We should oppose not just scapegoating migrants over the cost of housing, argues Jack Stubley, but borders and immigration restrictions altogether, in the first of a new series on what socialists say
Anti-immigration rhetoric is on the rise globally.
Donald Trump wants to deport 11 million immigrants and massively increase the capacity of the notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Here in Australia, Labor and Liberal are competing to announce cuts to immigration and ever more ruthless measures against refugees.
Liberal leader Peter Dutton is looking to copy Trump. He has continually blustered about Labor running, “a migration program that’s been taken advantage of”. Dutton has promised to cut permanent migrant and international student visas, scapegoating migrants over the price of housing.
Anthony Albanese himself has deployed anti-migrant rhetoric, cutting international student numbers and banning non-residents from buying homes.
Dutton was adamant that Australia should not take any Palestinian refugees, claiming they are a security risk. He doubled down on this with the completely fabricated claim that Gazans were receiving fast-tracked Australian citizenship to allow them to vote in the election. This came despite the Albanese government’s own boasts about rejecting the vast majority of Gazan refugees.
Blaming migrants is a distraction from the real causes of problems like the cost of living, stagnant wages, poverty level welfare payments and cuts to services like the NDIS. This racist scapegoating must be opposed.
The real threat to workers’ living standards comes from our own bosses and governments. Grocery prices are skyrocketing while the supermarket duopoly of Woolworths and Coles rake in record profits. Social services, from education to healthcare, are chronically underfunded by government while they cut taxes for the wealthiest and binge on military spending.
But even many on the left accept that there must be a limit on immigration. This means accepting the idea that migrants pose some kind of threat. Socialists oppose all immigration controls and support open borders.
Local jobs
The idea that immigration either takes jobs, causing unemployment for locals, or undermines wages, is widespread. In fact, immigration helps to create more jobs through increasing demand in the economy. Every extra person is someone whose work and consumption generates economic activity, someone to build the houses, pick the fruit and staff the social services.
Mass immigration has been a feature of Australian history. After the Second World War Australia adopted a high immigration policy with the slogan “populate or perish”. The economy boomed and jobs grew. Although laden with the racist White Australia Policy, this showed mass migration does not threaten local jobs or wages. In recent years migration has been one of the only things driving jobs and Australia’s economic growth.
Economic studies have repeatedly shown that immigration does not create unemployment. A 2016 report for the federal Productivity Commission found “almost no evidence” that immigration either increased unemployment or reduced wages. It examined different types of workers including those who never completed Year 12, diploma graduates and university graduates, concluding that the only evidence of any negative impact on wages from immigration was for recent university graduates.
Yet trade unions often assume that immigrant labour undermines pay and conditions for local workers. Head of union peak body the ACTU Sally McManus claimed that temporary migration was “shipping in exploitation, and it is taking away jobs for local people”.
The idea is that immigrants will accept lower wages. Bosses are entirely willing to abuse the vulnerable position of migrants, such as food outlet Sushi Bay which was fined $15.3 million last year for systematic underpayment of Korean temporary visa holders. But capitalists are just as willing to exploit local workers if they can too.
According to a Grattan Institute report, up to 16 per cent of recent migrant workers are paid below the national minimum wage. That same report found up to 9 per cent of all Australian workers were also being paid below the minimum.
Migrant workers are made more vulnerable when their visas are dependent on employment and their right to stay in the country is under threat. The solution is to fight for permanent visa rights and to organise them into the unions.
Borders
Borders reinforce national, ethnic and racial divisions between workers here and those overseas. Meanwhile the rich are free to travel and invest all around the world.
Borders encourage workers to identify with the nation and to see the Australian way of life as a privilege under threat from outsiders. This means identifying with Australian bosses and the well-being of Australian company profits instead of with workers around the world.
Yet we have far more in common with workers in China, the US or India than with the billionaires in Australia who run companies that exploit workers here and abroad.
Hostility to migrants also weakens the solidarity between local and migrant workers that is necessary for trade unions and workers’ strike action to succeed.
Most people think open borders would be unmanageable.
But we have recent examples of “open border” policies that did not bring catastrophe. In 2004 eight Eastern European countries joined the EU, leading to 560,000 migrants arriving in Britain over two years. This resulted in wages that were actually slightly better in areas with higher immigration.
In the US, the plans for mass deportation don’t promise a brighter future for the average US worker but potential economic collapse. Migrant workers, undocumented migrant workers especially, are crucial to many industries.
Borders only serve to divide workers and weaken our ability to fight back against exploitation.
