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Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
Mon Sep 7, 2020, 04:50 AM Sep 2020

On Labor Day, New Reason Not to Fall for Trump's Immigrant Threat Narrative


September 07, 2020 | by Ruth Milkman

Among the many conversations I’ve had about the upcoming election, one stands out in my mind. It was with an old friend who is riding out the pandemic in upstate New York. She told me about an acquaintance of hers there, a white male construction worker, who is a steadfast Trump supporter. She could not understand why, given that he is struggling economically, he finds the ‘MAGA’ narrative so appealing. “What he is really angry about is all those Mexicans and Guatemalans around here who are taking jobs away from people like him,” she reported.

There’s no danger that New York State will land in the Trump column in November, and lately immigration has faded from the headlines, displaced by the Black Lives Matter protests and Trump’s demonizing of “rioters” and “looters” in the streets. This time around “law and order” is the focus of Trump’s presidential campaign. But we should not lose sight of the immigrant scapegoating that was his North Star in 2016. It remains a potent force for a sizable chunk of Trump’s base, especially white working-class Americans like that construction worker.

This Labor Day brings another reminder of the reversal of fortune that the nation’s white working class has endured over recent decades, as de-unionization and labor market restructuring drove economic inequality to sky-high levels not seen for over a century. Employment insecurity and precarity, already widespread before 2019, have been deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump and his allies continue to trumpet the immigrant threat narrative, blaming immigrants for “taking American jobs” and for the collapse in living standards that so many U.S.-born white workers have experienced. But this narrative – like so many others promoted by the president – has no grounding in reality.

As I document in detail in a new book, the immigrant threat narrative confuses cause with consequence. In industry after industry – including construction – the degradation of wages and working conditions preceded the influx of immigrants.

Starting in the 1970s, employers moved to undercut or eliminate unions, and turned formerly well-paid jobs with health and pension benefits into low-wage jobs with few appealing features. In the same period, business-promoted deregulation and skyrocketing subcontracting further contributed to the mushrooming of low-wage, precarious work. In response, U.S.-born workers increasingly abandoned or rejected newly degraded jobs, if they had the option. Only then did employers recruit immigrant workers to fill the resulting vacancies. In short, it was labor degradation that led to low-wage immigrant employment, not the other way around.

More:
https://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/9737-dont-fall-for-trump-immigrant-labor-threat-narrative
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