The call for an egregious display of American hostility to illegal immigrants on May 1 is of a piece with the hysterical nationalism that is causing so much harm to this country – WHILE COMPLETELY MISSING THE TRUE PROBLEM.  There are about 11 million illegals, mostly productive workers, in a nation of 300 million.  Get a grip, it’s a minor aspect of the greater problem, which is that the unrestricted flow of capital across borders lets corporations use national groups of workers -- who face many restrictions on their movements and organization -- to undercut each other’s wages and living standards.  Thus, corporations can hire illegal migrants here, offshore there, store money here or there, and avoid taxes and other liabilities (like decent working conditions and environmental clean-up) almost everywhere.  Yet a Mexican worker has to risk death simply to go where the jobs are.

 

The international order of business is using poor Mexicans to undercut American workers who are then mobilized to keep Mexican workers poor, in part by keeping them hemmed in and terrorized.  And the dutiful corporate minions and blind patriots want this pro-corporate, anti-worker display on May 1, the day of international worker solidarity!  A day of commemoration, by the way, created right here in the USA.

 

I say if governments won’t enforce national sovereignty equally on corporations in the forms of wage standards, workplace safety, environmental protections, and capital controls, then workers must organize internationally to seize the freedoms and powers they need to protect themselves and to build decent lives and more just societies.  Too many pinhead middle-class North Americans have only the narrowest sense of self-interest in defense of their declining living standards – they’re only delaying, and not by much, the day their heads are on the chopping block for real.

 

BTW, the “wall-builders” better stop thinking about the wall and start asking how many desperate job seekers they are personally willing to shoot down. Because a wall, no less here than anywhere, is only as effective as the guns mounted on it.

 

— Robert Anbian