Immigration and American Unionism.

• Author: Eisenhauer, Joseph G.
• Position: Book Reviews

By Vernon M. Briggs, Jr.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. 213. $35.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paperback).

Long opposed to illegal immigration and at best neutral regarding lawful immigration, organized labor rather abruptly altered its traditional stance on these issues during the Clinton years. Recognizing that open borders are inevitable in a global economy and faced with declining membership among their traditional population bases, American unions began to recognize in immigrants a potential source of new members who could reinvigorate a stagnant labor movement. Consequently, the 1993 AFL-CIO convention lauded immigrants for their role in strengthening unions, the 1995 convention rejected anti-immigration arguments as scapegoating, and by the turn of the century the AFL-CIO had endorsed amnesty for illegal immigrants and the repeal of sanctions against their employers.

Cornell University Professor Vernon Briggs appears to have written Immigration and American Unionism as a response to this shift by the vanguard of the labor movement. It is essentially a well-written history of immigration interwoven with the history of American unions. The period from 1788 to 2000 is divided into six chronological episodes, each organized according to the same basic structure: the historical setting, the nature of the labor force and industrial employment, the type and level of immigration during the period, the relative status of unions, and the consequences of the era's events. The book provides some fascinating stories of immigration and clear explanations of immigration law; among the most interesting are the discussions of Chinese "coolie" labor in California, the "bracero" program by which Mexican farmworkers came to the United States, and the "Texas Proviso"--the provision in federal law by which employers could legally hire illegal immigrants (until its repeal in 1986). Similarly, a ll the familiar union histories are reviewed, including those of the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Homestead and Pullman strikes, and the formation of the AFL-CIO itself.

Of course, these histories are well known, and it does not appear to be Briggs's intent to cast the individual events in a new light. Rather, it is the justaposition of the immigration and union trends that forms the book's central theme. Briggs contends that "unions thrive (membership grows) when immigration is low or levels are contracting; unions falter...