middle class. By bringing immigrants in to the mainstream of our economic life and extending to them the same workplace rights and protections that American citizens enjoy, we can prove once again the truth of the simple, progressive notion that we all do better when we all do better.
