OPINION: On Immigration, Today's Unions Are Raising A Straw Man, While Endangering Migrant Children
Most Americans say they favor immigration, but not illegal immigration. Unionists suggest these Americans are racist xenophobes—because today’s unions see opportunity in migrant workers.
Last week, the union-funded think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released an article titled “Immigrants are not hurting U.S.-born workers: Six facts to set the record straight.” While the statistics the EPI writers present are not wrong, per se, the article creates a straw-man argument that is at odds with how most Americans actually feel about immigration—and that reveals the true goal that today’s union leaders have when it comes to exploiting the immigration issue.
EPI’s article opens by setting a premise: Anti-immigration advocates have been out in full force with deeply misguided commentary and analysis that roughly translates to, “immigrants are taking all our jobs.”
In that context, the article’s headline makes sense. However, EPI attempts to ensure that Americans believe immigrants are not taking American jobs, despite some evidence to the contrary.
The thing is, most Americans already agree with EPI on its overall point. EPI is setting up a straw man argument though. The union-backed think tank is arguing with imaginary opposition that can easily be defeated, to serve as cover for a real, and highly questionable, goal.
Americans’ Position on Immigration
According to Gallup’s research from mid-2023, two-thirds of Americans say immigration is good for the country. But this is only true, Gallup points out, when Americans are asked specifically about legal immigration. As Pew Research found, also in mid-2023, among Democrats and Republicans alike, “somewhat larger shares now say illegal immigration is a major problem than did so last year.” Just more than half of Americans say it is “very important for the U.S. to require people to apply for asylum before they travel to the U.S.-Mexico border.”
In fact, Gallup specifically addresses the idea of whether the public believes immigrants are taking American jobs: “The majority say immigrants have no effect on job opportunities.” Instead, what Gallup found is that Americans are worried about things often associated with illegal immigration: crime and drugs.
The problem with EPI’s premise is that it makes no distinction between legal and illegal immigration, while Americans absolutely do make that distinction. EPI is suggesting: If you’re an American worker who opposes immigration, you’re a racist xenophobe. Americans are saying: We support legal immigration, but stop the illegal criminals bringing crime and drugs across our border.
Why would EPI set up this straw-man argument? Because today’s union leaders’ views on immigration have changed dramatically in the past 20 years. They are now at odds with the views that union leaders held for more than a century prior.
While, in part, today’s unions motivations may stem from their current collection of union dues from undocumented migrants—with some even becoming “sanctuary unions”—many union leaders today are also wholly aligned with increasingly extremist political organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America.
The DSA states, “As internationalists we should open our borders everywhere and welcome migrants into our country, our workplaces, and our unions.” This was never a belief shared by the majority of union leaders in the United States, at least not from the 1880s until 2000. During that time period, union leaders recognized that the mass importation of immigrant labor would drive down wages and standards of living for everyone.
America needs immigrants. More importantly, America needs its immigration system fixed. However, unions’ collective silence, acquiescence, and even support of illegal migrants and the current border crisis is a dereliction of duty to their own members and an act of betrayal when it comes to advocating for American workers—both U.S. born and lawful immigrants.
The fact is, due to an aging workforce, declining birth rates, already-tight labor markets and low labor participation rates, without a lawful influx of immigrants, America’s economy will falter. America needs immigrants—badly.
Labor Supply and Demand. For more than a century (from the 1880s to 2000), despite the fact that many were immigrants themselves, the leadership of America’s unions recognized that the mass importation of immigrant labor would drive down wages and standards of living.
Their opposition to mass, unchecked immigration was based on the simple economics of supply and demand: The more the supply, the lower the demand and, consequently, the lower the wages workers could obtain.
Unions fought, often unsuccessfully, the influx of illegal immigrants into industries like construction and numerous others.
For example, labor union icon United Farm Workers Co-Founder Cesar Chavez, was adamantly opposed to illegal immigration, stating in one interview, “We don’t want Mexico to export its poverty to us.”
Not all agreed with the turn to union acceptance of illegal immigrants at the national level though. As recently as 2017, for example, a Northeast Regional Carpenters Council representative, admitted to the Buffalo News that the union routinely called ICE to report undocumented workers on construction sites in upstate New York.
This basic principle of supply and demand has never changed. However, national union leaders’ views on immigration changed over 20 years ago when the AFL-CIO changed its long-held stance on immigration.
The internationalist, open borders perspective. Earlier this month, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain made a similar argument to that of EPI while speaking at Harvard University..
Like EPI, Fain did not distinguish between legal or illegal immigrants. In fact, as though speaking from a DSA policy perspective for open borders, Fain’s comments seemed to disregard the fact that many of the immigrants coming to the United States today are undocumented.
“Destitute people trying to cross the border to find a better life are not our enemy. They are not taking your jobs,” Fain reportedly told graduates of the Harvard Trade Union program at Harvard Law School. “When I see these people, I see my grandparents. Our job as leaders is to eradicate poverty everywhere, that is our challenge.”
Oddly, the premise of Fain’s statement, as well as EPI’s article that “the idea that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is wrong.” is similar to arguments Corporate America has made for decades in their quest for cheap labor: There are jobs that need filling and immigrants—undocumented or not—are a ready made labor pool, especially in construction, meatpacking and other semi-skilled jobs.
The cost of illegal immigration
What’s really bothering America about immigrants? While neither Fain, nor the EPI are wrong that America needs immigrants, they are not addressing what has so many Americans (Republican and, now, Democrats), including union members, concerned about the de-facto open borders which seems to be taking place.
Until recently, immigration complaints were confined to right-leaning voters and largely confined to Southwestern states where the costs of illegal immigration were felt the most.
However, as more migrants have arrived in so-called “blue states” and, in particular, so-called “sanctuary cities,” the problem is impossible to ignore.
According to a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this month, “nearly all Americans say the large number of migrants seeking to enter the United States at the Mexican border is a problem,” with 77 percent of adults saying it is either a crisis or a major problem.
Social media is filled with stories of crime committed by illegal migrants, often against Americans, while more and more Americans are seeing stories about the costs of housing migrants while Americans go homeless—at the expense of hard-working taxpayers, including union members—public-school students displaced to house migrants, as well as criminal gangs that have crossed the border along with those seeking a better life.
“Many of these migrants have sought asylum in cities like Denver, Chicago, West Springfield, Mass., and New York, placing a strain on these densely populated areas and decimating their already tight budgets,” notes journalist James Causey in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In California, the state announced in December that it will be providing free healthcare to approximately 700,000 undocumented migrants at a cost of $6.5 billion annually.
In New York City, $53 million as been allocated to a pilot program to provide pre-paid debit cards to migrants, which officials say will save $600,000 per month and $7.2 million annually. While $53 million is a small drop in New York City’s $110.5 billion budget bucket, it is representative of a larger problem.
According to a Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) study, the cost of illegal immigration in 2023 to states and cities was an estimated $150.7 billion.
This amount is not insignificant to anyone. However, during a period of high-inflation, in states with already-high income taxes, many taxpayers are beginning to resent the fact that their hard-earned incomes are funding a problem that was created by politicians from both parties’ inability to fix America’s broken system.
Illegal Immigration Promotes Child Labor
Over the past few years, there has been much attention given to underage minors working unlawfully in what are considered dangerous jobs.
While much of the media attention is focused on the companies that hire them, very little attention is paid to the fact that many of these minors are in the country illegally and by obtaining false papers, get work doing jobs they should not be able to do legally.
By way of example, in 2023, the Guardian reported that a U.S. Department of Labor investigation found Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services Inc (PSSI) employed at least 102 children, ranging from 13 to 17 years old, to work overnight shifts at 13 meat processing facilities in eight states.
“The child labor violations in this case were systemic and reached across eight states, and clearly indicate a corporate-wide failure by Packers Sanitation Services at all levels,” said Jessica Looman, the department’s principal deputy administrator of the wage and hour division.
“These children should never have been employed in meat packing plants and this can only happen when employers do not take responsibility to prevent child labor violations from occurring in the first place.”
Nowhere in the Guardian article does it mention who these minors are, or where they are from.
However, a Washington Post profile of one of teens employed by Packers Sanitation Services—a 13-year old migrant girl—does partially provide an answer.
First, she lost the job that burned and blistered her skin but paid her $19 an hour. Then a county judge sent her stepfather to jail for driving her to work each night, a violation of state child labor laws. Her mother also faces jail time for securing the fake papers that got the child the job in the first place. And her parents are terrified of being sent back to Guatemala, the country they left several years ago in search of a better life. [Emphasis added.]
In a another case, 16-year old Duvan Pérez, a Guatemalan teenager and contract worker at the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi was killed when he was pulled into a machine.
Recently, during a House subcommittee hearing, Jessica Looman, the U.S. DOL’s Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division and, notably, former Executive Director of the Minnesota State Building and Construction Trades Council was asked about migrant children working in dangerous conditions, she would only comment about holding employers accountable. She would not address the fact that, as referenced above, the minors have “fake papers.”
Neither Looman, nor the reporters covering these stories, dare to explain that, unless “fake papers” are clearly and obviously fake to a hiring employer, if an employer questions an applicant’s “papers” (which are used for I9 forms), the employer can have discrimination charges filed against it with the EEOC.
Americans deserve better
Illegal immigration—not legal immigration, which is needed—hurts all American workers (U.S.-born and foreign-born workers), as well as minors who cross the border unlawfully.
Despite the fact that unions often take dues money from undocumented migrants, rather than creating a straw man to push a false argument, today’s unions would serve their members (and migrant children) better by having an honest discussion about the current border crisis.