Another GR Chamber report on immigrant contributions to the economy means they love the profits their members make from cheap labor

On Tuesday, MLive posted an article entitled, ‘Our economy wouldn’t work without them.’ Report shows how immigrants contribute to Kent County. This headline is accurate, but not in the way that the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce sees it.

The US economy, thus the local economy is built on exploiting immigrant and migrant labor. However, this is not the content of a new report published by the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce and the American Immigration Council, Economic Impact Report of New Americans in Kent County.

This new report from that the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce co-authored has the following four findings, with GRIID responses to each:

• Immigrants are helping the county meet its labor force demands. In 2019, immigrants were 27.3 percent more likely to be of working age than their U.S.-born counterparts, allowing them to actively participate in the labor force and contribute to the economy as taxpayers and consumers. GRIID – This point is just stating the obvious, but with no qualifiers. It is true that immigrants are part of the labor force, but they are also disproportionately exploited, with wages that are at poverty levels. 
• Immigrants support the federal safety net. In 2021, they contributed $192.3 million to Social Security and $47.8 million to Medicare. GRIID – Again, the point here is true in terms of what immigrants paid into social security and Medicare, even though those who are undocumented are often unable to access these social benefits. According to Aviva Chomsky’s book, “They Take Our Jobs!”: and 20 Other Myths about Immigration, undocumented immigrants contribute billions of dollars annually to Social Security, yet they will never be able to access what they have contributed to.
• Immigrants are helping Kent County meet its rising labor needs in key industries. While making up 8.9 percent of the county’s overall population in 2019, immigrants represented 53.1 percent of agriculture workers, 15.3 percent of construction workers, and 14.8 percent of transportation and warehouse workers. GRIID – Again, just providing data is fairly meaningless, especially in this case, since agricultural workers and warehouse workers are some of the most exploited in the US. In fact, agricultural workers are one of only two labor sectors where businesses do not need to pay even a minimum wage. 
• Immigrants in Kent County help create or preserve local manufacturing jobs. Immigrants strengthened the local job market by allowing companies to keep jobs on U.S. soil, helping preserve or create 2,600 local manufacturing jobs that would have otherwise been eliminated or moved elsewhere by 2019. GRIID – The context of immigrants allowing companies to keep jobs in the US is primarily because they can pay immigrants less, since most new immigrants are not unionized. Just think about the recent scandal in Grand Rapids, where immigrant youth were being exploited by companies who were paying them poverty-level wages, as reported on by the New York Times. This type of exploitation is more common than is often reported in the news media, which is the main reason why many manufacturing companies will keep their operations in the US, since they can exploit workers with ease.

This same issue was the topic of discussion with the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce back in early July, which we reported on. In that post, we identified three reasons why the Chamber’s celebration of immigrant labor is superficial and often harmful. 

First, the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce and West Michigan Business leaders have a long track record of primarily endorsing and providing campaign contributions to GOP candidates at all levels of government. The Republican Party has rejected any and all aspects of Immigration Reform over the past several decades, even the mildest of immigration reforms. Not that the Democratic Party embraces any sort of immigration justice, but there have been several attempts since the Obama years to adopt some sort of Immigration Reform policies. (See the book, All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It, by Daniel Denvir.)

Second, the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), along with other such trade policies, have undermined workers and displaced small farmers in countries like Mexico, which has led to massive numbers of immigrants coming to the US. These trade policies have been fully endorsed by the US Chamber of Commerce and the regional ones, like the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce. I remember attending an event at San Chez in 1995, which was co-sponsored by the GR Chamber, and was all about how businesses can market their products in Mexico after NAFTA had been adopted in 1994. The GR Chamber spokesperson even wore a fucking sombrero during his welcoming remarks to the event attendees. 

Third, the GR Chamber of Commerce and many West Michigan businesses love immigrant workers, primarily because they are willing to work for low wages. There are literally tens of thousands of migrant workers (mostly of whom are immigrants) in West Michigan that make very little money for doing physically demanding work. Then there are all thousands more in West Michigan that work in the service sector – fast food industry, restaurants, janitorial, construction and hotel workers – all of which make low salaries. If the GR Chamber of Commerce and West Michigan Business leaders wanted to truly celebrate immigrant workers, they would pay people a living wage and be an outspoken advocate for people to earn no less than $25 an hour, regardless of the kind of work they do.

Since I wrote these reasons in July, I would like to add a fourth reason why I don’t trust the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce to really celebrate immigrant workers and their contribution to the economy. The fourth reason is simply this – the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce has been silent and arguably complicit in the anti-immigrant climate in West Michigan, since they have contributed significantly to GOP candidates and they have never spoken out against the state violence perpetrated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), even though there has been strong opposition to this violence for several decades as I noted in chapter 9 of my book, A People’s History of Grand Rapids. 

While the President of the GR Chamber of Commerce and the other West Michigan Business leaders talk a good game about US immigration policy, the need to fill the talent pool gap, and how much immigrants benefit the economy, what they really mean is that they are the ones who primarily benefit from immigrant labor in the current neoliberal capitalist economy.