An Injury to One is an Injury to All

Nice article today about immigration law and the workplace: Latinos walk out amid firings. After 50 workers were fired at the Tar Heel, NC Smithfield pork processing plant on the pretext of immigration violations, a large number of workers (mostly Latino) walked out in protest. But they'd been fighting for some time, so this was just another straw on the camel's back.

There couldn't be a more textbook example of how employers use immigration to divide workers, lower their wages, and intimidate them into being docile. The ability to marginalize any part of the working class allows wages and working conditions to be driven down for every member of the working class. And of course, in the face of blatant firings of union supporters, a company can simply claim that they are complying with federal law. Of course, when it doesn't suit them, they aren't worried about federal law at all – and the lack of enforcement allows that to be the case most of the time.