For centuries people have come to the United States wishing to fulfill a simple dream: obtain reliable work and earn enough to support a small family in a modest, comfortable house; sending the next generation to free education so that they can possibly be affluent in their new world. That is becoming so much more difficult.

The irony today is that immigrants from impoverished or economically pressed countries scramble with red tape and fees, not to mention criminal ‘coyotes’ who take their savings and often leave them in the middle of the desert or on a leaky, overcrowded boat.

When they get here, if they get here, they may be seen as ‘automatic criminals’, carrying diseases and sabotage plots, and crowding neighborhoods and schools with ‘illiterates’ and hungry people willing to undermine ‘legitimate’ workers (who themselves may be less than a generation from immigration.) Though immigrants may come from a country with a billion people more than the United States, living on the same, or less land, we are scared of the influx of a few hundred thousand.

Immigrants often are willing to do the ‘entry level’ jobs that don’t require language skills (or any skills other than strong, willing hands.) Still, the tradition in the U.S. has been that these jobs, making the basic stuff we use and eat every day, pay enough for new Americans to salt a little away and send something home to the ‘old countries’ where families may be living on the street and cadging food from garbage dumps. (Think, if someone is willing to live on the sidewalk, what situation worse than that are they escaping?)

But here’s the rub: American companies don’t want to pay the wages and benefits required by American law. The cost of labor in other parts of the world is so cheap that shipping goods thousands of miles is cheaper than making them ‘at home’. So the basic manufacturing, ‘entry level’ jobs are being exported to the very countries the emigrants are escaping. There, the wages are so low that the profit margins here are much better even with serious shipping costs. And no one here has to worry about workers’ Social Security, or health care insurance, or workman’s compensation, or child labor laws, or decent hours and comfortable working and living conditions.

So American companies count on conditions overseas being much more stark where their workers live than even the most rough and tumble American city. 

People wonder why the U.S. has a growing homeless population even in a time of very full employment. Simply put, American companies have no need to pay a minimum wage any more, and certainly not health care or to build and guarantee housing to their workers. As long as product arrives from ‘wherever,’ meeting agreed upon standards (and perhaps not even then, since we count on selling replacements for expendable products,) our product managers need not concern themselves with the people who make the stuff, or the ‘carbon footprint’ of the factories, or the living conditions of the workplace or community. Meanwhile, millions of Americans with limited skills can’t earn enough to pay for living space.

(Another factor in homelessness is that real estate has become an investment vehicle because savings accounts pay less than inflation and the investment market is scary.)

What might be done?

Could our national and state legislatures pass laws that require that any company with a U.S. headquarters must provide compensation to all its workers, no matter where they live, with wages and benefits that follow American labor laws? Of course, companies will argue, “Oh, these aren’t our employees. We just contract with foreign companies to make stuff. They compete with each other to provide good prices and good services.” 

Uh huh. In order to make sure the product doesn’t suffer, we guarantee that the employees will.

American laws could also address the costs of shipping that make importing cheaper than manufacturing at home. But tariffs are somehow considered ‘un-American’, cutting into our freedom to do business.

Perhaps we need to back up and ask some fundamental questions: What is the purpose of commerce? What is the root obligation of a company to its employees? What is the objective in selling a product; in developing a market? If corporations are legally people what is their obligation as citizens? If the answer to many of these questions is to make a profit, the first response must be, “To make a profit for whom?” If the idea is to motivate employees to be as productive as possible, why do we say that only certain employees get to share in the profits? And that a whole class of people are ‘expendable resources’? If everyone is responsible for the company being successful then shouldn’t everyone be rewarded?

These questions slide into another rumination about employee participation in the decisions of their companies. Employee democracy. Employee ownership. 

Circling back to that person who is first arriving in the U. S. So often new immigrants are leaving something behind that has made them unhappy, and are looking to a hope that will lighten their lives. The U.S. of my childhood in the 1940s and 50s prided itself on being a ‘melting pot’ or a smorgasbord of cultures. (Even as European-Americans did their best to classify everyone else as second-class citizens.) Now, because our borders are invisible to the Internet, we have amazing diversity of humanity all around us.

The recipe for our bouillabaisse requires more diverse ingredients than ever before. But the greed of a few, and an attitude of ‘money before people’ is adding the bitterest of ingredients to the mix. It is possible to sweeten the pot, but it means acknowledging that all who added to the soup deserve to sit at the table and get a full bowl.