Date: Fri, 16 Feb 96 13:04:51 GMT
From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
Subject: Re: Border Controls -Reply



Lisa asks if perhaps workers with jobs are, at least short term,
threatened by immigration. I say no they are not, even in the 
short term.

First, there is no empirical link between net migration and standard 
of living. Ireland is relatively poor, even though, as the saying has it,
its main export is people. Hong Kong is rich, although it has massive 
immigration. This pattern is repeated many times across the world.

There are of course well known examples of countries which have directly
benifited from immigration : the US + Israel.

Of course, there are many other factors at work in all these cases. But
even one counter example disproves a causal link.

Second, immigrants work and live. In order to work and live they consume,
and these needs must be met by new production, which creates demand for
Labour.

Third, rich countries tend to have an aging population, and this causes
the ruling class to complain that they can't pay decent pensions, health
care etc. Immigrants tend to have a greater bias towards people of working
age than the population they are moving to, and can therefore solve this
problem inasmuch as it is a real problem and not just a smoke screen for
making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Finally, as the ruling class well knows, ideology is itself an economic
factor. The ideology of the familly is not based on reality, but is
an excuse to pay women workers less than men for work of equal value.
Similarly, immigration is only a threat to the workers of the country
they are moving to if they react to it in a racist way.

As usual I can't quote the exact source, but the wobblies reacted to the
news that negroes were going to be brought up from the south to break
their strike by saying "Brilliant. We'll end up with 1000's of negro
wobblies". Exactly ( although needless to say we would use different
language ).

Adam.

Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK

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