No Surprises: Growing Inequality and the Anti-Immigrant Backlash

By Chaka A. K. Uzondu

Anti-immigrant hysteria is widespread and deafening. The massive influx of people seeking a better life has made very explicit the tremendous anti-immigrant feeling that exists. People from Latin America, who are the largest single group of immigrants, are the primary focus of this negative attention.

How are we to make sense of what is going on? What does this so-called “immigration debate” reveal about race, class, and inequality in U.S. society?

As inequality continues to grow, more and more people find themselves facing economic hardship. If you’re a worker who makes the minimum wage, your paycheck buys less today than it did 50 years ago. But even people who might consider themselves middle class are finding it difficult to make ends meet. The Bush tax cuts are hurting most people, except perhaps the top 10 percent. Between 1979–2003, the richest 5% saw their income go up by 75%, a bit higher than the top 10 percent. You have to be making more than $110, 000 to be in this club. So, for ever increasing numbers of people there is nothing real about the American dream.

Who is to be blamed for this? When life gets difficult, especially for whites, who usually gets blamed? Isn’t it always “those people,” “the Blacks,” “the Latinos,” “the poor,” and of course, “the immigrants” who are the problem? Scapegoating racialized peoples is quintessentially American. So growing inequality is quite likely connected to the anti-immigrant hysteria.

Therefore, the “debate” that pits the explicit white supremacist policies of the Sensenbrenner bill, H.R. 4437, and the many similar bills, against the “less” draconian version advanced by McCain and Kennedy and supported by George W. Bush is disturbing, but not surprising. The fact that the forces in favor of formal white supremacy are having difficulty reconciling themselves with the forces of the corporate ruling class who are prioritizing maximizing their profits over their allegiance to keeping “ America white,” is to be expected.

It seems that it is easier to believe that a “white only America” can solve the problems the majority faces much more effectively than the nation wide polices that we all need. Criminalizing people who are trying to make a life is seen as a solution. Too few are talking about national policies that raise the minimum wage to a living wage, that reverse all the unfair tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the super rich, that create asset building opportunities for low-income people, and that make adequate health care universal.

So many people are angry with President Bush because he supports a temporary worker program. To them this is “amnesty,” perhaps for Bush it is “compassionate conservatism”! Really, it is neither. This Bracero like program (guest worker) is exploitative. Corporations looking for people to work at the lowest possible wages can hire immigrant workers and then deport them to their countries of origin after they are no longer desired. For the corporate class – cheaper labor means more profits, even if it hurts white America.

Yet many people want to build walls across the border. Will that guarantee the rights of workers to form unions and stop corporate outsourcing of jobs?

Here is the cruel irony. The same people who probably supported “free trade” policies like North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) are probably supporting the anti-immigration policies.

Unfortunately, few people are asking why are people from Latin America, or any where for the matter, leaving their homes to seek a better life in the United States. But those concerned with the massive influx of immigrants from Latin America should examine the following questions. What has North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) done to the economy of a country like Mexico? And what effect will the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) have?

According to a Pew survey, 58% of the immigrants coming to the U.S. are from Mexico. Today, the US is the third most unequal industrialized society in the world, right behind Mexico. Are immigrants been pushed from their homes in countries like Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador to seek a better life in the United States? Who continues to be the primary beneficiaries of those trade agreements in this country? Are they U.S. workers or corporations? Addressing these questions may help inform a just immigration policy.

But this is not happening.

Instead, many whites from all class backgrounds, not just the poorer ones, are leading the rally in support of a “ keep America white campaign.” They are defending white supremacy. As they have done so many times over the course of this country’s history, they choose to defend, what Dubois termed, as the “psychic wages of whiteness” over their own material interest. It is the “American way” to identify racialized people as threats. But it is somehow un-American to question our capitalist economic system that produces such inequality. People rather talk about illegality.

Let’s talk seriously about illegality. What is illegal: people trying to make a life in a different country by working hard, or the average CEO pay, which is now 431 times what the average workers makes? What is illegal: a minimum wage that has not increased for more than 7 years, or the CEO of Halliburton making about $8,300 an hour in this last year?

Especially in a time of growing inequality, what should be illegal is all of the Bush tax cuts have gone primarily to the already rich. According to the Institute of Tax and Economic Tax Policy Model, the 2004, tax cuts gave about $59,000 to the top 1% while giving about $103 to the bottom 20 percent. Repealing the Estate tax, which is paid by less than 2% of the population should also be illegal.

The key challenges ahead of us are not really about whether or not people are legal.

Immigrants don’t cause the quality of life to decline. They contribute to this society in many ways. It is time to end the backlash against immigrants and put all this energy into organizing against economic inequality. Higher and longer walls on the borders cannot solve inequality.

Fortunately, many racialized peoples and some whites understand this and are supporting the rights of immigrants. The April 10 th march in Boston was comprised of working people from Haiti, El Salvador, Ireland, Brazil and the Dominican Republic. It is important that such support grows. For what we need are economic policies that privilege the needs of working people, especially those most disadvantaged. We don’t need policies that favor corporations and the super-rich. We need economic policies that share the wealth of this nation more equitably. Let’s surprise the super-rich by refusing to scapegoat immigrants, by defending the rights of immigrants, and by organizing a cross-racial movement for economic justice. May 1, 2006 is the day.

Chaka A. K. Uzondu is an Education Coordinator with the Racial Wealth Divide Project at United for a Fair Economy. Email Chaka at cuzondu@faireconomy.org