Immigration and American Unionism

Long opposed to illegal immigration and at best neutral regarding lawful immigration, organized labor rather abruptly altered its traditional stance on these issues during the Clinton years. Recognizing that open borders are inevitable in a global economy and faced with declining membership among their traditional population bases, American unions began to recognize in immigrants a potential source of new members who could reinvigorate a stagnant labor movement. Consequently, the 1993 AFL-CIO convention lauded immigrants for their role in strengthening unions, the 1995 convention rejected anti-immigration arguments as scapegoating, and by the turn of the century the AFL-CIO had endorsed amnesty for illegal immigrants and the repeal of sanctions against their employers. Cornell University Professor Vernon Briggs appears to have written Immigration and American Unionism as a response to this shift by the vanguard of the labor movement. It is essentially a well-written history of immigration interwoven with the history of American unions. The period from 1788 to 2000 is divided into six chronological episodes, each organized according to the same basic structure: the historical setting, the nature of the labor force and industrial employment, the type and level of immigration during the period, the relative status of unions, and the consequences of the era's events. The book provides some fascinating stories of immigration and clear explanations of immigration law; among the most interesting are the discussions of Chinese "coolie" labor in California, the "bracero" program by which Mexican farmworkers came to the United States, and the "Texas Proviso"-the provision in federal law by which employers could legally hire illegal immigrants (until its repeal in 1986). Similarly, all the familiar union histories are reviewed, including those of the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Homestead and Pullman strikes, and the formation of the AFL-CIO itself. Of course, these histories are well known, and it does not appear to be Briggs's intent to cast the individual events in a new light. Rather, it is the juxtaposition of the immigration and union trends that forms the book's central theme. Briggs contends that "unions thrive (membership grows) when immigration is low or levels are contracting; unions falter (membership declines) during periods when immigration is high or levels are increasing" (p. 3). Given the simplicity and overtly empirical nature of this hypothesis, the theory could have been developed more rigorously and concisely in a professional journal article, but the author presumably wished to target a broader and less academic audience than a technical paper would have attracted. Additionally, the book's two major drawbacks-its biased vantage point and its lack of statistical verification-might not have been tolerated in a more scholarly, peer-reviewed forum. Briggs openly discloses his opposition to liberal immigration rules and union pursuit of such policies, writing, For organized labor to sanction such an infusion on an ongoing basis can only be considered the act of a Judas. Organized labor might thereby become the friend of the self-serving immigrant advocacy groups, but it could no longer be considered a champion of American workers. The [amnesty] proposal is a betrayal of the legacy of the past in which unions always placed the interests of workers, whether native- or foreign-born, ahead of any subsidiary consideration. (p. 181) Indeed, he goes so far as to render an ethical judgment against the federal immigration policy in place since the 1960s: "To satisfy the private interests of some citizens rather than serve the national interest, the principle of family reunification became the cornerstone of the new immigration system and remains so, even though it does not rest on a morally sound foundation" (p. 108). Such pronouncements are doubly dangerous. First, though the criteria for a morally sound policy are not obvious, few would contend that reuniting families is immoral. …