Workers Without Borders (New York Times)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/opinion/10gordon.html?ref=opinion

March 9, 2009
By Jennifer Gordon (opinion piece)

So today we have two opinion pieces on temporary foreign workers - one in the US, one in Canada.

For the US, Gordon suggests something she calls "Transnational Labor Citizenship" or a transnational union. This would give temp. foreign workers fair working conditions, which she claims would both allow for greater remittances and "address the inconsistency and inhumanity of policies that support free trade in goods and jobs but bar the free movement of people." I guess this is a compromise in her view (if you don't give people US citizenship/rights, at least give them fair working conditions) which she compares to the EU (When Poland joined the EU, Britain predicted 50,000 migrants in four years; instead, more than a million arrived. However, "the influx did not take a serious toll on native workers’ wages or employment...Migrants who were not trapped in exploitative jobs flocked to areas that needed workers and shunned the intense competition of big cities. And when job opportunities grew in Poland or shrank in Britain, fully half went home again.")

But Poland <--> England migration within the EU - where a migrant has the option/possibility of settling permanently - is very different than Mexico <--> US migration where (legal) permanence is often not the case. Still, interesting idea.

She finishes with this:

"Like it or not, until we address the vast inequalities across the globe, those who want to migrate will find a way...The United States needs an open and fair system, not a holding pen. The best way forward is to create an immigration system with protection for all workers at its core."

And thus, working immigrants (that's labor, not people) remains at the core of immigration.

(By the way, on the topic of remittances, this is a great NY Times article.)