Labor unions in the United States, since their early beginnings, have held various viewpoints on immigration. There were differences among the labor unions and occasionally opposition to contemporary majority opinions and public policies.
First half of 20th century
In the first half of the 20th century, the majority of labor unions within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) were strongly anti-immigration, looking to curtail immigration, causing the AFL itself to adopt restrictive policies and resolutions. The predominant viewpoint in the AFL in the early 20th century saw the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 as a model piece of legislation for restricting Asian immigration and favored its expansion to include Japanese and Korean immigrants. The AFL also favored the passage of a literacy test as a requirement for an immigrant's entry to the United States to reduce the number of unskilled and presumably-uneducated immigrants admitted into the country. After unemployment rose after the conclusion of World War I, the AFL made a renewed push for "a total suspension of immigration for a period of five years or longer." Although the legislation was less severe, the AFL supported the Immigration Act of 1924. While there were several notable exceptions, most labor unions within the AFL were allied with the position of the organization as a whole.
In the early part of the 20th century, restrictive policies towards immigration aligned the AFL with culturally-conservative, nativist groups, such as the American Defense Society. They were functionally one-sided coalitions since the groups by and large ideologically opposed labor unions and workers' rights to collective bargaining.
AFL arguments opposing immigration
The AFL, in the first half of the 20th century, pursued arguments to promote restricting immigration that were racist, economic, and political. Racist arguments often posited that immigrants were degrading the quality of life in the United States and unable to adapt to American society. Many of their arguments mirrored those of the eugenics movement of the time that certain races were genetically inferior to others and so were incapable of assimilating into the societies of the "higher" races. Generally, various unions within the AFL deemed three immigrant ‘races’ inferior: Southern and Eastern European, Asian, and Latino (often specifically Mexican). However, as Latino immigrants did not make up a significant portion of the population at the time, the AFL focused most vocally on limiting the immigration of the former two groups.
Economic arguments aimed at restrictive immigration policies posited that an increase in the supply of labor tilted the balance toward employers, who could use cheaper immigrant labor as strikebreakers. That would limit the effectiveness of labor unions to bargain, thereby reducing the wages and working conditions of American workers. Also, firms would prefer hiring less expensive foreign workers over American workers, leading to greater unemployment for the latter. Proponents of that argument also opposed organizing immigrants into American labor unions, as doing so would raise their wages, encouraging even more immigration into the country.
With the rise of communism in Europe after the Russian Revolution (1917), and a growing anxiety of similar attempts occurring in the United States, the AFL sought to gain legitimacy by purging itself of any ties to communism. The actions and statements of the far-left Industrial Workers of the World, a labor federation, led to an association between labor and communism, which the AFL fervently sought to avoid. Since immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were viewed especially suspiciously as potential communist "agitators," more political arguments were presented by the AFL to oppose immigration from those areas the organization of such immigrant workers.
Contingencies of AFL position
One central dichotomy that largely dictated the position of labor unions towards immigration during the early 20th century was whether their focus was largely inward or outward. Unions with an outward focus, dedicated to organizing workers, tended to be pro-immigrant, as immigrants constituted the main populations that they were attempting to organize. Unions that attempted to raise wages and working conditions for already-unionized workers, instead of organizing new workers, tended to see immigrant labor as competition with native workers and so wanted restrictive measures. As the vast majority of the unions within the AFL fell in the latter camp in the first half of the 20th century, the AFL, as a whole, unsurprisingly adopted the latter position.
