Robert D.

Skeels
Professor Javier Lopez-Perez, Esq.
U.S. Immigration Law
May 1, 2016

Lesser Evil? The Democrats and immigration policy in the era of neoliberalism
During a 2014 interview with a high-profle politician, journalist Christiane
Amanpour posed the question of what to do about thousands of undocumented,
unaccompanied minors. Unwilling to answer the question, the politician dissembled.
Amanpour persisted, and asked point-blank should they be sent back? The
politicians nativism-laden response was breathtaking, considering that they were
discussing refugee children likely qualifying for asylum:
But we have so to send a clear message, just because your child gets across
the border, that doesnt mean the child gets to stay. So, we dont want to
send a message that is contrary to our laws1
This callous statement may seem the domain of reactionary Republicans. Instead
it was made by the Democratic Partys 2016 presidential race front runner, Hillary
Clinton, whose rhetoric on immigration is frequently infammatory. While Democrats
have traditionally enjoyed support of immigrant rights groups and leadership of those
groups, their record on immigration issues is dismal. Additionally, much of the worst
modern immigration policies and enforcement have occurred side by side with the rise
of neoliberalism. Here we will examine some of the key Democrats, and their roles in
1 (Clinton, 2014)

R.D. Skeels 2
imposing draconian immigration enforcement. We will also explore how the demands
of neoliberalism drive both harsher and exploitative immigration policies, and
exacerbate the necessity of peoples to migrate.

Contours of neoliberalism shape modern immigration policy

Taking neoliberalism as the modern term describing the Washington Consensus
policies of deregulation, austerity, and privatization we have the framework in which
to discuss immigration policy for the past several decades. 2 While author Chris
Lehmann identifes Jimmy Carter as the frst President to adopt neoliberal economic
policies, this survey will not go back that far.3 Moreover, despite neoliberalism being a
bipartisan project, our focus is on the Democrats. Border barrier walls, so-called free
trade agreements, work visa quotas, detention centers, and other such issues
surrounding immigration are all interrelated with, and driven by, neoliberal policy.
Much immigration itself is driven by neoliberalism, as Justin Akers Chacn writes:
Modern immigration is motivated by the same human desires for
sustenance, exacerbated by the destabilizing effects of global capitalism,
although the debate is often nationalized by immigration opponents to
deprive it of this essential context. Corporate capitalism, also called
neoliberalism by its detractors, dictates that state policy decisions favor
proftability over social sustainabilitythe interests of corporations and
investors over those of workers, indigenous peoples, the worlds poor,
and the environment.4
2 (Skeels, 2015)
3 (Lehmann, 2014)
4 (Akers Chacn 89)

R.D. Skeels 3
We will return to the relationship between neoliberalism and modern
immigration policies, but frst we will examine policies in action as practiced by
Democratic politicians who champion neoliberal ideology. Our narrative begins with
1994, a year when deaths from immigration strategies with names like Operation
Gatekeeper, Operation Safeguard, [and] Operation Blockade began to skyrocket. 5

Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton became President on the heels of attempts to stem immigration from
Mexico through strategies including the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). 6
Ever the opportunist, the new President seized the issue. Corey Robin identifes Clinton
as one of the more signifcant, early Democratic politicians espousing neoliberalism,
and Clintons right-of-center leanings were clearly on parade with his aggressive antiimmigrant policies.7 Akers Chacn minces no words discussing this period:
[I]t was the Clinton administration that led the charge from Washington.
As previously discussed, Clintons Operation Gatekeeper was the most
formidable ant-immigrant undertaking ever by the federal government,
and is directly responsible for the deaths of over four thousand migrant
workers in the last eleven years. Clinton also presided over the passage of
the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act 8
The rest of the Akers Chacns passage cites the expansion of criminal law changes,

5
6
7
8

(Hing, Defning America 2)

(Ibid. 155)
(Robin, 2016)
(Akers Chacn 231)

R.D. Skeels 4
harsher sentences, and increased causes for removability. 9 Bill Ong Hing discusses the
early administration: [A] year after President Bill Clinton took offce, the Board Patrol
embarked on a strategy of control through deterrence that has proven deadly. 10
Laying out the history of how Operation Gatekeeper came into being, Hing details how
the focus of the efforts was to prevent crossing in high-visibility areas of San Diego,
with some 52 miles of fencing stretching from Imperial Beach to the Otay Mountains.
This forced migrants to attempt crossing in signifcantly more dangerous regions. More
odious is that guidance for many of these efforts came from The Department of
Defenses Center for Low Intensity Confictsin essence, Clinton was waging war on
defenseless migrants.11
Today the Clintons try to downplay the militarism and sheer aggressiveness of
their deterrence strategies, but as Adriana Maestas writes, [d]uring his re-election
campaign against Senator Bob Dole, the Clinton campaign even ran an ad highlighting
the harsh immigration laws of his administration. 12 The human toll of Clintons policies
cannot be overstated. Hing, after demonstrating that these policies did not reduce the
number of undocumented persons entering, makes the following statement before
discussing the number of mortalities:
Certainly, southwest border control always had an evil, racist dark side,
with its targeting of Mexican migration during a thirty-year period when
Mexican made up far less than half the undocumented population in the
United States. However, the tragedy of Gatekeeper is the direct link of its
9 The modern immigration term (read euphemism) removable replaces the older term deportable
for purposes of immigration law.
10 (Hing, Defning America 184)
11 (Hing, Defning America 187188)
12 (Maestas, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 5
prevention through deterrence strategy to an absolutely horrendous rise
in the number of deaths among border-crossers who were forced to
attempt entry over terrain that even the INS knew to present mortal
dangers due to extreme weather conditions and rugged terrain.13
Hing, whose watershed book is now over a decade old, wrote: The number of
migrant deaths increased 600 times from 1994 to 2000; a number that could be
attributed to Operation Gatekeeper14 Maestas, citing a 2014 source, states: Since
Operation Gatekeeper was implemented, it is estimated that over 6,600 migrants have
died on the US side of the southern border, and the remains of another 1,000 migrants
have been unidentifed.15
Clintons border policies were only one facet of his administrations neoliberal
approach to immigration. The previously mentioned Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA), were coupled with Clintons austerity measures like the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) to make
the precarious life of undocumented peoples even more diffcult than before. Opal
Tometi writes on the former two acts: As a result of these laws, millions of immigrants
have been victims of fast-track deportations and unjust, arbitrary detention; families
and communities have been torn apart; and entire generations of immigrants have been
criminalized, while Michelle Alexander writes on the latter: barred undocumented
immigrants from licensed professions.16 17 Taken together these types of policies had a
13
14
15
16
17

(Hing, Defning America 190)

(Ibid. 205)
(Maestas, 2016)
(Tometi, 2016)
(Alexander, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 6
tendency to disproportionately punish the poorest of undocumented immigrants, and
opened the door to further racial profling of peoples, who, as Hing says, are regarded
as outside the construction of real Americans by many in the mainstream. 18 This last
aspect has had lasting consequences as Maestas explains:
The 287(g) program empowered local law enforcement offcials like
Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona to engage in racial profling and to allow
local law enforcement agencies to check the immigration status of anyone
booked into jail.19
Clintons dubious immigration legacy would be built on by his successors from
both political parties. Many of his policies, particularly the border enforcement and
criminalization focused ones, are still in force today. During the two terms of the
Republican administration that followed Clinton there was an explosion of immigrant
rights marches, including the largest in historyMarch 25, 2006 in Los Angeles, in
response the racist Sensenbrenner-King Bill (HR 4437) which would have provided $2.2
billion for more border fences, and would not only make undocumented migration a
felony, it would criminalize the very act of associating with undocumented
immigrants.20 21 Fortunately the bill never passed, and despite many efforts at similar
legislation, including those calling for highly exploitative guest-worker programs, the
status of the Clinton laws stayed essentially the same. The election of a Democrat in
2008 saw many immigrant rights groups hopeful for change. The fact that the new

18 (Hing, Defning America 115)

19 (Maestas, 2016)
20 The author participated in nearly all of the major Los Angeles immigrant rights activities at the time,
including the March 25th action, as member of several groups. He would later become one of the
founding members of the Southern California Immigration Coalition (SCIC), which was created by
prominent organizers Professor Jesse Daz, Carlos Montes, and Gloria Saucedo.
21 (Akers Chacn 203)

R.D. Skeels 7
President was African-American caused many to think that he would be far more
sympathetic to the plight of undocumented peoples than his predecessors. These hopes,
it would turn out, were misplaced.

Barack Obama
Many assumed that as a person of color, President Barack Obama would be more
sensitive than his counterparts to the racism underlying U.S. immigration policies.
Lance Selfa details how Obama played on those expectation while running for offce in
2008 by assuring National Council of La Raza (NCLR): I will be a president who will
stand with you, who will fght for you22 What NCLR witnessed Obama do over the
next six years saw their leadership taking a bold step. While immigrant rights groups,
particularly those comprising the Non-Proft Industrial Complex, have been
traditionally afraid to criticize sitting Democratic Presidents, Obamas propensity for
deportations saw NCLR President and CEO Janet Murgua speak out against him
during their 2014 awards event:23
For us, this president has been the deporter-in-chief.
Any day now, this Administration will reach the two million mark for
deportations. It is a staggering number that far outstrips any of his
predecessors and leaves behind it a wake of devastation for families across
America.
Many groups, including NCLR, have long been calling on the
president to mitigate the damage of these record deportations. 24
22 (Selfa 112)
23 For more on this phrase see: Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (ed.). The Revolution Will Not Be
Funded: Beyond the Non-Proft Industrial Complex. Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 2007. Print.
24 (Murgua, 2014)

R.D. Skeels 8
Obama earned his deporter-in-chief epithet by building on Clintons
aggressive enforcement apparatus, while simultaneously expanding George W. Bushs
surveillance state, and using this potent combination against immigrants on a scale
never before seen. Selfa discusses some of the administrations policies, during the frst
term alone:
Under the Department of Homeland Securitys Secure Communities
program, local police agencies forward the fngerprints of all apprehended
people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The government
then orders the deportation of any undocumented arrestees with criminal
records. In 2010, the Obama administration increased these removals by
71 percent over Bushs fnal year in offce. Under Obama, the number of
local agencies participating in Secure Communities has skyrocketed from
fourteen to more than 1,300. In August 2010 Obama signed a six-hundredmillion-dollar border security bill that includes adding 1,500 more
Border Patrol agents, customs inspectors, and other law enforcement
offcers at the border, as well as unmanned aerial drones. By September
2011, the Obama administration had deported more than one million
undocumented people, compare to the 1.57 million the Bush
administration deported in its full eight-year term.25
While the overall fgures wont be available until Obamas second term ends, the
record numbers of removals and returns cited above can be augmented with more
recent fgures. According to The Washington Posts Philip Bump Under Obama, the
number of deportations through 2014 hit a new high while the number of returns is
25 (Selfa 113)

R.D. Skeels 9
lower than at any point since the Ford administration.26 Obama has already exceeded
the two million deportation mark that NCLRs Murgua expressed consternation over,
and continues to pad that number as his administration winds down its last year.
Selfas mention of the Secure Communities program warrants discussion of
another prominent Democratic politician who served as Obamas Secretary of
Homeland Security, namely Janet Napolitano. Likely chosen for the post because of her
hardline stance on immigration evidenced while she was Governor of Arizona,
Napolitano played a key role all of Obamas draconian enforcement programs, and
oversaw the deportations during Obamas frst term. She was rewarded with the
University of California (UC) Presidency in 2013, despite having no background in
education whatsoever.27 Old habits seemingly die hard as Napolitanos UC tenure has
been marred by many anti-immigrant incidents. A recent protest against the
controversial fgure was chronicled in The Daily Bruin: UCLA students protested
against cuts in funding for undocumented student resources and demanded University
of California President Janet Napolitanos resignation as she left a forum at the UCLA
School of Law. One of the students interviewed, Cristian De Nova, had a cogent point:
As the former Secretary of Homeland Security, Napolitanos involvement in programs
that resulted in deportations compromise her ability to represent undocumented
students.28
Even the Obama cheerleaders at the New York Times have been critical of his
immigration policies. They wrote in regards to how the administration has been so
obtuse toward offering protections to those most deserving of asylum:
26 (Bump, 2015)
27 It is with a profound sense of shame that the author discloses that Napolitanos signature appears on
their UCLA diploma, as they were awarded a B.A. on March 21, 2014.
28 (Pauker, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 10
Instead, it offered Operation Border Guardian, a grossly misnamed
immigration-enforcement surge that went after people this country did
not need to guard against. It began in January and lasted a month, but its
damage is still being felt. Among its tens of thousands of targets were
more than 300 recent migrants from Central America, youths who crossed
the border without their parents and turned 18 in the United States, thus
losing some of the protections granted to unaccompanied minors. After
they lost their cases to win asylum or other protection and were ordered
deported by immigration courts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
hunted them down.29
As abject as the Obama administration has been on immigration, this last issue is very
much of interest since many of the children seeking asylum are escaping countries that
were destabilized by Obamas U.S. Department of State. This brings us full circle to the
Democrat whose infamous quote heads this essaySecretary of State Clinton.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Clintons long career, and multiple roles in government have afforded her opportunities
to affect immigration policy as few others. As such, it is diffcult to discuss her impact
without a degree of overlap between her roles as First Lady, U.S. Senator, Presidential
candidate (twice), and Secretary of State. Moreover, a thorough treatment of all these
issues would exceed the scope of this essay. In addition to exploring her positions and
policy advocacy, we need to consider her role in facilitating many of the political
disasters that have created the humanitarian crises leading to the mass infux of
29 (Times Editorial Board, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 11
unaccompanied minor aliens.
Clintons Liberal supporters frequently chafe against associating her with her
husbands policies, but as Alexander writes But Hillary wasnt picking out china while
she was frst lady. She bravely broke the mold and redefned that job in ways no
woman ever had before. She not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and
signifcant infuence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures. 30
Indeed, if Hillary Clinton didnt fully support Bill Clintons immigration policies, she
has had over two decades to demonstrate it one way or another. Rather, her own votes,
actions, and policy advocacy indicate that she is even further to the right on
immigration than most Democrats. Maestas outlines some fairly common Clinton votes
and positions:
As a senator, Hillary Clinton voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which
began construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border. In November
while campaigning in New Hampshire, Clinton said, I voted numerous
times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to
prevent illegal immigrants from coming in, and I do think that you have
to control your borders
In 2007, Senator Clinton supported then-Governor Eliot Spitzers (New
York) decision to withdraw his plan to give drivers licenses to
undocumented immigrants. She then went further, saying that as
president she would not support drivers licenses for undocumented
people.31
30 (Alexander, 2016)
31 (Maestas, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 12
While Clinton frequently modulates her rhetorical positions, it is more than she
is generally to the right of most of her fellow Democrats. Instead, she is often to the
right of many Republicans on immigration issues. Exemplary is this 2004 newspaper
passage: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is staking out a position on illegal immigration
that is more conservative than President Bush.32 This was not a fuke, the selfproclaimed Goldwater Girl has consistently held herself out as being tougher than
Republicans on immigration and has crafted a message that essentially tars all
immigrants as being possible terrorists. Consider the latter part of this passage: In an
interview on WABC radio, she said, I am, you know, adamantly against illegal
immigrants, and in an interview on Fox News she accused Bush of not doing enough to
protect our borders and ports.33 Akers Chacn rightly identifes this strategyone
that Clinton has mastered: the Democratic Party has not only made winning the war
on terrorism its clarion call, but it is also responsible for helping to shift the debate to
the border.34 The unparalleled nexus of domestic law enforcement, barriers, increased
border patrol, and so-called Homeland Security bound by policies including Secure
Communities is something that Clinton has advocated for during her career. Maestas
deftly sums this up: Democrats like the Clintons have championed get tough policies
that have bolstered bureaucracies and enterprises (private prisons) who have an
incentive to maintain the status quo.35
Clintons tenure as Secretary of State placed her in a unique position where her
involvement with the affairs of other statesfrequently in Latin Americafound her
playing a role in creating humanitarian crises that led to infuxes of undocumented
32
33
34
35

(Washington Times, 2004)

(Akers Chacn 232)
(Ibid.)
(Maestas, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 13
peoples. The Amanpour question regarding undocumented, unaccompanied minors is
particularly distressing when one considers what Hing writes:
Honduras, where the largest numbers of unaccompanied minors are
coming from, has become one of the most dangerous countries in the
world. In 2011, Honduras became the country with the highest murder
rate in the world. Homicide rates in El Salvador are only marginally lower
than in Honduras, with 66 individuals killed for every 10,000
inhabitants.36
The reason Honduras is as dangerous as Hing frames it is because of the 2009 coup
dtat that occurred with material support from Clintons State Department. Clinton
would then aid and abet the golpistas in consolidating power via a sham election. 37
Clinton now denies her critical role in coup, to the extent that she has had a tacit
admission of support for it removed from the paperback version of her memoirs, and
recently dissembled about it in an interview with Democracy Nows Juan Gonzales. Dana
Frank, listening to that interview, excoriated Clinton on her revisionism:
I just want to say this is like breathtaking that shed say these things. I
think were all kind of reeling that she would both defend the coup and
defend her own role in supporting its stabilization in the aftermath. I
mean, frst of all, the fact that she says that they did it legally, that the
Honduras judiciary and Congress did this legally, is like, oh, my god, just
mind-boggling. The fact that she then is going to say that it was not an
unconstitutional coup is incredible, when she actually had a cable, that we
36 (Hing,Playing Politics 2014)
37 Golpistas: coup makers.

R.D. Skeels 14
have in the WikiLeaks, in which U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo
Llorens says it was very clearly an illegal and unconstitutional coup. So
she knows this from day one. She even admits in her own statement that it
was the Honduran military, that she says, well, this was the only thing
that was wrong there, that it was the military that took Zelaya out of the
country, as opposed to somehow that it was an illegal thing we didthat
the Honduran government did, deposing a president. 38
The resulting chaos of the coup, which led to an, as Frank says, almost complete
destruction of the rule of law in Honduras, is a major factor in the infux of
undocumented children.39 Hing provides additional evidence of why so many
unaccompanied minor refugees fee: 920 Honduran children were murdered between
January and March of 2012.40 He then discusses how many Latin American refugee
children fall victim to human and drug traffcking rings, and lastly summarizes the
fndings of a Immigrant Legal Resource Center of immigrant survey:
Twenty-fve percent of respondents found that youth come to the U.S.
based on a combination of four factors: neglect, abuse, or abandonment,
gang violence, drug violence, and poverty. This was followed by 19
percent feeing gang violence and 16 percent feeing poverty. In particular,
many respondents found that these cases involved youth who faced gang
recruitment and threats in their home country.41
While Honduras is not the only country Clinton played a role intervening in, it

38
39
40
41

(Frank, 2016)
(Ibid.)
(Hing,Playing Politics 2014)
(Ibid.)

R.D. Skeels 15
serves as the one most indicative of her hypocrisy in stating these immigrant children
should be sent back.42 Hing asserts Some of the youth may qualify for special
immigrant juvenile status, asylum or visas for victims of crime. 43 Indeed, these
unaccompanied minors seemingly meet the four elements for granting asylum under
U.S. Immigration Law. They have a well founded fear of persecution; based on past
persecution or risk of persecution in the future; because of membership in a particular
social group; and the persecution is by the government or a group that the government
is unwilling or unable to control. While Ms. Clinton bemoans sending a message that
is contrary to our laws, perhaps she should be more concerned with our government
following those laws instead.44 At any rate, unaccompanied minors require our
protection and assistance, not detention in for-proft prisons while awaiting removal.

Neoliberalism and Immigration

This brief survey of key Democrats and their impact on immigration policy would be
incomplete without exploring some of the reasons why these neoliberal policies are
favored. Neoliberalism requires the state, among other things, to privatize services once
in the domain of the public, to do away with any impediments to so-called free trade,
and to discipline labor in service to capital. Here we will examine three examples of
each, since a comprehensive survey of these topics would likely require an entire
volume.
Privatization is the watchword of neoliberal ideology. Only until recently,
immigrants being held while their status was being determined, or asylum seekers
42 For a comprehensive compendium of Clintons interventions see: Grandin, Greg. A Voters Guide to
Hillary Clintons Policies in Latin America. The Nation. 15 Apr. 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
43 (Hing,Playing Politics 2014)
44 (Clinton, 2014)

R.D. Skeels 16
unable to afford a bond while they awaiting hearing, were kept in facilities maintained
by the Board Patrol under the aegis of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). 45 That was
until corporations in the for-proft prison business saw opportunity in immigrant
detentions. With the explosion of deportations under Obama, coupled with the food of
immigrants created by former Secretary Clintons Latin American interventions, the
number of immigrants being detained while awaiting entry or exit has been staggering
and proftable. John Washington writes:
Execs from CCA, GEO Group and the other for-proft corporations
involved in family and immigration detention also get their cut. CCA
charges the government an estimated $296 dollars a day for each detained
woman or child, according to the New York Times. At a capacity of 2,400,
that will amount to over $250 million a year to lock up non-criminals:
Your tax dollars paying for months of child incarceration. 46
It is of no small consequence that corporations CCA and GEO mentioned in the
Washington piece above both contributed a combined amount of over $130,000 to
Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign and her "Im Ready for Hillary"
SuperPAC.47 Once more Clintons name is associated with horrifc consequences to
persons from Honduras. Washington chronicles one migrant mothers plight:
The conditions at another family detention center, in Karnes, Texas, drove
a 19-year-old woman to cut her wrists on June 4. She had a 4-year-old son
with her and wrote in a suicide note that the detention center was killing
me little by little and that she was treated worse than an animal. She
45 Formerly Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
46 (Washington, 2016)
47 (Hamilton, 2015)

R.D. Skeels 17
survived and, four days later, was deported to Honduras. 48
Privatizations proverbial partners in crime are free trade agreements. Unlike
workers, who must endure a great number of hurtles to even have a chance of crossing
the border with permission to work, transnational corporations rarely face many
restrictions relocating their operations other than occasional tariffs, and having to
follow a host countrys domestic laws. Corporations fnd that last part onerous, with
labor protections, environmental rules, and rules protecting local markets a barrier to
higher profts. Many of these restrictions had already been removed for U.S. frms
operating maquiladoras in Mexico under the Border Industrial Program (BIP) as early
1965.49 The net effect of the highly proftable BIP was hyper-exploitation of workers, and
wage depression on both sides of the border. In 1994 Bill Clinton signed the North
American Free Trade agreement, which saw virtually all protections for workers,
including agricultural workers and sustenance farmers, eschewed in favor of opening
exports to corporate interests.50 The loss of family farms, in many cases held for
generations, was one of the more egregious results, as David Bacon explains:
Corn imports also rose, from 2,014,000 tons to 10,330,000 tons from 1992 to
2008. US producers like Archer Daniels Midland, subsidized by US farm
bills, sold corn at artifcially low prices to gain control of the Mexican
market. Then small farmers in Oaxaca, Chiapas and southern Mexico
couldnt sell their crops at a price high enough to pay the cost of growing
them.51

48
49
50
51

(Washington, 2016)
(Akers Chacn 115)
(Ibid. 120)
(Bacon, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 18
Bacon further discusses how post NAFTA migration to the U.S. from Mexico
continually increased until it peaked in 2008, and adds: That too has been a beneft for
US employers, who have had access to an enormous pool of displaced people desperate
for work.52 This combination of trade agreements freeing capital from national
confnes, while simultaneously controlling the fow of workers via borders is easily seen
when viewing immigration through the lens of neoliberalism. It is no coincidence that
NAFTA and Operation Gatekeeper came into being the same year. Neither is it a
coincidence that Hilary Clintons most frequently discussed policy position during the
2016 Democratic primary elections has been her vacillating over the Trans-Pacifc
Partnership (TPP) free-trade agreement.
If offshoring jobs via free-trade agreements is one way of disciplining labor to
the demands of capital, then the politics behind H-1B visas for technology companies
represents another. Hing discusses capitals approach to ensuring no potential shortage
of highly skilled workers during the early Clinton administration:
A second solution to the prospect of a future workforce lacking essential
skillsone that was increasingly being viewed with enthusiasm by big
business interest and government powerbrokers alikewas immigration.
That is, the right kind of immigration. Leaders saw immigration of everlarger numbers of highly skilled immigrants as an immediate quick-fx to
a thorny situation.53
Much of the push for the H-1B work visa category originated with the Atari Democrats,
who recognized that they could accomplish several goals by using immigration in a
52 (Ibid.)
53 (Hing, Defning America 106)

R.D. Skeels 19
weaponized form against labor.54 The H-1B program enables employers to ensure that
there are always more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
workers available than needed, allowing them to depress prevailing wages and
maintain less than optimal working conditions. Ironically, these frms do this while
simultaneously claiming they have a shortage of workers to fll available positionsa
claim often echoed by the corporate media. In contrast to their narrative, the truth is
that there is a glut of qualifed workers. These frst two points from researcher Hal
Salzmans statement to Senate Committee on the Judiciary are refective of the actual
domestic STEM labor market:
(1) Overall, our colleges and universities graduate twice the number of
STEM graduates as fnd a job each year; that is, only about half of our
STEM graduates enter the STEM workforce; (2) Of the entire workforce,
only about a third of those with STEM degrees are employed in STEM
jobs.55
Later Salzman then uses the Atari Democrats free market logic against them:
If there were truly a tight labor market, with widespread, high demand
for IT workers, a free labor market would exhibit increasing wages []
The most rigorous study of the direct impact of H-1B workers was
conducted by three researchers with access to actual wage records of frms
(using confdential data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury). Their
fndings are striking:
H-1Bs substantially crowd out employment of other workers...has an
54 For the phrase Atari Democrats, and their role in advancing neoliberalism in general, see: Geismer,
Lily. Atari Democrats. Jacobin., Winter 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
55 (Salzman, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 20
insignifcant effect on patenting...[and] H-1Bs lead to lower average
employee wages while raising frm profts.56
Salzmans fndings coincide with many others, and the overall goal of using H-1B
in service to neoliberal aims has been framed thusly: The manufactured STEM crises
has from the onset been a means to drive down the salaries of those professionals who
often dont see themselves as being working class.57 More disconcerting is a Mother
Jones article discussing how H-1B are now called "outsourcing visas because they allow
technology frms to train workers so that they can return home and do the job for those
selfsame frms overseas at a lower wages.58 Technology frms hope to maintain this
status quo as evidenced by: In her 2016 campaign bid, Hillary Clinton has
strengthened these ties, surpassing candidates from both parties in individual
donations from employees at the ten highest-grossing companies in Silicon Valley 59

Beyond the Democrats

The demands of neoliberalism drive these and other immigration related policies in
service of corporate capital. The human toll of these market-oriented policies is diffcult
to fathom, but it is clear that physical borders harm workers regardless of which side
they fnd themselves on. That the Democratic Party has been enthusiastic supporters,
and, more to the point, extremely effective implementors of neoliberal policies is
testament to which class they serve. As such, Democrats should never be considered the
lesser evil on immigration issues. We need a party that prioritizes human need over
corporate greed, and advocates for the abolishment of borders.
56
57
58
59

(Ibid. Source footnotes omitted.)

(Skeels, 2013) The same piece contains numerous other studies and articles corroborating Salzman.
(Harkinson, 2013)
(Geismer, 2016)

R.D. Skeels 21
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