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In October 1996, immigration authorities detained 28 undocumented construction workers in Watervliet, New York, on a “tip from a local union worker,” The Daily Gazette reported at the time. Just years earlier, so-called liberals from the U.S. labor movement were highly involved in advocating for workers’ rights in war-torn El Salvador and calling for an end to U.S. military support for the conflict. Yet the same movement also demonstrated an anti-immigrant stance against the Salvadoran population in the United States, where the Reagan administration’s labeling of Salvadorans as “economic migrants” fueled a narrative that undocumented workers posed a “threat” to the nation.
During El Salvador’s U.S.-backed civil war, Salvadorans were the largest group of Central American migrants entering the United States. Although they were fleeing a bloody violent conflict, the U.S. government denied almost all Salvadoran refugee claims since recognition of the violence and repression taking place in the country would implicate the United States in the atrocities. Politicians and media outlets scapegoated these Salvadorans—refugee claimants who, trapped in a cycle of transnational displacement, were forced to live without documentation—as the roots of the country’s social and economic woes. Attacks on migrants in the court of public opinion and in raids on worksites were driven not only by the Conservative Party of New York State (CPNYS), but also by union members and leaders who acted as tipsters collaborating with Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the precursor to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Today, as heightened anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy drive a fresh barrage of attacks on Central Americans and other racially profiled people of color, this history offers important lessons for our current climate. In times of economic crisis, official narratives often reinforce persistent neoliberal economic agendas while obscuring their harmful effects on the population. Since the 1980s, the rise of free-market neoliberalism has reshaped labor dynamics, strengthening corporate power at the expense of workers’ rights. Yet rather than condemning these systemic injustices, labor and other social movements have sometimes joined anti-immigrant campaigns, scapegoating immigrants for crises such as unemployment and poverty instead of challenging the structures that produce them.
In Albany, New York, or the Capital Region as the area is known, the labor movement joined the peace movement of the 1980s in advocating for workers and unions in El Salvador at the same time as they advocated for workers in New York. Among these labor movement groups were the Solidarity Committee of the Capital District (SCCD), Capital District Labor Coalition on Central America, and Albany Central Federation of Labor (ACCFL). However, support from these groups in the United States context focused solely on citizen and unionized workers. Migrant undocumented and non-unionized workers became the enemy. The labor and peace movement’s stance aligned with the anti-immigrant views and campaigns of the CPNYS, which throughout the 1970s had advanced the narrative that undocumented immigrants were stealing jobs from Americans. As part of their campaigns, CPNYS monitored pro-immigrant media coverage and court cases involving undocumented workers. For instance, feedback letters to the WPIX Editorial broadcast station in 1977 complained about the editorial opinion on “illegal aliens” and calls for “compassion” towards refugees because these people were “criminals” and taking “four million jobs” from Americans. This pressure on media to distort immigrant accounts influenced the Republican Party in the 1980s, ultimately forming the Conservative-Republican coalition that triumphed with the 1984 presidential victory of Ronald Reagan, who kept a close and supportive ideological relationship with CPNYS.
When it came to discourses of immigrant exclusion, conservatives and liberals in the labor movement converged, cementing the longstanding narrative of certain migrants being underserving of solidarity efforts. Indeed, the ACCFL lobbied in favor of the new provision in Reagan’s 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) that penalized the hiring of undocumented immigrant workers. These narratives and actions on the part of the SCDD, CPNYS, and ACCFL denied the lived realities and knowledges of Central American migrants while upholding and validating those of predominantly U.S citizen workers. By adopting anti-immigrant discourses and measures in the 1980s, labor organizers in Albany created a false binary between protecting labor rights and recognizing Central American migrant workers’ dual vulnerability—as both war victims and people living with precarious immigration status. The history of labor and peace movements in Albany holds important lessons for recognizing exclusionary organizing practices that create divisions among workers across immigration status lines.
The Albany Peace and Labor Movement
At the turn of the 1980s, Albany had a vibrant labor movement associated with left-wing politics. Two prominent labor leaders were Lawrence Wittner, a university professor and president of the United University Professions (UPP), and Fred Pfeiffer, “a left-wing machinist,” in Wittner’s words who was very active in the anti-industrial and anti-nuclear pollution efforts. They and many other labor activists met at the ACCFL meetings. In addition to national and international labor organizing, activists in Albany also engaged in anti-apartheid, peace movement, human rights, and anti-U.S. military intervention organizing.
As early as 1981, a report by the Electrical Union News found among Pfeiffer’s papers informed labor leaders about the struggles of Salvadoran people, especially workers. Titled “Membership Votes Against Aid To El Salvador,” the article also revealed the stance of the Electrical Union. The report warned that the “repressive” military of El Salvador was “responsible for 80% of approximately 13,000 people killed this past year” and unemployment increased to “more than 50%.” As a consequence, people were fleeing in large numbers. Various organizations continued issuing these types of reports throughout the 1980s.
In March 1982, as secretary of the Albany chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Wittner sent an “ad petition” to The New York Times signed by 57 DSA members imploring the U.S. Congress “to end intervention in El Salvador” because the Reagan administration was “flagrantly viola[ting] human rights” and intensifying “the agony of Salvadoran people.”
Led by the Solidarity Committee of the Capital District (SCCD), a coalition of labor unions across New York State, the labor movement was also aware that the repression in El Salvador targeted labor unions and workers in particular. In response, labor movement members sent letters to political leaders in the United States and in El Salvador. On June 25, 1984, Wittner sent three letters advocating for labor union members in El Salvador, directed to Salvadoran President José Napoleón Duarte, to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, and to U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. The message to the Salvadoran state and its U.S. partners was straightforward: set the captured and tortured Salvadoran union labor leaders free or allow them to leave the country. The Albany labor movement also maintained direct contact with unions in El Salvador, including in the form of material support. For example, the SCCD made out a check for $150 dated August 7, 1986, payable to FENASTRAS, the National Trade Union Federation of Salvadoran Workers. Worker solidarity, in this instance, intentionally crossed national borders and alluded to an equality that united working-class people across nationality, ethnicity, and language.
In 1987, NACLA published five reports, all found among Pfeiffer’s papers, detailing acute military oppression against workers and labor unions in El Salvador. In other words, we know that Albany labor leaders read these reports. Two years later, Francisco Acosta, a representative of the Salvadoran Union Conference for Peace and Solidarity (UNTS), sent two letters to the SCCD informing the committee that the military had “bombed” labor union headquarters and captured, tortured, and assassinated many Salvadoran union members. Indeed, the FENASTRAS headquarters was bombed three times in 1989, and many workers were killed or injured in the October 31 bombing. The letter, like many others arriving in Albany from different national and international labor and human rights organizations, also called for solidarity.
Labor activists in Albany attended to these calls immediately. Throughout the early 1990s, labor leaders continued to write letters calling for the end of U.S. government aid to the repressive military in El Salvador. In 1992, Pfeiffer and fellow labor leader Andrew Feffer, representing the Capital District Labor Coalition on Central America, sent a letter to conservative New York Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato, urging him “to vote in favor of the upcoming Dodd-Leahy Amendment” that would cut “military aid to El Salvador.” The letter also requested a meeting between the senator and “a delegation of labor activists from the Capital District… to discuss this matter.” It is unclear if the meeting ever took place, but the labor organizers continued to pressure state officials to end El Salvador’s civil war.
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Ruth Murcia is a doctoral candidate and a health disparities fellow at the University at Albany-SUNY. Her research focuses on migration, domestic labor, and health inequities. Her dissertation project explores the experiences of Central American migrant domestic workers in New York from the 1970s to the present.
Archival collections reviewed for this article came from the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany, State University of New York.