Global capitalism, which presently controls our economic lives, requires certain conditions to be in place, in order to operate at peak profitability. One is expanded free trade, the unfettered exchange of goods and services. We’ve recently witnessed one of its downsides in the form of the Baltimore bridge collapse, caused by the operation of a dangerously oversized container supership of the sort globalized transport deems essential for it to derive maximum benefit from economies of scale.
Another precondition desired by global capital consists of unchecked worldwide population flows that provide it with the cheapest possible labor supply wherever it operates. The international upsurge in cross-border migration is the current manifestation of labor moving to where global capital demands its availability at the right cost. Immigrants surging across national borders, mostly in search of work in the developed economies, are literally following the dollar as the currently arranged global capitalist system requires them to do. Whether this is in the best interest of society at large is another question.
Regardless of the upshot of such economic upheaval, there’s no doubt that in the Western Hemisphere its impact is greatest in the US. Immigration to these shores has been increasing for several decades, but the immediate catalysts for its recent explosive rise were probably the dislocations of the worldwide financial crash of 2008 and the extended recession that followed, combined with the side effects of climate change and the new means of mass communication that have technologically interconnected and shrunken the world.
At any rate, more and more people are coming here, and the numbers are astounding. Legal immigration has stabilized at around one million a year, but illegal or unauthorized entries are at least that or greater. One estimate places total immigrant arrivals in America during 2023 at three million, still a mere fraction of the 160 million worldwide The Economist reports would like to emigrate to the US if they could.
Most problematic, of course, are the undocumented, who either apply for asylum, claiming persecution at home (a vague, hard-to-confirm category), or simply avoid official channels altogether by easily penetrating the sieve-like southern border illegally. The former apply for humanitarian admission and are released into the country after promising to eventually appear before immigration courts, a multi-year process euphemistically called “catch and release”; the latter, the so-called gotaways (1.4 million of them in 2021-22), just disappear onto US soil and melt into American society.
Pro-immigration has historically been the default position of both major American political parties, but not always. Organized labor, a Democratic constituency, has often opposed immigration because of its downward pressure on wages, influencing Democrats against it; likewise, the nativist Republican right, fearful of foreign contamination, has occasionally overcome its party’s business wing, which in its search for cheap labor traditionally favors more immigration.
Since 2020, however, party positions have changed somewhat. The Democrats have increasingly become an open-borders party in response to Donald Trump’s provocations, such as his family-separations policy, and to curry favor with its minority voters. The Trumpian GOP, meanwhile, has adopted an absolutist closed-door approach.
At the moment, the immigration ball is in Joe Biden’s court, and he’s not handling it well. Dexter Filkins, writing in The New Yorker (“Borderline Chaos,” 6/19/23), has ably detailed the president’s ideological pro-immigration stance — his open invitation to asylum seekers during his 2020 campaign and since, his removal of Title 42 health restrictions on immigration, his stocking of his administration with immigrants’-rights advocates, his expansion of “backdoor” admissions through extended work visas.
The president wants more immigration, and he’s getting it. Since his inauguration three years ago, 3.1 million border-crossers from 150 countries have been legally admitted into the US (about one million seeking asylum), while another 1.7 million have entered illegally or have overstayed temporary visas — 4.8 million in all. This includes hundreds of thousands of special admissions granted to selected Central American refugees for political reasons and to beneficiaries of the much-abused family-reunification process. This past November and December alone, over 500,000 migrants crossed from Mexico into the US.
Joe Biden, whose blind spot on immigration matches his blind spot on Israel, is paying a stiff price for his indulgent borders policy. According to a New York Times survey (November 2023), voters favor Trump over the president on immigration by 53% to 41%. Nevertheless, there’s one politically influential group, the business community, that’s with him all the way.
Shortly after the 2020 election, corporate America announced its desire to partner with the incoming Biden administration to achieve mutually beneficial solutions on immigration, that is, expanded H-1B and H-2B work visas and increased backdoor worker admissions through refugee and protected-status programs, each by means of executive action. The goal for business: reducing labor costs and boosting profits by replacing relatively expensive domestic workers with cheaper comparable talent from overseas. The presumed quid pro quo: corporate political donations.
New arrivals, legal and illegal, drove US net migration in 2023 to its highest level in six years and brought the foreign-born component of our national workforce to 18.6% — the corporate sector’s dream come true. But for stressed American cities, forced to accommodate the surging influx, it’s brought unimagined problems — not a dream but a social and economic nightmare.
Unless they break the law, the undocumented, including asylum seekers, can’t technically accept jobs until they first obtain legal residency, a process taking several years. In the meantime, it’s up to the cities where they reside to feed, clothe, educate and shelter them, and provide healthcare as well.
Large urban centers, where the thousands of migrants tend to congregate, are experiencing fiscal crises of massive proportion. According to the latest figures, Chicago has spent $255 million caring for its migrant population, Denver $222 million, and New York City (which must observe a “right-to-shelter” law) $1.2 billion to house 110,000 newcomers. New York State itself budgeted $2.1 billion for migrant aid in 2021 and plans an additional $2.4 billion in expenditures through 2025.
Democrats should recognize where the evolving international migrant crisis is heading. Beginning with Angela Merkel’s integrationist Germany in 2015, moderate and progressive European parties have been in political free fall due to their tolerant acceptance of mass migration. The American center-left could be next. Instead of using executive actions to stimulate immigration, Joe Biden might consider executive actions, such as nationalizing the National Guard, to enforce border security.
Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2024
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