IMPERIALISM, IMMIGRATION, AND CHANGES IN THE U.S. WORKING CLASS.

I will use this opportunity to present some general ideas

about the nature of the Marxist method of analysis, illustrating

its value in the process of analyzing present trends in immigra-

tion from Central and South America to the U.S., and their econo-

mic and political effects.

The growth in the numbers of immigrants from Latin America in

recent years has resulted in the proliferation of demographic

studies and media reports about the magnitude of the immigration

flows and about their potential effects upon U.S. society. First,

let us look at how demographers tend to look at immigration. The

dominant approaches mirror the coexistence, within bourgeois

thought, of deterministic and voluntaristic forms of thinking

about social reality and developing theories about what goes on in

the world we live. Needless to say, these approaches constantly

turn into each other; deterministic explanations ultimately rest

upon voluntaristic assumptions and viceversa. From a deterministic

or structural standpoint, migration processes reflect differences

in the conditions of origin and destination and the distance

between places of origin and destination. Conditions are analyzed

in their economic, social and political dimensions; it is acknow-

leged that political and religious reasons may trigger migration

flows, but generally greater importance is given to economic

conditions. Empirical generalizations are developed which codify

a common sense understanding of migration. Some places, because

of their greater economic development, economic prosperity and

expanding opportunities "pull" or attract people from less privi-

leged areas; conversely, places in which the economy is stagnant,

underdeveloped, and opportunities are scarce or non-existent,

"push" or expel people towards more promising areas. The greater

the similarity between countries or regions of countries, the

lower the probability that large migration flows will develop; for

example, Canadians, unlike Mexicans, do not flock into the U.S.

On the other hand, the greater the difference between countries or

regions, the greater the probability that migration flows will

become a permanent feature. The closer the areas are, the greater

the opportunities for the poorer sectors of the population because

the obstacles are, relatively speaking, negligible. On the other

hand, the greater the distance between countries or regions, the

greater the probability that those who migrate will be "positively

selected;" i.e., will have higher levels of skills and resources

than those who stay behind. Another way to make this point is to

say that the greater the distance between areas, on the average,

immigrants will answer to pull factors: i.e., to the opportunities

in the area of destination. The smaller the distance and the

lesser the obstacles, the greater the likelihood that immigrants

will be "negatively" selected, responding more to push factors:

i.e., to the negative conditions in their place of origin. In the

real world, both factors operate; while it is true that Central

American workers and peasants come to the U.S. "pushed" by poli-

tical and economic negative conditions, it is true they are also

"pulled" by the expectation of finding jobs which, however poorly

paid may be, offer them and their families greater chances for

economic survival than their country of origin.

Individualistic and voluntaristic approaches to migration

rest upon a model of human behavior derived from microeconomics;

individuals decide whether or not to migrate depending on the

costs and benefits entailed by staying or changing place of resi-

dence. From this utilitarian standpoint there is, for all practi-

cal purposes, no distinction between economic behavior and social

behavior in general, for everything we do could be analyzed in

terms of its potential costs and benefits and its marginal utility

This view of human behavior neglects the effect of the institu-

tional context in which behavior takes place and the hierarchy of

values that informs behavior because it assumes that, for purposes

of analysis, such institutional context remains unchanged. These

extraneous factors are taken as givens and what matters is the

analysis of individuals' utility maximizing behavior.

Structural and deterministic explanations of the migration of

aggregates of people rest upon this utilitarian model of behavior

while voluntaristic explanations take structural and ideological

conditions for granted. From a Marxist theoretical standpoint,

it is necessary to bring the two levels of analysis, structural

and individual, together and, in the process of doing so, the

antinomy of structure and individual behavior are overcome when

individuals are placed in their historical locations in the class

structure and the relations of production that determine their

opportunities. It would be easy (but superficial) to attempt to

understand international migration processes, specifically those

from Latin America to the U.S., simply in terms of the utility

maximizing behavior of Latin Americans, or as effects of the push

exerted by underdevelopment and the pull exerted by development.

To understand the determinants and significance of these processes

it is necessary to place them in their historical context, as

visible effects of underlying capitalist processes at the state

and world-system levels of analysis.

The exploitation of human and material resources in Latin

America countries have created profound distortions in their eco-

nomies and the inability to generate employment for most of their

workers, both skilled and unskilled. The material conditions in

which the rural and vast sectors of the urban populations repro-

duce themselves adds a demographic component to the source of

potential immigrants. This means that population increase, in a

context of political instability and economic stagnation, contri-

butes to increase the numbers of potential immigrants. The search

for cheap labor has compelled capital to invest in the colonial

and neocolonial countries generating conditions in which the

export of capital to those countries leads to the transformation

of labor in one of the major exports of less developed countries

and a major import in the advanced capitalist nations. If we are

to speak of these processes dynamically, we can say that the

circulation of capital determines the circulation of labor within

and accross state boundaries. The development of capitalism

entails proletarianization, loss by the vast majority of people of

the means of production necessary to survive and, consequently,

their powerlessness and subserviance to the dictatorship of

capital: workers must follow capital in order to survive and when

investments are unable to generate sufficient employment in a

given region of a country or in a given country, workers must

uproot themselves and follow well trodden paths to those regions

or countries where employment opportunities are greater. In this

light, voluntary, utility maximizing behavior answers not just an

abstract criteria of rationality but is itself a manifestation of

working class powerlessness and capitalist power. The rationality

of the capitalist class is given content by the problem of profit

maximization. When, where, and under what conditions capital is

invested or withheld responds to this specific rational calculus.

on the other hand, the rationality of the working class is shaped

by the need to survive; to sell labor power at the highest wages.

this means that what is rational from the standpoint of the

working class, it can be seen as irrational, destructive or anti-

social from the standpoint of the capitalist class. Working class

rationality expressed in decisions to migrate within or across

state boundaries is not a reflection of rationality shaped by

working class interests but of a rationality shaped by capitalist

interest in a flexible supply of labor, which adapts itself to the

requirements of capital while overlooking its own interests.

From this standpoint, migration streams reflect the subordination

of labor to capital. Methodologically, this leads us back to

Marx's insights, that men make history but not under circumstances

chosen by themselves. The behavior of immigrants is both free and

unfree, rational and irrational, a unity of opposites with a

specific historical context which, at this time, reflects the

profound changes that the world-economy and state economies are

undergoing in an effort to delay a world-wide depression.

The internal economies of Latin American countries have been

shaped by the effect of Spanish colonial practices in conjunction

with their natural resources and the presence -- or relative

absence -- of large indigeneous populations. Common to all of

them is an extreme concentration of land in very few hands; 1965

official data showed that 94% of the available land in latin

America was owned by 7% of the land owners, and even these figures

may underestimate land concentration. The coexistence of vast

estates (latifundios) together with masses of land poor peasants

barely surviving in their minifundios is characteristic of most

Latin American countries, with the exception of Argentina, and

perhaps Chile and Paraguay, where the indigenous populations were

ruthlessly decimated and an indigenous peasantry never developed.

Land reforms in Latin America have contributed to the problems,

by multiplying the minifundios and worsening the conditions of

landless and semilandless peasants. The practice of developing

agriculture primarily for the production of exports has created

chronic food scarcity in Latin America, with the exception of the

countries of the Southern Cone, which have fertile lands and

moderate climate that allows them to produce wheat and grains.

Typical of Central America and tropical South America is the

plantation system, in which big local landowners and foreign

agribusiness (the most famous of which is, perhaps, the United

Fruit Company) not only control the best land, but also the state

and political life of the country. A simbiotic relationship

develops between the large plantations and a seasonal supply of

workers who support themselves only partially with wages, produ-

cing their own small crops of beans or corn for their own con-

sumption. Plantations dedicated to produce export crops such as

tropical fruits, coffee, tea, sugar cane, etc. created since the

19th century profound distortions in the economic and social

organization of latin America. The impoverishment of the rural

areas and the surplus population generated both by technological

changes replacing workers in the farms and by natural increase,

generated internal migration processes through which a sector of

the population of these countries, the most impoverished ones,

circulate within, looking for better living conditions, until they

settle finally in the outskirts of the capital. Unlike the United

States, where the poor and the displaced live in the inner cities,

in Latin America the cities themselves, particularly their central

areas are the most beautiful and impressive, and as one moves

outwards, one can see the growing poverty until in the outskirts

are found the make shift dwellings of the pauperized sectors of

the reserve army of labor.

Women migrate from the rural areas to the cities and are

generally able to find employment as domestic servants. Being a

domestic servant is a very viable alternative to rural women or to

working class urban women who find no other sources of employment.

This is a very important fact; it meas that when women migrate

from Latin America to the United States, they are willing to do

here what they know best in their own countries and, if they find

no factory or service jobs, they are more likely to enter in

domestic service. While Black women have moved away from domestic

work, their place is being taken now by immigrant women. Those who

are undocumented, of course, are the most vulnerable. It is not

uncommon for young Central American women who are single and have

no children, to enter employment as live in maids in the homes of

upper middle class American or Latin American professionals. The

extent to which the liberation of many American women from the

drudgery of domestic work is predicated on the part or full time

employment of immigrant women is an important topic of investi-

gation which to my knowledge remains unexplored.

Eventually, workers in Latin America cross state boundaries

in search for work; Bolivians, Peruvians and Paraguayans migrate

to Argentina for seasonal work in sugar cane, tobacco, and other

kinds of plantations. Lots of Chilean workers have settled in the

Patagonia, leading many politicians to complain that if Argenti-

nians are not willing to forgo the charms of urban life to settle

in those harsh, inhospitable places, the Patagonia will be taken

over by Chile in the future. The kind of international migration

we are most interested here, though, is migration to the United

States. in terms of its causes, to the economic conditions of

latin American countries in general, one must take of course into

account the dismal political conditions and the constant presence

of armed conflict within Central American countries. Fear of

death squads, the effects of years of state repression and deli-

berate assassination of indigenous peoples, political activists

and intellectuals, coupled with the destruction of their internal

economies, have pushed millions of Central Americans out of their

countries towards Mexico and the United States; as you probably

know, in Los Angeles you find the largest populations of Mexicans

and Salvadoreans outside their respective countries.

Migration is an important demographic process; it introduces

changes in the population structure of a given area (it changes

the number of males and females and young and old) and changes,

therefore, the potential for growth of the population as a whole.

When people become aware of those demographic effects, it is easy

to interpret them in the worse possible light, and that is

precisely what has happened with the mass media and professional

coverage of the growing numbers of Latin Americans entering the

U.S. Latin American immigrants are now defined as "Hispanics" and

minoritized in the process; their increasing presence, therefore,

is now perceived as an increase in the size of an ethnic minority

thus havinf political and social consequences and significance

which would not have arisen had they been perceived simply as what

they are: Latin American immigrants. Common titles in the news-

papers are, for example, "Hispanic Population increases at 5 times

the rate of rest of the U.S.", "Hispanic Immigration Tests the

U.S." The Census Bureau estimates, the report says, that the

number of "Hispanics" has increased 30% since 1980, at five times

the rest of the population. 25 % of the increase is atributed to

undocumented immigrants; 25% due to legal immigration and rest to

natural increase. "Hispanic " activists considered that the

report had broad implications for "Hispanic" political strength,

the delivery of social services and the composition of the U.S.

workforce. Another states that those numbers indicate a dramatic

potential for "Hispanics" to become an electoral power. One point

usually stressed in reports of this kind is that, because of immi-

gration and high birth rates, the "Hispanic" population will

double again by 2020 and by 2060 they will be the nation's largest

minority. It is also stressed that because of the growth in the

"Hispanic population" it will be more difficult to reduce poverty;

furthermore, a growing "Hispanic" population will require

increased welfare spending, particularly for health care. Schools

will also face problems and will have to find more effective ways

to educate "hispanic" children.

Now, what happens in the so -called "Hispanic" population is

mirrored in what happens, in a smaller scale, among Blacks and

Asian minorities. Current definitions minoritize all immigrants

and the consequences of this practice are just beginning to be

explored. I will briefly refer to some of the questions that can

be asked about the effects of immigration in the U.S. Perhaps the

most salient aspect of what is going on with immigration today is

the fact that immigrants are deprived of national identities and

reduced to an abstract category: they are automatically trans-

formed into members of pre-existent minority groups, they are

counted as such and perceived as such by the media. This has an

enormous impact on people's consciousness; on the form in which

the average adult and child perceive immigrants. Their minoriti-

zation carries with it not only the assumption that they are

similar in their traits to already existing minority groups, but

the notion that they are likely to experience the same kinds of

problems those groups suffer from; hence the notion that more

"Hispanics" will automatically increase the poverty rate and the

demand for welfare assistance, etc. This is fascinating because,

behind this stereotypical perception there is a kernel of truth;

most immigrants from Latin America are uprooted peasants or poor

unskilled workers and it is likely that here they will continue to

be poor. What the minoritization process accomplishes, however,

is to give a cultural veneer to the reasons for their poverty and

mystifies their class position; if most Latin Americans are likely

to be poor is because the jobs they are offered paid poorly and

they are probably going to be locked not only in the same "vicious

circle of poverty" afflicting other minorities in this country,

but affecting also the lower layers of the white working class.

But to present immigrants not only endowed with a national origin

but with social class woud mean moving outside the parameters of

present discourse which rules out social class as a major deter-

minant of individuals' well being. This would also lead to the

widespread realization that Asian immigrants have done too well

for their own good because a substantial number of them come to

the U.S. either with high school education, college education or

with professional creddentials; a substantial proportion are

middle class or upper middle class, and a small minority is here

to invest capital. Asians not only join the professional strata,

but the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie and the capitalist class.

But their situation is not presented in the media in these terms;

the media, and social scientists too, tend to stress their values

and commitment to the same tenets of the protestant Ethic which,

presumably, account for the success of those who "have made it."

Summing up, the minoritization of immigrants obscures their

class origins and explains their relative success or their expec-

ted failures in cultural terms. This brief discussion highlights

the fact that migration is bimodal; most immigrants tend to be

poor, or relatively well off and educated with few in the middle.

From this vantage point, less developed nations export not only

their excess surplus unskilled labor, but their overproduction of

professionals and intellectuals. They tend to produce far more

university graduates and skilled workers than their economies can

afford; immigration of these workers to the developed nations is a

scape valve, that allows those societies to maintain the social

order, as the potential discontents are gone. The U.S. benefits

from this brain drain and from the import of labor in general

economically, because it saves the costs of production, but also

politically, as the brain drain of the third world is counted for

affirmative action purposes as proof of progress in the situation

of the local minorities.

The minoritization of immigrants contributes to cement the

ethnic division of the working class; their presence contributes

to increase the size of minority groups, not the size of the

working class; when they are discussed as workers, it is generally

assumed that they will take jobs away from Americans and that

current and recent high rates of unemployment are actually their

fault. In fact, immigrants contribute to economic growth in a

variety of ways, by leading to the location, in the U.S., of

foreign capital seeking to cut transportation costs for its pro-

ducts, to avoid protectionist measures, and employ cheap labor at

the same time. In turn, this revitalizes the area through the

multiplying effect that is produced. Immigrants - documented or

not - pay taxes and social security and their consumption helps

also the local economy. And, of course, immigrants take jobs which

pay very little, jobs that American workers cannot afford to take

given their level of expectations. For example, one of the

reasons why so many women stay on welfare instead of working is

that the jobs they can get at their level of skills do not pay for

health care; rather than expose their children to illness, those

women opt for welfare. Immigrant men and women on the other hand,

come from such dismal conditions of existence that to forego

health care is something they are willing to do, at least during

the beginning of their stay in this country.

While "hispanic" leaders look at numbers and talk about the

political potential of that group, one can question the extent to

which effective political unity could develop between Latin

American immigrants and U.S. minorities of Mexican and Puerto

Rican descent; this is a very heterogeneous group not only in

terms of national origin and culture, but also in terms of social

class. immigration brings middle, upper middle and petty bourgois

latin Americans which, under these conditions and particularly in

light of policies designed to help minority businesses, can lead

to the development of middle man minorities, exploiting their own

in the name of ethnic unity and strength.

On the other hand, the transnational nature of capital is

creating a transnational working class within state boundaries.

Greater awareness among American workers of the determinants and

effects of the flight of capital abroad could lead to the develop-

ment of transnational working class solidarity, cutting across

artificially imposed ethnic and racial distinctions. Objectively,

the material conditions leading to the development of such a class

are here; the crucial issue, of course, is that of the development

of the subjective conditions; i.e., political consciousness and

organization as a class. While emphasis on the ethnic, racial and

gender divisions within the working class are dominant in current

forms of political discourse, the process of class and income

polarization now taking place might contribute to the development

of a more realistic understanding of their conditions of existence

among workers. The rainbow coalition might be just such a

beginning. At any rate, immigration is radically transforming the

structure of the U.S. working class and an increasing dialogue

between U.S. and foreign workers might translate those processes

of objective transformation into processes of political

organization.

7. This process is not equivalent to the "feminization of the

proletariat" (Ehrenreich, 1987: 12). Because of demographic

reasons (higher male mortality) women have always been more than

half of the proletariat, whether they were aware of it or not. I

refer here to the erosion of "middle class" and "upper-middle

class" statuses among growing numbers of propertyless women. It is

also true that working women are concentrated in the more poorly

paid jobs and that demand for female (and male) cheap labor is

increasing. These trends can be best understood not in demogra-

phic terms (giving emphasis to the sex or age composition of the

proletariat), but as effects of current processes of wealth con-

centration and class polarization.