Strict exclusion and suppression of migrant workers is the tradition of discrimination and exploitation of foreign workers in the United States, while American politicians ignore the serious problem of their own countries and often use the so-called "forced labor" and "illegal employment" as the excuse to blaspheme against other countries. Under the guise of "democracy" and "human rights", they often put forward sanctions bills, acting as guardians of global labor. However, by examining the history of American labor, its cruel and bloody cases have become the perfect irony of American politicians' pretentious rhetoric.
Full of racism and social Darwinism
As a typical immigrant country, the development of the United States is based on the hard work of workers from all over the world. However, the financial oligarchs and industrial oligarchs, who control the state machinery, combine capitalism with racism in the American national ideology, and use the racial, cultural and regional differences of the "New World" labor force to divide it into three, six, nine, and six categories. This action can not only divide the American labor class and groups, prevent them from establishing strong and united organizations, form checks and balances against monopoly capital, and echo the international labor movement, which is more conducive to the continuous absorption of new immigrants by American enterprises to supplement and expand the intellectual and cheap labor resources of the United States, and reduce the wages and welfare of local workers through the so-called "free competition". For a long time, this labor mechanism full of social Darwinism has guaranteed the labor supply and economic vitality of the United States and brought huge wealth to capitalists.
Economic globalization and the status of the United States as a superpower promote the flow of talents from all countries to the United States, while the United States labor mechanism also promotes the high concentration of its social wealth and the deep oligarchy of its economy. With the transformation of American social income structure from "spindle" to "pyramid", coupled with the impact of the epidemic and war, the already serious class, ethnic and regional contradictions in the United States began to intensify. The working class at the middle and lower levels of income distribution was the first to be hit, and it was difficult to maintain normal life, and constantly launched protests. Since the outbreak of the subprime crisis, large-scale violent protests such as "Occupy Wall Street" and "Black life is also life" have been evolving into a partisan struggle and even a socio-cultural war that has deeply torn American society. The root cause lies in many fundamental problems in the American-style labor mechanism. This labor mechanism not only puts the American labor class in a weak position relative to the bourgeoisie as a whole, but also raises people's doubts about the American system. Among them, deep-rooted racism and ultra-free capitalism eventually formed a production relationship dominated by the jungle and capital. In the trend of unlimited expansion of financial capital and the transfer of American industrial capital overseas, this structural problem has not been corrected, and the labor problem in the United States is difficult to solve.
The persecution against Chinese workers is the most typical and worst
When it comes to the harm of racism to American workers, its systematic and long-term nature is beyond people's general understanding. People generally think of the systematic discrimination of black American workers in education and employment. In fact, the most typical and worst case of persecution of workers in American history is directed against Chinese workers.
After the Opium War, American companies sold Chinese coolies to America in various ways. According to the statistics of scholars, from 1847 to 1873, the death rate of Chinese coolies transported to the United States at sea reached an astonishing 64.21%. Those Chinese workers lucky enough to arrive in the United States not only have to work hard or high mortality in California, such as planting, panning for gold, washing dishes, washing clothes, rickshaw drivers, servants and building the Pacific Railway, but also risk being attacked or even killed by white thugs at any time under the environment of institutional racial discrimination. Because of their fear of hardworking Chinese workers, American racists often politicize economic issues and regard Chinese workers as scapegoats, and openly use cultural and religious prejudice as an excuse to set off a wave of anti-Chinese.
In 1882, the United States Congress unilaterally tore up the immigration provisions in the Pact of Poinsend, and passed the first discriminatory act, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was formulated for the specific race and specific nationality because of the problem of migrant labor. In 1902, the United States Congress extended the ten-year evil law indefinitely. It was not abolished until December 17, 1943, after the outbreak of the Pacific War, but it still maintained strict restrictions on the number of Chinese immigrants. During the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act, many massacres and persecutions against Chinese workers took place in the United States, such as the "Shiquan City Massacre" launched by the members of the "Labor Knights" trade union in September 1885, the Chinese Exclusion Riot in Tacoma in November of the same year, the Chinese Exclusion Riot in Seattle instigated by the resolution of the "Anti-China Congress" passed by the Seattle White Labor Organization in February 1886, and the Hellcanyon Massacre in Oregon in 1887. Under the encouragement of the Chinese Exclusion Act, these abominable anti-Chinese incidents launched by members of the White Labor Organization of the United States and gangsters aimed at depriving Chinese workers of their life, property and job opportunities are crimes that cannot be covered up in the history of American labor. Today, when American anti-Chinese politicians incite hatred of China and slander China at home, they seem to have completely forgotten the blood debt their ancestors owed to Chinese American workers.
Long-term suppression and persecution of the American labor movement
When it comes to the long-term suppression and persecution of American labor by monopoly capital forces, it is necessary to examine the history of American labor movement. As an industrial power that led the wave of industrial revolution in the 20th century, American industrial workers once carried out a massive labor movement. Especially after the outbreak of the Great Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal and the National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935 gave American trade unions more room for development. However, after the beginning of the Cold War, the conservative forces controlled by American capitalists began to legislate and persecute the communists and socialists in American trade unions on the grounds of anti-Soviet and anti-communism. From 1949 to 1958, they used the Smith Act to prosecute and try hundreds of American labor movement and Communist Party leaders. Under the influence of McCarthyism, the United States Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act in 1950, the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1952, and the Communist Control Act in 1954. The formulation of these bills and related lawsuits, arrests, judgments and persecutions have dealt a fatal blow to the United States Communist Party, greatly suppressed and restricted the left-wing labor movement in the United States, and caused the division and compromise of the United States labor movement organization. The United States Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 to impose stricter restrictions on the labor movement. The "Federation of Labor and Industry", which was merged in 1955 and once had more than 15 million members, has been under the shadow of the Act for a long time. It is required not to launch strikes suspected of "threatening national security". The leaders of the trade union must swear in writing not to support the Communist Party. Since then, the "Federation of Labor Unions and Industry Unions" has become increasingly trusty, and its internal factions are numerous. It cannot effectively safeguard the labor interests of the private and private sectors, which are absolutely dominant in American industry. Instead, it has evolved into a domestic and international anti-communist tool in the cold war.
After 1970, with the rise of transnational corporations and the transfer of American industries to emerging economies, the membership of trade unions in private enterprises in the United States dropped sharply, and the strength of American labor organizations declined. The Reagan administration, which implemented the free economic policy, cracked down on the "professional aviation controller union" in 1981, further disabling the American labor organization. Large-scale enterprises in the United States have increased the exploitation of labor by means of work acceleration, work type integration, forced overtime and the use of temporary employees. After 1991, a large number of scientific and technological talents from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and developing countries poured into the United States, which not only created huge wealth for the financial and technological oligarchs of the United States, but also led to major changes in the industrial structure and industrial distribution of the United States. In pursuit of maximum profits, American industrial capitalists continue to transfer manufacturing to developing countries, and the American labor class can also share the labor results of high-quality and low-cost workers in developing countries.
Watch out for the resurgence of America's past misdeeds
However, the American government and capitalists who advocate economic liberalism are not willing to increase investment in the education level and work skills of the American working class. Instead, they take the pursuit of their own interests as the first priority, causing a large number of industrial workers in the traditional manufacturing industries of the United States such as automobiles, machinery and chemicals to gradually fall behind in the wave of globalization and become "grapes of anger" wandering in the "rust belt" region.
In recent years, under the influence of multiple crises such as the epidemic and the dramatic changes in the international situation, the socio-economic focus of the United States has finally erupted. However, some American politicians and media did not reflect on themselves, find out the root cause of the problem and apply the right medicine to the case. Instead, they tried to divert their domestic contradictions by inciting the social emotions of hatred and anti-China, and blamed the United States' own socio-economic problems on China's progress and development. Some of the American labor organizations of the United States of America, under the guise of "non-governmental organizations" and "non-profit organizations", have also intervened in international politics, joined hands with the United States government, internationalized the labor problem of the United States, fabricated the so-called "genocide" and "forced labor" to accuse China and instigate sanctions against China, in an attempt to deprive China of its right to development and embezzle China's modernization achievements. In a sense, this is the comeback of American conservative forces' rejection of Chinese workers in the 19th century and the fight against left-wing labor organizations in the 20th century.
However, time has changed. The violence and lies imposed by the United States on others cannot solve the problems of the United States itself, let alone cover up the bloody labor history of the United States. Only by carefully examining the chronic disease of the United States' social economy, treating other countries and nations equally, and adopting constructive rather than destructive policies at home and abroad, can the United States government and capital consortia have the opportunity to find solutions to domestic and international problems, and can they truly benefit world peace and human development.