Citizenship And Immigration Policy

The economic and organizational attractiveness of noncitizens as labor market participants has been heightened by the increased political and economic claims associated with citizenship. Of the general category of noncitizens, undocumented immigrants offer the most significant contrast with persons who have some claims to make on either economic or political citizenship. Undocumented immigrants are politically unenfranchised labor whose presence in the nation-state is almost totally dependent upon their participation in economic organizations. As nonmembers of the community, undocumented immigrants can make no claims against the collectivity for politically mediated transfers or support payments. When employed, they are severely restricted in their ability to make claims against employers/economic organizations for higher status or reward. They cannot make claims on the state to regulate or enforce their occupational, labor market, or organizational position; skill or training certification is either denied or devalued as the basis for negotiation over the price of labor power. Furthermore, undocumented immigrants are denied the capacity to use citizenship entitlements—unemployment compensation or general assistance aid—as the basis for establishing geographical stability. Thus, they cannot draw welfare to make up for periods of seasonal disemployment or industrial relocation in order to sustain a stable residence. Undocumented workers are forced to be more mobile and, subsequently, more "responsive" to economic conditions.

The lack of protection, political or economic, associated

with this labor pool makes it particularly vulnerable to manipulation by employers. Undocumented workers may be paid less than their enfranchised counterparts in the domestic labor force—though they cannot be paid less than what is necessary to sustain them at a given level of skill. Undocumented workers represent cheaper labor in price terms. Beyond pay levels, however, undocumented workers can be used to sustain more labor-intensive production processes because they are less able to reproduce skill as higher status or reward. Undocumented workers, if not used directly to undercut the bargaining position of citizen and documented labor, can be used to politically and organizationally fragment labor at several levels. First, they can be brought into competition with negatively privileged citizen labor, most particularly blacks, Latinos, women, and youths. As competitors for the same category of jobs (e.g., in service and retail trade), undocumented workers provide the equivalent of a decrease in the overall wage levels associated with those jobs or a diminution of minimum wage laws in that sector. The latter strategy provides the equivalent of a reduction in the guarantees of citizenship without directly expressing the battle in those terms.

Second, undocumented workers can be used to politically fragment ethnic organizations. In particular, the question of strategy regarding the undocumented worker has strained organizational efforts in the Hispanic community (Thomas, 1981). In this case, common ethnic and national heritage draws undocumented workers and citizens together but differences in political protection/vulnerability pull them apart. Third, and at a more general level, the emphasis on "illegality" as portrayed in the popular press and political debate focuses organizational strategies among trade unions on the characteristics of undocumented workers as nonmembers of the community, not as members of a common class. Thus, undocumented workers have been viewed by leading figures in the labor movement as an "external" explanation for the deteriorating position of American labor. Although unemployment due to economic decline has captured national attention most recently, it was not so long ago that George

Meany and colleagues in the AFL-CIO were decrying the illegal alien menace as the principal cause for increased urban unemployment. Caught up in the worsening national economic situation, Meany, and others far to his left, focused on the supposed threat to the national community posed by the alleged invasion of Mexican and Latin American workers.

The capacity of employers to manipulate undocumented workers politically, using communal status as the lever, depends on the reproduction of the distinctive negative privileges associated with noncitizenship. Not only does the supply of labor have to be perpetuated but labor's distinctive quality must also be sustained. It is not surprising, therefore, that efforts to deal with the illegal alien/undocumented immigrant issue focus not on employer involvement in the recruitment of labor but on regulating the flow and restricting the claims available to noncitizens.

In recent years two major directions for immigration policy have been developed to perpetuate political manipulation and reproduction of political vulnerability. The first has focused most directly on regulation of the flow of labor across the borders. Greater efforts to monitor border crossings and to apprehend and deport border violators have had the effect of sensitizing the public to the alleged threat of unchecked immigration and, at the same time, has increased the circulation of labor across the border. This "enforced circulation of labor" (Burawoy, 1976) has not proven any more successful in curbing the flow of labor between Latin America and the United States. But that was not its intention. Rather, increased surveillance and apprehension has served to prevent the stabilization of undocumented labor in the United States and, in the process, has increased the risk for individual migrants. That increased risk has redounded to the advantage of employers: fear of apprehension and deportation makes workers that much more committed to employment where they can find it, especially when employers offer a form of protection against apprehension. A proposed program to further regulate the flow of labor, though not to eliminate it, has been offered in various circles: something on the order of a revised bracero program (Craig, 1971, and Galarza, 1964, for detailed

discussions of the bracero program, Public Law 78) or an American version of the "guestworker" (gastarbeiter ) system found in West Germany. Such a program would directly involve the government in the licensing or certification of noncitizen workers for employment in the United States for a limited duration. Both these systems create a semi-caste system of labor. Both provide for political mediation of labor market processes where the denial of access to citizenship entitlements provide the equivalent of a denial or (at least) an abridgment of economic citizenship (i.e., formal market freedom).

Equally important, efforts to "distribute the burden" of blame for employment of undocumented workers, such as that proposed by recent legislation (the Simpson-Mazzoli bill), do little more than push Hispanic groups into an uneasy alliance with employers. The approach suggested by the Simpson-Mazzoli bill would impose financial penalties for employers who hire undocumented workers—a goal long advocated by organized labor in the United States. Enforcement of such provisions, however, would require an effective means for employers to screen potential employees, something less easily counterfeited than a Social Security card, driver's license, or green card. Job applicants of Hispanic descent or appearance would be immediately suspect unless they provided adequate proof of their legal immigrant status or citizenship. To avoid overt discrimination against Hispanics, the only workable solution would be to require some universal form of identification for all citizens. Since civil rights advocates have long argued against universal identification papers for U.S. citizens and Hispanics have argued vehemently against a restricted version, civil rights activists, liberal politicians, and Hispanic leaders find themselves temporarily standing alongside employers in the fight to quash such programs. Even with the creation of a somewhat less objectionable identification system, the current legislation provides few concrete clues as to how efforts to police employers (and the border) will prove any more effective than past attempts to regulate illegal border entry.

The other major direction for immigration policy has been

one of total exclusion of noncitizen labor. This approach would be tantamount to the creation of a Berlin Wall at the border—or, alternatively viewed, a Great Wall of Mexico—sufficiently well protected to deny access to any but the most qualified immigrants. While the content of those qualifications themselves are the topic of important debate, the past experience of efforts to seal off the border only alert us to the fact that restrictions increase the utility of undocumented labor to employers and the vulnerability of undocumented labor to political manipulation. The refusal to sanction employers for hiring undocumented workers or to provide sufficient funding to make such sanctions enforceable reinforces the representation of the issue as one in which indocumentados "steal" jobs. The circulation of labor across the border (whether as a category or as individuals) effectively reproduces the distinctive political inequalities associated with noncitizenship. The insistence on the integrity of the border and national economic health (i.e., the representation of noncitizens as a threat to citizens) increases the utility of undocumented labor to employers. As long as enforcement of immigration laws is located at the level where it cannot work, at the level of the individual, then the rhetoric of an "invasion" of illegal aliens sustains employer advantage while appearing to be a threat to the entire community.