The left wing argument against immigration

[imomus]

Reading the page of a Facebook friend the other day I discovered a link to an op-ed piece about the Dutch Socialist Party, led by Agnes Kant. In the article -- entitled Dutch advance socialist case against immigration -- we learn that this party is the fastest-growing in Holland, and may replace the Dutch Labour Party as the main alternative to the Christian Democrats. The secret of their success seems to be that they're anti-EU and anti-immigration; in other words, that they're picking up votes from the right as well as the left (they also support welfare, nationalisation and progressive taxation, and attack capitalism's "culture of greed").



Kant's party argues that workers shouldn't have to "flow freely" around the world in search of work, and that immigration is a capitalist ploy to drive down wages and destroy indigenous working-class solidarity. They see the EU's desire to let both capital and labour flow around easily serving the interests of fat cat industrialists "who for obvious reasons welcome the influx of large numbers of people from low-wage economies onto their labour market". Voila, a left-wing rationale for the (traditionally right-wing) dislike of immigration!

My left-wing friends on Facebook were appalled at this development. "Sooooo bloody depressing," said one. "When the Dutch socialists are against it, we're sunk mate." Another responded: "I'm appalled that a party that purports to be socialist can maintain that being opposed to immigration is anti-capitalist. Socialists should advocate internationalism and laws to protect all workers." I was also appalled, yet somewhat intrigued; Holland (I'll be there next week; I play the Kikker Theater in Utrecht on September 11th) seems to be a sort of political gene-splicing laboratory where radical-leftist-libertarian politics get mingled, magically, with right-wing populism. Remember openly gay politician Pim Fortuyn and his argument that immigration should be stopped because muslims didn't understand Holland's traditional liberalism on social issues like homosexuality? Tolerant, left-sounding arguments powered his rightward rise, too.

There's no doubt that, on a purely pragmatic level, being anti-immigration gets you places. At the European elections in June, voters steered Europe to the right by rewarding anti-immigration candidates. But how socialist can an anti-immigration stance claim to be? In her book Immigration and politics in the new Europe, Gailya Lahav found that while only 14% of socialists agreed with the statement "immigration should be decreased", 83% of members of radical right parties agreed. And the results of this 2002 survey in Norway show that you're more likely to have a positive view of immigrants if you're:

a) Scandinavian (rather than from a country further south)
b) young
c) have a high level of education
d) have actual personal contact with immigrants
e) live in a city rather than the country, and
f) the centre of a city rather than the suburbs
g) have a left-wing political affiliation



Chris Dillow, in a Stumbling and Mumbling blog article entitled Immigration and the left, lists a cogent set of reasons why the left continues to be pro-immigration. And, back on Facebook, Eric Ross puts the traditional leftist view strongly: "Since the days of the Paris Commune, real socialism has been internationalist and has regarded nationalism as a divisive force, not the diverse attributes and points of origin of the workforce. The Dutch socialist party should seek to restrict the free flow of capital, not of labor; and it should advocate policies that prevent the exploitation of all workers."

Meanwhile, if we need confirmation that the trad right is as anti-immigration as the trad left is pro, we need only turn to the writings of John Fonte, of right-wing American think-tank The Hudson Institute. Fonte coined the term Transnational Progressivism to sum up everything he considers rotten, "non liberal-democratic" and "post-Western". He summed it up for American Diplomacy thus:

* Transnational progressivists put groups (especially ethnic groups) over individuals.
* They pit privileged indigenous oppressor groups against marginalized victim groups comprised of immigrants.
* Their idea of fairness is that ethnic victim groups get proportionally represented.
* The mountain comes to Mohammed; "the values of all dominant institutions [must] be changed to reflect the perspectives of the victim groups."
* Transnational progressivists favour diversity over assimilation; it's okay to stay different.
* TPs prefer power-sharing among ethnic groups (some of whom are non-citizens) to the majority rule of democracy.
* TPs work to deconstruct national narratives, like "Britishness". They define America as "the convergence of three civilizations -- Amerindian, West African, and European."
* TPs believe in postnational citizenship and elitist transnational institutions (the EU, the UN, and so on). They are "postdemocrats".

Now I identify fairly readily with Fonte's cautionary stereotype here; I am his enemy, the unrepentant Transnational Progressivist. That's natural enough; Fonte is a right-winger who defends anti-immigration views in the National Review; American Diplomacy calls him "markedly conservative". But I'm also -- and for almost all the same reasons -- the enemy of the Dutch Socialist Party. And that's weird.

Comments

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

I really, really want to say something about "national socialism" viz. "socialism in one country" here, but I feel like it couldn't possibly be fair.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, in the comments under the Stumbling and Mumbling blog I link, someone called Ortega says: BNP = Labour + racism, explaining that the BNP (ie fascist party in the UK) vote comes from disaffected Labour Party supporters who feel threatened by immigrants rather than feeling internationalist solidarity with them. So they really are, in a sense, national socialists. Or, more accurately, nationalist ex-socialists.

[(Anonymous)]

"immigration is a capitalist ploy to drive down wages and destroy indigenous working-class solidarity"

It's hard to argue with this point of view. Capitalism is the big enemy now but I doubt we will see the back of it in our lifetime.

[(Anonymous)]

It's possibly accurate to say that the origins of mass immigration were about getting cheap people in to service capitalist expansion, rather than live and work with what you've got. Multicuturalism as a concept is not the reason for mass immigration, but a definition of what is happening after-the-fact.

As an immigrant myself I don't think that being asked to go home would be catastrophic. I'm surprised my hosts have been so kind. It's a bit patronising to assume that a flight to civilisation 'rescues' people. It's one option. I don't think reducing the flow of movement is up there with Auschwitz. Living in the country you were born in is hardly the end of the world. Yes, even in wartime.

Which introduces the other argument - stagnation-by-movement (the French Revolution wouldn't have happened if they could all have upped and fled to Brazil). Which systems aren't getting their house in order because the sharpest people, the changers, the pioneers, bleed away?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, on the theme of return migration -- going back to where you came from -- there's an interesting conversation about it (particularly in the Caribbean context) at the beginning of this week's Thinking Allowed (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mbz1k/Thinking_Allowed_02_09_2009/). One problem mentioned there is that the people coming back are often resented because they're richer, but they also find that the people back home aren't as poor as they remember them 40-odd years ago.

[(Anonymous)]

Ironically, German-born Kant is herself an immigrant.

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

Is it really so strange (as a famously bespectacled and mopey singer once asked in the 80s) that capitalism would be linked with something so suspiciously internationalist as immigration? After all, isn't one of the suspect qualities of all those suspect, shady Jewish and Jewish-like merchants in the plays of Shakespeare and his pals that they are outsiders whose livelihoods are ultimately part of a wandering, international network of finance? And aren't transnational corporations routinely and indignantly condemned for not being sufficiently concerned with the welfare of various native populations?

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

Which, of course, raises the question, is this song really a sad little plea from native-borns to politics and the forces of globalization?:



"Gasping - but somehow still alive
This is the fierce last stand of all I am

Gasping - dying - but somehow still alive
This is the final stand of all I am
Please keep me in mind"

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

I don't think survival makes people feel good. And no political movement can gain traction unless it makes people feel good. Economic systems (where they can even be articulated) don't address that problem. No system can escape miserable people. And nothing makes us miserable like success. Toxic political ideas thrive because we can't cope with living. The human race is addicted to organizational heroin.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't really think there is anything "traditional" about the pro-immigration supporters being on the left or anti-immigration being on the right. Organized labour groups in many parts of the world have a long history of opposition to the introduction of lower cost labour while, as you already note, business leaders frequently support it. Today in Japan, for instance, many of the most vocal proponents of immigration are members of the Keidanren.

I think you could argue that the current weakness of unions in the west is one reason why anti-immigration sentiment today is no longer strongly associated with labour and the left which makes it easier for nationalist groups to appeal to it unopposed.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

If someone were to ask you "Are you pro or anti-immigration?" the only reasoned response would be "It depends on the specifics".

Who's emigrating? How many? Why are they emigrating? How long will they stay? To which country are they going? To what area of that country? What infrastructure needs to be in place to support this community? How will it affect the native communities? How will it affect the countries economy and wages? etc.

All these questions need to be answered before you could possible say you're for or against it, unless of course you just want to be lazy and see this as some kind of quasi-racial issue, which it isn't.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Nevertheless, profiling shows that your politics tend to determine your attitude to immigration: while only 14% of socialists agreed with the statement "immigration should be decreased", 83% of members of radical right parties agreed.

Being pro-immigration also correlates positively with being a citizen of a more liberal nation, being young, being highly-educated, having personal contact and experience with immigrants, and being urban rather than rural.

You propose attitudes to immigration as the outcome of the isolated logical operations of individual brains, but as a good Transnational Progressivist I'm much more inclined to see them as a question of group affiliation, and therefore of sociology and ideological clustering. And I see no reason to break the template of the traditional right / left lines here; to be anti-internationalist is one of the defining hallmarks of a right-wing stance. Period.

[deadbatteries.livejournal.com]

i agree. i'm all about rainbows and lollipops

Love the collapsing of spurious binaries

[(Anonymous)]

"Paris Commune, real socialism" LOL, yeah right

Also, being in California, immigration remains a hot taco. A few points from the front lines: there are ways of looking at the issue that don't involve color/ethnicity; ecology/practicality for one. The 10s of millions of immigrants are going to want their own 10s of millions of automobiles and shop at supermarkets, get big TV's and SUV's etc etc. Another is that most of the Mexican immigrants coming in have rather conservative religious values themselves (which equals, among other things, intolerance of gays, impractically large families and children, etc); ironic, then, that the supposedly "real" left-wing socialists would be supporting an influx of immigration of peoples who have rather opposing values to their own! How's that for irony.

Lastly, of course the immigration issue in California is related to history, war, corporate capitalist pigs setting up maquiladoras which destabilize the economy and working people's of Mexico itself, etc etc etc. it's a mess, to say the least.

Re: Love the collapsing of spurious binaries

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Another is that most of the Mexican immigrants coming in have rather conservative religious values themselves (which equals, among other things, intolerance of gays

This is exactly the same point that I associate with "pro-tolerance" immigration-intolerant right-winger Pim Fortuyn in my piece, though. Ironically, he was killed by a Dutchman who objected to his stance on animal rights.

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

1) You show examples of voters who combine anti-immigration attitudes with conservative sentiments about other issues. I think you are confusing liberalism <-> conservatism with socialism <-> capitalism.

Pretty much every capitalist corporation I'm aware of is very pro-immigration. They like it as a means of keeping workers' wages down and workers' organisations divided. (The same corporations probably have no problem with gay marriage and other red light issues for conservatives).

2) Socialism is about equality. All the evidence I know suggests that multicultural, multi-ethnic societies are less equal than homogenous societies like Japan (BTW remind me what your attitude is to Japanese immigration policies).

3) In the Netherlands immigration is seen as endangering Dutch liberalism, because it means importing people with hyper-conservative attitudes to gays and women. Effectively, immigration means importing right wingers (ie social conservatives). Imagine if the German government started a program to encourage large numbers of Pat Robertson type US religious conservatives to move to Berlin. I take it you'd support that.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think you're right that capital is more liberal than trad conservatism. This is one cause of the split that developed between Bush and Cheney; Bush was fairly soft on immigration, seeing immigration (especially over the Mexican border) as a good source of cheap labour and, yes, Republican votes.

Your other points are shabby, though. To argue that keeping borders shut keeps equality higher is pure weasel. It only keeps equality high in the closed country. The world Gini rate is high, therefore to open your borders somewhat will adjust your Gini rate somewhat upwards. But it's an important step to lowering worldwide Gini rates.

Similarly, while immigration does bring conservative attitudes (along with a whole host of cultural differences) in, all studies show that it's a process which softens and liberalises hardline views. Bringing Turkey into the EU, for instance, would start a process of liberalising Islamic countries whose hardline stance is directly proportional to their sense of exclusion.

You cannot reduce conservatism or poverty by isolating the nations in which they exist.

what japanese immigration policy???

[(Anonymous)]

"curry stalls?" LOL

dude, anyone who's been to japan for an extended period of time knows how welcome immigration is there; the southeast asians and south americans (particularly the brazilian-japanese) who come to japan are seriously considered second-class citizens. and don't even get me started about the koreans in japan (have to adopt japanese names, can't vote, it goes on and on and on)...

Re: what japanese immigration policy???

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"curry stalls?" LOL

I notice you didn't LOL the mosque bit, dude.

I was asked my attitude to Japanese immigration, not the Japanese state's attitude to Japanese immigration.

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

Kant's party argues that workers shouldn't have to "flow freely" around the world in search of work, and that immigration is a capitalist ploy to drive down wages and destroy indigenous working-class solidarity. They see the EU's desire to let both capital and labour flow around easily serving the interests of fat cat industrialists "who for obvious reasons welcome the influx of large numbers of people from low-wage economies onto their labour market". Voila, a left-wing rationale for the (traditionally right-wing) dislike of immigration!

If this is the first time you hear something like this, there is something lacking in your "left-wing" education. This is hardly new: it's the traditional communist viewpoint on the matter --dating from Marx's time.

There are several confusions in this post. First of all it is not the "right" that opposes immigration, it is conservatives. The real right, as in capitalists and the capitalist system, have not been conservative since at least World War 2. The "society of the spectacle" is not your granpa's Victorian Britain.

(And "Bush's conservatism" is only a show for Bible Belt voters. The system he served is no conservative, and it thrives on "progress", "individual rights", "consumption", etc)

Internationalism and traditional left "international worker solidarity" is also is not the same as favoring immigration.

Furthermore, modern capitalism is all for immigration --it's the same notion of the frictionless flow of merchandise and money applied to people. There are numerous reports from IMF and World Bank to the Economist praising the "positive effects" of immigration on economy (mainly lowering the cost of labour and increasing "competivines"). Hell, capitalism's starting fuel was immigration: from the forced migration of the English farmers to the cities and factories to the 19th and 20th century waves of european immigrants that enabled the U.S. capitalism to thrive on cheap labour (Southern richman even used poor white workers for works they considered too dangerous to risk their african slaves to perform!).

The so called "left" of today (bleeding heart reformists, actually, as far from marxism or labour discourse as possible) seldom mentions the basic facts about immigration: that it's not a happy "cultural-exchange" expedition, but actually a human trade of people force to leave their countries, due to economic and political circumstances.

And when they do mention it, they never tell it as it is: an act of desperation, that leaves the countries of origin of the immigrants without the most able minds and workforce (further contributing to their decline) and provides cheap labour to industrial countries.

Want to make things better for immigrants? For starters, don't force them to migrate. Have the colonial and post-colonial politics reversed, clear third world debt (a post-colonial tool for exploitation if there ever was one), stop major powers from forcing their local tools on those countries, etc...

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

Here are some real left-wingers:

With such a competitor the English working-man has to struggle, with a competitor upon the lowest plane possible in a civilised country, who for this very reason requires less wages than any other. Nothing else is therefore possible than that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English working-man should be forced down further and further in every branch in which the Irish compete with him. And these branches are many. (...) On the contrary, it is easy to understand how the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history, and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence of Irish competition.

Irish Immigration, From "The Condition of the Working Class in England", by Engels, 1845

OR:

As in 1848, Marx continued to advocate an interest-based conception of working-class internationalism, treating nationally localized interests as the building-blocks of any effective cooperation between the workers of different countries. (...) This was why, in 1875, Marx upbraided the German Social Democrats for omitting from their programme any mention of 'the international functions of the German working class', declaring:

It is altogether self-evident that, in order to be able to fight at all, the working class must organise itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle. To this extent its class struggle is national.

From: «Really Existing Nationalisms: A Post-communist View from Marx and Engels», Oxford University Press

OR:

Defeated in England, the masters are now trying to take counter-measures, starting in Scotland. The fact is that, as a result of the London events, they had to agree, initially, to a 15 per cent. wage rise in Edinburgh as well. But secretly they sent agents to Germany to recruit journeymen tailors, particularly in the Hanover and Mecklenburg areas, for importation to Edinburgh. The first group has already been shipped off.

The purpose of this importation is the same as that of the importation of Indian COOLlES to Jamaica, namely, perpetuation of slavery.

If the Edinburgh masters succeeded, through the import of German labour, in nullifying the concessions they had already made, it would inevitably lead to repercussions in England. No one would suffer more than the German workers themselves, who constitute in Great Britain a larger number than the workers of all the other Continental nations. And the newly-imported workers, being completely helpless in a strange land, would soon sink to the level of pariahs.

Furthermore, it is a point of honour with the German workers to prove to other countries that they, like their brothers in France, Belgium and Switzerland, know how to defend the common interests of their class and will not become obedient mercenaries of capital in its struggle against labour.

On behalf of the Central Council of the International Working Men's Association, Karl Marx, London, May 4, 1866

Kikker

[(Anonymous)]

On another note: what are you going to play in Kikker?
Something like your best-of performance of last year?

Re: Kikker

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes. Or rather, something like the Momuthons I played in the US earlier this year.

The concert is a memorial tribute to Jip de Kort (http://imomus.livejournal.com/407965.html), but it's also a general Momus show open to the public, so we've opted to do the kind of show Jip would have liked to see.

Can't see the trees for the forest

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's important to emphasise the difference between immigration and illegal immigration. Many pressure groups lambasting immigration are in fact substituting a more general term, "immigration" (which, as has been said above, covers many complex issues) for the unfortunate consequences of depriving immigrants of their rights once they arrive in a country.

It is only because they don't have a single law protecting their rights as workers that these illegal immigrants will work for such low pay.
In fact, it's in the interests of many businesses in the developed world to keep illegal immigrants in this sort of limbo for as long as possible. If they were subject to minimum wage along with everyone else (in Europe at least) then this would no longer be an issue. As it is, there's a new generation of slaves, they're all around us and it's one of the most startling abuses of human rights that exists in developed countries today.

Re: Can't see the trees for the forest

[(Anonymous)]

good point. many "leftists" in california are against such immigration because it actually destabilizes unions and wages in general here, not to mention is a complete exploitation by businesses of such workers---they accept peanuts for wages, no health care, etc etc etc.

[lazy-leoboiko.livejournal.com]

I’m surprised that Fonte’s list is supposed to list bad things. Other than the «group above individual» (i.e. identity politics) thing, I can’t see what’s the problem with it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's only a problem if you think rootless cosmopolitans are trying to poison you, as Fonte apparently does.

[(Anonymous)]

C'est fini le français? zut alors...

*copernicus*

[gu88766.livejournal.com]

government hates immigration because government only sees expenditures

capitalism loves immigration because capitalism only sees profits

neither government (socialism) nor capitalism (classical liberalism) really cares about the immigrant. lets get real here.

the final statement of this article "and that's weird" is probably the most important statement and i do not think we are giving it enough credit.

what is weird? the weird thing is how political discussion is bursting at the seams. it is almost as if we no longer know what words mean. leftism vs post-leftism. conservatism vs neo-cons. what used to be a two dimensional political spectrum is now more complicated than the ptolemaic solar system.

There is no purity of ideology; people are too complex for that.

[thedr9wningman.livejournal.com]

I have to mention a couple of things:

1. Capitalists generally favour the moving of people around. It allows them to exploit the world for their profit-game. Generally, when you're dealing with labour, capital, and land, it is the CAPITAL that moves around. Only with modern technology have we started to think of people as the ones that move around a lot. But it isn't always good to move people around: there are social and linguistic barriers to that game.
   
2. Under that line of thought, the Right wing should be pro-moving-people-around. But there are other conservative principles (fear of 'others', fear of change, and conservation of culture) that overshadow their ideology on this matter. That 80+% is being completely out of synch with their neo-liberal economic ideology.
   
3. The Dutch Socialists make sense. They're being anti-capitalist, and anti-disruptionary. They are NOT being inconsistent in their values. But...
   
4. As a young, educated, less-scared, melting-pot dweller who eats nothing but 'foreign' food and knows 3 languages, the leftist culture embraces diversity, although in general, leftist economic theory does not support the movement of people across cultural/social lines. That is done not because of a dislike for the people, but for a dislike of a policy that uproots people from their home and presents them with no other option but to move their labour to where the capital is, or die in their country that is now economically at a disadvantage, ecologically ravaged, and ruined by debt to the World Bank.
   
5. Again, the capital should be moving, not the labour, under free-market idealism. But the Right wing resists the results of the system they put in place, creating a paradox for people who are trying to keep their head above water.
   
6. If the Dutch Socialists pull this off, how the fuck am I going to move to Holland?! There's a difference between being forced to move because of economic pressures (poor people moving into rich-people areas), and people wanting to move on their own volition (rich people moving wherever the fuck they want to).
   

The slight distinctions that made in number 6 are usually missed when making policy. Conservatives don't fear rich-people migration, they fear poor-people, welfare-sucking, needy, your-tired-your-poor-yearning-to-be-free* people immigrating. Whereas, the left is happy to have the cultural diversity, is happy to share their riches with others, and raise the tide for all. The left just doesn't want the Mexico situation happening**.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that you point out the unlikely coalitions, but that is a function of ideologies failing the people who tend to follow them. There are a lot of things that seem weird: Right-wing pro-war anti-abortionists, for example.

People are complicated.

*That is a quote off the Statue of Liberty: I'm not assuming Europeans know that.
**Mexico can't grow corn at cost for what the US sells it for, therefore, people are economically forced to migrate. Yet the political will by the Left and Right fail when you bring up farming because the subsidies are supposed to help farmers (but don't, they just help agribusiness and ensure cheap food). There's no political will to increase food costs, even though it would do us a lot better health-wise, economically, and it would let the Mexicans grow corn on their own land with their family, instead of working in an estranged situation as an economic refugee.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Highlanders (http://imomus.com/highlanders.mp3)

[(Anonymous)]

This might be propaganda designed to demonise a group one plans to crush or exploit. But are the Dutch Socialists demonising immigrants to crush or exploit them?

Life in Morocco isn't such a living nightmare. One of the problems there is a lack of working age males. There is a feeling in some rural towns that they consist of women and children and the old only. Maybe it is Internationist to slow that corrosion.