David Bacon's Illegal People

David Bacon has three primary arguments in his book, Illegal People. The first point is that illegal immigrants’ are exploited on their vulnerability from lack of legal status. Particularly when they try to form unions, both employers and government use the threat of deportation to discourage organized labor. The second argument suggests that the economy and previous policies have created illegal immigration and made countries dependent on this workforce. The third argument ties illegal immigration in with globalization. Bacon proposes that when skilled citizens migrate, the illegal immigrant and their home country both reap negative consequences, while the employing country gains unfair benefits. Illegal People shows how the economy displaces …show more content…
They then begin to organize unions to rally for their rights. They demand things such as living wages, safe working conditions and morally-just treatment; characteristics that the majority of their illegal jobs do not provide. When employers notice these workers vocalizing their opinions “they view them as workers, not humans” (Bacon, 2). Employers use illegal workers’ illegality to eliminate their power and thus restrict their basic rights. The IMAGE was a historical program that shows this process. It was “designed to build cooperative relationships between government and businesses to strengthen hiring practices and reduce the unlawful hiring of illegal aliens” (Bacon, 16). The program checked all employees’ social security numbers in a database to verify if the numbers, and thus legality of workers, were valid. After the database check, employers sent out letters to those whose numbers did not match. After letters were sent out, employers and the government would coordinate raids to deport illegal immigrants. Their aim was to stop the organization of unions by illegal workers though a fear tactic, by scaring and threatening the illegal immigrants. The elimination of unions would ensure that employers would not have to improve the working conditions they provided. This specific process was mirrored by many more to come, such as Operation Vanguard (Bacon, 134). Illegal labor …show more content…
This is when “developing countries use scarce resources to give people needed skills and then those skills are lost forever as the (citizen) ends up working in different countries” (Bacon, 239). This creates a brain drain and results in an unprofitable investment for the country. Many of these workers are either nurses or engineers and come to America with hopes of finding higher wages and better opportunities. Unfortunately, many cases result in a ‘Brain Waste’. Once in America, the illegal immigrants work in poor conditions with low paying wages because American employees exploit their illegalness. In essence, American benefits from the migration, but the worker and their home country would both be better off staying in the country of