Don’t blame newcomers

Capitalism is a system based on divide and rule, male versus female, young against old, employed pitted against unemployed and successive governments in Britain have played the race card (in Northern Ireland it was religion) or resorted to xenophobia to try to set workers against one another. The slogan of “British jobs for British workers” deflects from the possibility of solidarity and reflects a “divide and rule” situation in which fearful workers turn on “foreigners”. One section of the ruling class does not benefit from migrant workers and therefore does not want to bear the costs, while another section has been keen to defend the benefits of immigration. Political parties in Britain have once more begun to talk about immigration during this 2015 general election campaign. Unfortunately the debate is usually an ill-informed one and typically just a cover to introduce nationalist notions about the impact of immigration.

Migrant workers play a distinct role in capitalism as a “reserve army of labour” Employers use special schemes in agriculture and the so-called “hospitality” sector to import workers on a temporary basis. Advanced capitalist economies regularly poach workers with particular skills, such as nurses, teachers and social workers, from developing countries.

 The use of migrant workers also allows the receiver country to externalise the costs of renewing the labour force. The state uses migrant workers to fill gaps in the labour market but does not pay any of the costs of them or their families settling.

 Migrant workers are especially useful as part of the reserve army of labour because they can quickly be expelled. Nigeria expelled two million immigrant workers from other West African countries in the wake of the collapse of the oil market in the early 1980s, for instance.

 Employers do not simply want to obtain additional labour. They also want to get workers who can be used under specific conditions to raise the rate of exploitation. In some cases bosses will try to employ migrant workers even when indigenous workers are available because they assume that migrants’ status will make them easier to exploit. The vast majority of migrant workers have been used to fill the worst and most badly paid jobs. The use of migrant workers is inextricably linked to increasing labour “flexibility” to ratchet up the rate of exploitation. This is driven by increased competition between capitals.

Research puts a strong case against linking immigration to depressed wages or increased unemployment and suggests little or no evidence that immigrants have had a major impact although it is conceded that there is a limited negative effect on the lower skilled and the lower paid. While there is pressure on the wages of the worst paid workers, it is not the case that migrant workers are responsible for this. The drive for “flexibility” and lower wages goes back much further than the influx of workers from Eastern Europe. Privatisation, outsourcing and subcontracting have intensified competition over the past two decades in industries such as cleaning and other badly paid service sector jobs as well as construction. It is expensive for employers to invest in the infrastructure to train workers, so the exploitation of an already highly skilled labour market is utilised. When there is contraction in the market, the pushing back of migration occurs and vice versa. During these times the scapegoating of migrants and refugees is prevalent. Worker's fears are stoked by an austerity driven government, successfully deflecting people’s attention away from a lack of job prospects and cuts to services by pointing the finger at migrant workers.

Undoubtedly some employers in individual workplaces have sought to employ migrant workers on poorer pay and conditions of service. It is easy to see how employers could seek to employ workers on worse pay and conditions. The lesson to learn is in the importance of uniting indigenous and migrant workers, and of the role of trade unions. Not to organise these workers would weaken the movement as a whole. We are rightly fearful that migrant workers will be used as scapegoats. It is bosses who try to hold down pay to make bigger profits. They want workers to blame each other because it keeps them divided. Workers who resist this division can win better pay for all. It is crucial to argue in their workplaces and unions that blame does not lie with the migrant workers but with the cut-throat competition of capitalism that sets one person against one another in dog-eat-dog rivalry.  The most successful way to defeat low pay and conditions is to unite and organise against exploitative employers. When workers unite for fair pay and conditions, it strengthens the position of all workers.

Many of the above arguments are a rehash of ideas which opposed the movement of women into the work-force and even supported pay differentials, restricting their wages relative to men. Same with the employment of younger workers who once were placed on a pay-increment scale based upon age. Migrants and refugees are the scapegoats for people’s anxieties and fears about their livelihoods and quality of life. Migrants are not only being blamed for unemployment, but they are also being blamed for taking advantage of free healthcare and other welfare benefits.

Immigrants are also being blamed for the housing shortage. Rents are going up, and homes are becoming harder to find. But who is to blame? It’s certainly not migrants, who end up with some of the worst and most overcrowded housing. There is a shortage of housing because not enough is being built. And those being constructed are luxury flats aimed at the well-off and unaffordable to those on average wages.

“Health tourism” and “benefit tourism” are myths. The NHS would grind to a halt without migrant workers. It has relied on migrant labour from the time Enoch Powell as Health Minister invited West Indian nurses to staff the wards. Many say Britain is already “full up” and this seems to chime with a certain common sense—surely, more people means less to go round. But that isn’t how it works. Wealth is not shared out either fairly nor rationally. And the pot of wealth is not fixed. Our labour creates wealth. Yet the rich get more than the rest put together.

 In reality the debate on immigration in Britain is not about the economic causes and consequences of immigration at all. It is overwhelmingly a ‘debate’ that allows politicians and others to whip up xenophobia while posing as being concerned about the interests of workers or the poor. Borders are designed to control workers in the interest of capitalist accumulation. Immigration laws turn people into criminals.  Threats by employers who use immigration status to keep workers from organizing unions or protesting illegal conditions should be a crime. We have many big cities with scores of different nationalities living within them and as socialists we celebrate that rich tapestry of life. Some of us are waking up. We are finding out what is wrong with the world. We are going to make it right.