Organizing Tomorrow’s Latino Vote Today
One of the points I have been trying to make on this blog is that being being affirmatively pro-immigrant is not the way to win back the Latino votes we Democrats lost in 2004. Latino voters are already here - whether it gets any easier for more Latinos to become American is less important to Latino voters than issues like Iraq and education. On the other hand, being anti-discriminatory in the face of perceived Republican racism can help tremendously in ensuring that non-naturalized and non-registered Latinos become Democrat. So I was very heartened to read that a key member of the Democratic interest group ensemble is starting to sing a different tune when it comes to immigrants.
In today’s New York Times, Steven Greenhouse reports that the A.F.L.-C.I.O. signed a partnership agreement with the National Day Labor Organizing Network, the nation’s largest organization of day laborers:
Several labor experts called the partnership a major step for labor.
“Symbolically it’s very, very important,” said Janice Fine, an assistant professor of labor relations at Rutgers University and the author of a book about worker centers. “It’s a clear signal from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that it’s acknowledging the immigrant workers movement that has grown up largely alongside organized labor.
…
Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter restrictions on immigration, said it was surprising that the A.F.L.-C.I.O. was embracing day laborers when many American workers oppose the influx of immigrants, convinced that they take away jobs and push down wages.
While Camerota may be right that American workers believe that immigrants take away jobs and push down wages, the Pew Hispanic Center released an analysis suggesting that immigrants do no such thing. By looking at statewide census data from the years 1990, 2000 and 2004, the Pew Hispanic Center found no correlation between an increase in the foreign-born population in a state and the effect on the employment status of native-born workers:
Overall, the weight of the evidence presented in Tables 1 and 2 shows that there is no consistent relationship between the growth in the foreign-born population and employment outcomes for native-born workers. As a result, it is not possible to state with certainty whether the inflow of foreign-born workers has hurt or helped the employment outlook for native-born workers.
As Roger Lowenstein wrote in the Sunday New York Times Magazine a month ago, data like Pew’s won’t settle the debate among academics:
The economists do have political opinions, of course. Borjas leans to a system like Canada’s, which would admit immigrants on the basis of skills. He also says that, to make sure the problem of illegals does not recur, the U.S. should secure its borders before it adjusts the status of its present illegals.
Advocates of a more open policy often cite the country’s history. They argue that the racists of bygone eras were not only discriminatory but also wrong. Card, for instance, mentioned an article penned by a future U.S. senator, Paul Douglas, titled “Is the New Immigration More Unskilled Than the Old?” It was written in 1919, when many people (though not Douglas) held that Jews, Slavs and Italians were incompatible with the country’s Anglo and Teutonic stock.
Which is why I’m encouraged by the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s recent move. I do not believe that the Democratic Party can get many votes in 2006 by dwelling on the debate. We need to state a unified position - stronger border enforcement, increased punishment of employers of undocumenteds and a clear path to citizenship - and then move on to better issues, letting the Republicans squabble amongst themselves on immigration as they try to appease their right wing. But I do believe that the Democratic Party can win a whole lot of future elections by using the immigration issue to register new Democrats out of non-naturalized or non-registered Latinos. Given that less than 20 percent of Latino adults living the United States are voters, the monumental task of registering new Latino voters will take organization. And who better to show would-be registration professionals how to organize than a union?
