Georgia Legislators said that the purpose of their bill was to transfer the work done by undocumented immigrants to the rest of the workforce. But, in fact, the real purpose of the bill is to divide and conquer — setting worker against worker — and it will hurt all workers in Georgia, whatever their status.
Undocumented immigrants will be driven out of the state or deeper into the informal economy. Documented immigrants will find themselves suspected and jobs harder to find. Native-born workers will see their wages driven down and their power weakened.
There is no doubt that things will get even worse — for everybody — if the federal guest-worker program is strengthened, as the new law calls for. Federal guest-worker programs essentially legalize the smugglers of immigrant workers (coyotes) to bring in undocumented immigrants in formal work programs.
The “guests” work for U.S. corporations and other businesses at low wages and without normal workers’ rights — and without the opportunity to become citizens and settle down in the United States. By strengthening and expanding this program, the U.S. government will create a slave-like substrata of indentured workers, putting pressure on all workers to drop that level.
Slave labor fueled the Southern economy for the first 250 years of its history. And in their version of the Arizona law, state legislators in neighboring Alabama made that connection crystal clear.
It criminalizes anyone who “harbors, conceals, transports, or employs” undocumented immigrants. Slave-owning capitalists used the same language when they criminalized people who helped escaped slaves more than 150 years ago.
