Immigration: myths vs. facts [View All]

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A look behind the anti-immigrant furor

In the buildup to the 2008 elections, the right-wing Republicans have decided to make immigrants the scapegoat for the failure of the Bush administration and the shortcomings of the capitalist system. Right-wing personalities on cable TV, on talk radio and in newspapers are fueling this process. Vicious lies are being told about immigrants.

The questions and answers here are designed to provide you with accurate information about the impact of immigrant workers and their families, with or without papers, on the United States today.


Why are so many immigrants coming to the United States?

• Working people in Mexico and other poor countries have been devastated by the practices of U.S. and other international corporations. So-called free trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are imposed with conditions that prevent poor countries from meeting their people’s needs.

• After NAFTA came into force, more than 1.3 million Mexican farmers were driven out of business. U.S. agribusiness, subsidized by our tax dollars, sold corn in Mexico at lower prices than farmers there could produce. Undocumented Mexican immigration to U.S. rose 60 percent.

• Big corporations in the United States have been glad to take advantage of the cheap labor, and have sent labor recruiters into economically depressed areas of Mexico, Central America and elsewhere.


So why don’t people in those countries fix their situation at home instead of coming here?

• U.S.-based multinational corporations have put heavy pressure on other countries, including Mexico, to keep their economies open to penetration by U.S. corporations.

• When these countries resist this pressure, the U.S. government and corporations intervene with threats, bribery and even military force to stop union organizing and political change from taking place.

• With this pro-business, anti-worker foreign policy, the U.S. government has sponsored coups, civil wars and dictators in Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras.


My grandparents came from Europe legally. Why can’t people from Mexico and other countries do the same? Why do they butt ahead in line?

• It is not a matter of “butting in line.” There is no line for them to get in! In 2005, the U.S. government gave out only 5,000 permanent legal resident visas for low-skilled workers.

• Even people married to U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents sometimes have to wait years to join their spouses. This is a different situation from the one our grandparents faced.

• Today it is nearly impossible for most people who don’t have relatives here or specialized skills to come at all.


Do immigrants cause unemployment?

• There are not a fixed number of jobs in our economy. The truth is immigrant workers and their families, like all other workers, create jobs at a rate corresponding to those they fill.

• The real causes of unemployment are rooted in the decreasing wages being paid to all workers. Our country’s workers can no longer afford to buy the products they produce.

• Immigrant workers are not responsible for the millions of jobs wiped out by the shutting down of plants across the nation. They are not the cause of massive job loss which occurs when employers increase the workloads of some employees while laying off others.


http://www.pww.org/index.php/article/articleview/12336/1/406