Treating the Symptoms

“Free trade” and unfettered immigration are really only useful to the affluent. But, if you question their value, you’re assumed to be a racist xenophobe devoid of anything intelligent to say on the subjects. After all, who in their right mind could possibly object to “free trade” or unfettered immigration? They’re self-evidently beneficial to all, right?

(In the style of John McLaughlin:) WRONG! As the Archdruid has noted (and, if you haven’t read his shit, do it NOW), the American middle and upper classes have long exploited undocumented immigrants as landscapers, nannies, housekeepers, etc.

These immigrants also drove down prices on goods and services that used to be made or provided by U.S. citizens. The immigrants couldn’t demand fair payment or treatment by their employers for fear of being deported (or, now, detained).

As a result, the working class got the shaft. Adding insult to injury, they get mocked for raising concerns about immigration. They’re painted as rednecks who just don’t like POC’s or people from other countries. I laughed at this depiction on South Park. It’s still funny to me, but now I can relate to their fear and anger.

The mistake the working class made was succumbing to racism and xenophobia. Of course, it’s hard to blame them given the pressure they’ve been under for the last 50 years. All it took for me to descend into that headspace was to be thrust into a similar, but still much better, situation for a few years.

Once my friends, job and apartment were gone, all my enlightened, open-minded empathy went right out the window. My anger overrode my intellect and compassion. I can only imagine how difficult it would be if I’d been raised in a family that’s been stuck in the working class for generations. My parents got out while the getting was good (the 1950’s and 60’s), but not everyone was so lucky.

Their parents didn’t have to compete with immigrants. They also grew up in a booming economy, so jobs were plentiful. The idea of a shrinking economy and job market is foreign to them. That’s why they hear the arguments against immigration and free trade as provincial bigotry, the kind of ignorance they wanted to leave behind when they became middle-class.

But the global economic system that enabled their escape from the working class also created the Third World. It’s just hard for those of us in the First World to accept that, because then we feel guilty, like really guilty. I mean, how would you feel if you thought your prosperity was creating the Third World? I hope you’d feel as guilty as I do, which is to say really super-guilty.

A common First-World assumption is that the jobs being shipped to the Third World must be superior to what they replaced. After all, why would people take those jobs if they weren’t better than what they had before?

We don’t realize that our free trade agreements have destroyed many livelihoods in the Third World, and the people are left with little choice but to work in the factories (or work for drug cartels, like in Mexico). That’s why these economic policies must be implemented and enforced so brutally, often at gunpoint. They don’t have popular support in the Third World.

That approach isn’t necessary in the First World, because many of us are benefiting from the policies. Those who aren’t benefiting, the working class, for instance, is no longer organized on a sufficient scale to oppose the policies. If they were, their resistance might be put down with the same violence as it is in the Third World. That’s what happened in the U.S. back in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when unions were strong.

The irony is that “free trade” is billed as a cure for poverty, but in practice it simply transfers wealth from the Third to the First World. Its opponents are cast as Neanderthals, cavemen who want to go back to “the good old days” of racism and geopolitical isolation. This has proved an effective way to keep hidden the central role of protectionism in building the economies of the First World.

Allowing immigrants into our country is a nice humanitarian gesture, but it’s really just a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. We’re only (barely) treating the symptoms. The disease is the “free trade” of Neoliberal Capitalism that destroys Third World economies and forces people to leave their homes in search of a tolerable life. Until we do away with “free trade,” naturalizing undocumented immigrants is just a stopgap to ease our guilty conscience.