Moving Millions: How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration - Hardcover

by Jeffrey Kaye (Author)

On the same day that reporter Jeffrey Kaye visited the Tondo hospital in northwest Manila, members of an employees association wearing hospital uniforms rallied in the outside courtyard demanding pay raises. The nurses at the hospital took home about $261 a month, while in the United States, nurses earn, on average, more than fifteen times that rate of pay. No wonder so many of them leave the Philippines.

Between 2000 and 2007, nearly 78,000 qualified nurses left the Philippines to work abroad, but there's more to it than the pull of better wages: each year the Philippine president hands out Bagong Bayani (""modern-day heroes"") awards to the country's ""outstanding and exemplary"" migrant workers. Migrant labor accounts for the Philippines' second largest source of export revenue--after electronics--and they ship out nurses like another country might export textiles. In 2008, the Philippines was one of the top ranking destination countries for remittances, alongside India ($45 billion), China ($34.5 billion), and Mexico ($26.2 billion).

Nurses in the Philippines, farmers in Senegal, Dominican factory workers in rural Pennsylvania, even Indian software engineers working in California--all are pieces of a larger system Kaye calls ""coyote capitalism.""

Coyote capitalism is the idea--practiced by many businesses and governments--that people, like other natural resources, are supplies to be shifted around to meet demand. Workers are pushed out, pulled in, and put on the line without consideration of the consequences for economies, communities, or individuals.

With a fresh take on a controversial topic, Moving Millions:

• Knocks down myth after myth about why immigrants come to America and what role they play in the economy
• Challenges the view that immigrants themselves motivate immigration, rather than the policies of businesses and governments in both rich and poor nations
• Finds surprising connections between globalization, economic growth and the convoluted immigration debates taking place in America and other industrialized countries
• Jeffrey Kaye is a freelance journalist and special correspondent for the PBS NewsHour for whom he has reported since 1984, covering immigration, housing, health care, urban politics, and other issues

What does it all add up to? America's approach to importing workers looks from the outside like a patchwork of unnecessary laws and regulations, but the machinery of immigration is actually part of a larger, global system that satisfies the needs of businesses and governments, often at the expense of workers in every nation.

Drawing on Jeffrey Kaye's travels to places including Mexico, the U.K., the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, Poland, and Senegal, this book, a healthy alternative to the obsession with migrants' legal status, exposes the dark side of globalization and the complicity of businesses and governments to benefit from the migration of millions of workers.

Front Jacket

On the same day that reporter Jeffrey Kaye visited the Tondo hospital in northwest Manila, members of an employees association wearing hospital uniforms rallied in the outside courtyard demanding pay raises. The nurses at the hospital took home about $261 a month, while in the United States, nurses earn, on average, more than fifteen times that rate of pay. No wonder so many nurses leave the Philippines.

Between 2000 and 2007, nearly 78,000 qualified nurses left the Philippines to work abroad, but there's more to it than the pull of better wages: each year the Philippine president hands out Bagong Bayani ("Modern-day Heroes") awards to the country's "outstanding and exemplary" migrant workers. Migrant labor accounts for the Philippines' second largest source of export revenue--after electronics--and they ship out nurses like another country might export textiles. In 2008, the Philippines was one of the top-ranking destination countries for remittances, alongside India ($45 billion), China ($34.5 billion), and Mexico ($26.2 billion).

Nurses in the Philippines, farmers in Senegal, Dominican factory workers in rural Pennsylvania, even Indian software engineers working in California--all are pieces of a larger system Kaye calls "coyote capitalism."

Coyote capitalism is the idea--practiced by many businesses and governments--that people, like other natural resources, are supplies to be shifted around to meet demand. Workers are pushed out, pulled in, and put on the line without consideration of the consequences for economies, communities, or individuals.

With a fresh take on a controversial topic, Moving Millions knocks down myth after myth about why immigrants come to the United States and what role they play in the economy, challenging the view that immigrants themselves motivate immigration, rather than the policies of businesses and governments in both rich and poor nations. Kaye takes readers around the world in search of answers, with stops in Mexico, Europe, the UAE, Poland, Senegal, and elsewhere. Interviewing smugglers and undocumented workers, recruiters and legal immigrants, Kaye finds surprising connections between globalization, economic growth, and the convoluted immigration debates taking place in the United States and other industrialized countries.

What does it all add up to? America's approach to importing workers looks from the outside like a patchwork of unnecessary laws and regulations, but the machinery of immigration is actually part of a larger, global system that satisfies the needs of businesses and governments, often at the expense of workers in every nation.

Moving Millions brings a new perspective to the looming debates over comprehensive immigration reform in Washington. It is important reading for policy makers, activists on both sides of immigration and globalization debates, and anyone who wants to understand an issue that will remain a major point of domestic and international political conflict for decades to come.

Back Jacket

Advance Praise for Moving Millions

"A really wonderful book. With vivid writing that brings policy to life through the people most touched by it, Moving Millions pulls us across the global landscape of one of the least understood phenomena of our time--human migration--and demonstrates why each of us has a stake in what happens to these strangers in our midst. Kaye's done such a fantastic job of capturing the human, as well as the government and commercial, sides of this complicated issue. A superb piece of work."

--Judy Woodruff, Senior Correspondent, PBS NewsHour

"Global immigration--forced, exploitative, and profitable--is arguably the most explosive social issue of our time. Its economics are murky and its politics are hypocritical. Read this book if you want a well-written, honest guide to how it works and why any solution has to focus on where immigrants come from as well as where they go."

--Jeff Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute and author of The Global Class War

"Jeffrey Kaye does a masterful job in demolishing the myriad myths surrounding immigration and puts a human, sometimes tragic, face on the concurrent global push of poverty and the pull of the promise of a better life."

--Marc Cooper, USC Annenberg School

Author Biography

JEFFREY KAYE is a freelance journalist and special correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, for whom he has reported since 1984. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and other print, broadcast, and Internet outlets. For more information, and to see pictures taken while reporting for Moving Millions, visit his Web site at: www.jeffreykaye.net.