population and immigration

Those who have been discussing the issues of immigration and
population clearly know a lot more than I do on this subject. 
However, I have tried to discuss these issues with my students. 
What follows is a summary of discussions of Mexico and the U.S. I
have recently had in my classes.

Most immigrants today to the US are from Mexico, Latin America, and 
Asia.  Why do millions of Mexicans risk their lives to come to the US 
to work in sweatshops and face police terror and deportations?  
Students know that Mexicans are mostly poor, but few have any 
understanding of why Mexicans are poor--or why most people are poor 
throughout the world.  Understanding US-Mexican dynamics is a way to 
understand global capitalism and imperialism, as well as immigration 
and population patterns.

Why do maquiladoras have little trouble recruiting low wage workers?  
Why have urban populations in Mexico swelled?  Understanding changes 
in the countryside is key.  Rural society is the vast reservoir of 
labor for capitalism, the biggest industrial reserve army by far for 
the capitalist world system.

But rural farmers will not migrate to urban slums or attempt to cross 
national borders if they can maintain a decent life on their farms 
and in their villages.  That is where capitalist agribusiness comes 
in.  Much of traditional Mexican agriculture has been destroyed as 
agribusinesses have taken over more and more land, converted it from 
subsistence use to export crops, brought in mechanization and large 
technology, reducing the need for human labor.

The process also often brings about vast environmental degradation,
which can then be esaily misconstrued as the result of
overpopulation.  After all, the economic changes have made much of
the rural population into a surplus population without food to eat. 
Much political coercion is also involved in this process, because
victimized farmers usually resist this destruction of their
livelihood.  Chiapas exemplifies all these processes, and their 
revolt, begun on the day NAFTA went into effect, dramatizes how 
"globalization" destroys the livelihood of rural workers. 

Much agribusiness in Mexico is US owned, and the output is destined 
mostly for the US market.  So US imperialism quite directly causes 
the expropriation of the rural Mexican population and forces them to 
migrate to Mexican cities and to seek to iummigrate to the US.

This swelling of the urban population reduces wages in Mexico and in 
the US.  It makes urban areas seem overpopulated, because the cities 
obviously do not provide decent housing or other services to 
impoverished workers who have a very high unemployment rate.  So 
again, crowed slums, high unemployment, and inadequate social 
services are misconstrued as due to overpopulation, when they are in 
fact a result of modern day "primitive accumulation."

Capitalists in Mexico and in the US benefit from the swelling of the 
industrial reserve army.  Today US business interests are lobbying 
for further relaxation of immigration laws so as to be able to import 
both high end technical workers as well as low wage workers.  Tight 
labor markets have led the INS to ease up on rounding up and 
deporting undocumented workers in the US.  The NY Times reported 
frankly a few weeks ago that the INS currently only deports illegal 
workers when their employers ask them to get rid of strikers or 
"troublemakers."

So, Mexico serves as a giant "Bantustan" or reservation, from which 
US imperialism can draw cheap labor as needed.  It is like a 
cross-national apartheid system, in which workers are allowed in the 
job zones only as long as their labor power is needed, while their 
family members and neighbors live in absolute poverty in the 
"homelands."

This a microcosm of world capitalism today.  The pattern is found 
almost everywhere.  Here are two very different examples that 
illustrate the same point.  This past week the NY Times ran the 
latest in its series on "race."  By far the most interesting article 
of the series, this one described the world's largest pork processing 
facility owned by Smithfield Foods in eastern North Carolina.  
Smithfield segregates and plays off white, native American, black, 
Mexican immigrant, and prison workers against each other in every 
phase of production.

The work place is a hell hole for all workers, but some workers are
deeper in hell than others.  Immigrant Mexican workers have been
used to undercut the wages and jobs of black workers who undercut
the wages and jobs of white workers--but a white prison worker is
treated like a Mexican worker. This industry used to be mainly
located in the US midwest, where it was unionized earlier in the
20th century.  The unions, comprised mainly of workers who had
immigrated to the US from Eastern Europe during the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, are now virtually extinct.

If you haven't read this article, I strongly recommend it.  It's on
the NY Times web site.  There is no more vivid description of what
racist capitalism is actually like for exploited workers in the US.

The second example is the computer chip industry.  Concentrated in 
Malaysia, it draws mainly upon rural young Malaysian women, whose 
eyes are ruined by the time they reach their mid-twenties.  The 
Malaysian government guaranteed foreign companies no strikes and no 
unions and has enforced this with a heavy hand when necessary.  
Intel, Motorola, and other US and Asian-owned companies enjoy access 
to the vast population of South and Southeast Asian labor.  The 
combination of racism and sexism is an unbeatable package of 
imperialist super-exploitation.  William Greider, in his "One 
World--Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism" contains a 
vivid description of the computer chip industry in Malaysia.

Conclusions:  What looks like overpopulation is generally a result of 
current capitalist processes that destroy livelihoods and relocate 
huge populations in areas where capitalism needs to exploit them.  
Capitalist competition often leads to wars over resources and land, 
which uproots large populations, destroys agaricultural production, 
and creates large refugee populations, as in many parts of Africa.

I have taught a course on Environmental Racism and Enmvironmental 
Justice a couple of times.  In this course I have discussed racist 
environmentalism extensively.  I think that neo-Malthusian arguments 
about Third World population explosions, immigration, and wars are 
the main form of racism in the environmental movement.  This has 
already been extensively discussed on WSN by others who know this 
issue well.  I'll just add that I think that we must NEVER adopt or 
unite with others who adopt that position.  This does not mean that 
there can never be too many people somewhere.  The irrationality of 
capitalism can cause that frequently.  It doesn't mean that there 
are no limits to the earth's "carrying capacity."  Everything has 
limits.

If parts of my analysis are wrong, I hope others will point out the 
mistakes.  Thanks.

Steve Rosenthal