Since the first days of the United States labor movement, powerful, anti-worker forces have used a wide range of methods to try to divide the American working class. But one of the most devastating is also one of the most enduring myths in the corporate playbook: the lie of the immigrant that wants to steal your job.
In 2024, we saw this lie re-emerge with a vengeance from the Trump-Vance presidential campaign, which falsely accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating their neighbors’ pets and used the tragic death of a child to malign an entire population of working-class people. (The young boy’s parents later decried their son’s death being used by Trump, Vance and others for political purposes.) The campaign and its allies rampantly accused “illegals” of flooding the southern border and taking work away from American citizens.
“We are all SMART members; united we bargain, divided we beg.”
Local unions and SMART members know better than anyone that yes, there are nonunion immigrant workers on jobsites in our communities. There are also undocumented people performing construction work, frequently while being blackmailed by their employer threatening to illegally use their immigration status against them.
Are those immigrants stealing our jobs? No.
The bad-faith contractor who would rather exploit people in desperate need of employment than sign a union contract — that’s who is stealing our jobs. The anti-worker employer who uses workers’ lack of familiarity with English to steal their wages and keep SMART members off the jobsite — that’s who is taking away our work hours.
In our union, we have a time-honored slogan: United we bargain, divided we beg. It’s a defining principle of our organization; one that we repeat proudly and that, in practice, has won our members strong contracts, family-sustaining benefits and a life with dignity.
The two key words in that sentence are “united” and “divided.” Make no mistake: The anti-immigrant lies spread joyfully by Trump, Vance and the U.S. corporate class are intended to divide us; to pit worker against worker, and to keep us from using our collective power to win victories in the face of the extraordinarily wealthy. As long as we are preoccupied by our immigrant neighbors, the elite know, we won’t focus on organizing more jobsites or bringing in more members to strengthen our union.
Our union, like many others, was built by members of immigrant communities — Irish, Italian, Portuguese and others. And just like today, those communities — many of whom are our familial ancestors, and on whose shoulders all of us stand — were demonized. They were labelled lazy, “illegal,” slovenly; discriminated against and, yes, categorized as foreigners stealing Americans’ jobs.
But those workers refused to be intimidated. They organized, and they grew the great organization that we proudly represent to this day.
In 2025, our union is made up of members who, either personally or ancestrally, come from all sorts of places: the United States, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Scotland, Vietnam, China, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Haiti, El Salvador, Somalia and so many more. Every single one of those members, no matter their place of origin or their ancestry, is bonded by the solidarity of our union. We are all SMART members; united we bargain, divided we beg.
The same principle applies to workers who are not yet organized into our union.
If the immigrant worker who is being exploited on a nonunion jobsite is kicked off the job, that won’t fix the problem. That bad-faith contractor will find someone else to take advantage of. What can fix the problem is if we bring that worker into our union. When we bring those workers in, grow our union, expand our market share and force abusive employers to fall in line, we create more work for our members. And when huge projects create workforce demands for local unions — like in the Columbus, Ohio, area — those new members help us make sure those jobs are union built.
Election season may be over. But make no mistake — you will continue to hear about people from other countries coming to steal your job. For the good of your union and your work hours, don’t let that rhetoric win. Instead, let’s stand together and organize against the people who benefit from keeping us divided.
