Old Liberals Believed in Borders

Source

The title of this 1901 editorial cartoon is A Crying Need for General Repairs, and it appeared in the The Saturday Globe of Utica, New York, August 27, 1901.

In the image, above, an "American laborer" pleads with Uncle Sam to repair the wall of “Immigration Restriction” because neglect has opened the way for unbridled foreign labor to enter.

An “Employer of Labor,” in his top hat and tails, happily assists people of other nations as they climb down the ladder. The image caption reads, “American Labor Calls Uncle Sam’s Attention to the Inefficiency of His Immigration Restriction Wall.”

At the time of this cartoon labor leader Samuel Gompers, like most labor leaders, opposed open-door immigration from Europe because it lowered wages. Gompers also opposed unrestricted immigration from Asia and other nations, for the same reason, but also because he thought those cultures were so different that they would be hard to assimilate.

The American Federation of Labor was instrumental in passing immigration restriction laws such as the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the Immigration Act of 1924, and seeing that they were strictly enforced. Gwendolyn Mink concludes that the link between the AFL and the Democratic Party rested in large part on immigration issues, as the owners of large corporations wanted more immigration and thus supported the Republican Party.

Some 60 years later, Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) would note that the the pro-immigration forces on Capitol Hill had somewhat realigned, with the Chamber of Commerce standing with the Democratic leadership of Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Joe Moakley (D-MA) pushing for open border immigration. "The Democrats want their cheap cause, while the Republicans want their cheap labor" he would note.

With the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, America decided that "order at the border" needed to be re-established.

As a result, secure fencing was built along many hundreds of miles of our land border, more magnetic and infrared sensors were put on remote roads, more border road inspection posts were created to stop cars and trucks driven by smugglers, U.S. passports were made more secure, overseas visa officers were retrained, many thousands of border patrol officers were hired, and employer sanctions were finally coupled with an electronic verification system to make it harder for illegal immigrants to get jobs.

While the U.S. continues to admit large numbers of legal immigrants and refugees, illegal immigrant admissions along our land borders have plunged, while folks who overstay tourist or other non-immigrant visas find it hard to work in the regular economy absent some sort of "guest worker" permit -- the very kind of guest worker permit that labor leader Cesar Chavez once opposed as being the largest scab labor pool in the world.

The battle continues to this day. 

None other than Donald Trump routinely petitions for the admission of hundreds of un-free foreign guest workers to work at his Virginia winery and at his Mar-a-Lago golf course in Florida. It's not that there are no Americans looking for work -- it's that Trump will not provide better wages, transportation, training, or benefits in order to attract American workers.

 Is it an accident that un-free foreign workers are being imported to pick crops and work as house servants in former slave-owning states? I think not.

Meanwhile, immigration continues to drive U.S. population growth, resulting in an increased dependence on foreign oil, more mining, more logging, more sewage outfalls and hookups, more roads, more tract houses, and more crowded schools. 

Today, more than 90 percent of all US population growth is due to immigration and the children of immigrants.

While the U.S. had a population of 205 million in 1970, it is over 324 million today, and is expected to top 450 million by 2050.

Where will it end? Is the solution to any overseas problem to move all the people facing that problem to the United States?

In an era of face-time and instant messages, is there any reason to "reunify" families, and if so why do 20 folks have to come from overseas rather that one should go back?

In an era of rapid mechanization, where driverless cars are just around the corner, and mechanical fruit and vegetable pickers are already here, do we really need to be importing low-skilled labor? 

If we import skilled labor, to what extent are we contributing to the "brain drain" from the developing world? 

To what extent does hiring foreign engineers, nurses, and waiters undermine programs to educate and train American workers whose families are now living in small apartments, Appalachian coal towns, inner cities, and mid-western villages where the mill has already closed?

Immigration is like water -- life sustaining and very useful in moderation and within bounds, but destructive in rampant surplus and without bounds.

Every nation is a "nation of immigrants." We need to disenthrall ourselves from this kind of fevered exceptionalism that says we alone must bear the burdens of the world.

While there is no place for the cruel and casual racist rhetoric and brain-dead reactive policies of the Trump Administration, there is a place for "order at the border," and that has been true in all nations at all times.

The Old Liberals who worked with their hands knew that, in a way that the modern Soy-Latte Liberals do not.