Baltimore bridge collapse shows how the US needs yet neglects immigrants

The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse highlights the dangers and abysmal conditions faced by working class Latino immigrants in the US
Ideologues scapegoat migrant workers from Mexico and Central America despite benefiting from their labour

Robert Delaney

Published: 8:30pm, 1 Apr 2024

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The US port city of Baltimore has been in America’s top headlines for nearly a week. Expect it to stay there for a while, as the Francis Scott Key Bridge wreckage becomes a political vortex into which ideologues will pour their vitriol about America’s immigration and infrastructure woes.

Given the striking footage of such a massive structure collapsing into a heap of twisted metal and the miraculous effort to block drivers – on just a few minutes’ notice – who would otherwise have been on the bridge as it fell, the sustained interest is no surprise.

Unfortunately, that miracle didn’t extend to eight workers on the bridge, who were focused on the operation of heavy equipment needed to keep a major artery in the port city in working order. Two were rescued, but the other six lost their lives.

While full details about the workers who perished in the Baltimore bridge collapse have not been released publicly at the time of writing, we know they came to the US from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

In any other context, this list of countries would have much of America sneering, particularly since the US Republican Party was hijacked by former president Donald Trump. To his “MAGA” movement, this list of countries is as triggering as terms like “gender fluidity”, “fully electric”, “science” and “TikTok”.

About 130,000 immigrants work in the construction industry in the regions in and around Baltimore and the neighbouring national capital. They make up 39 per cent of that workforce, The Washington Post reported, citing Casa, a Maryland-based Latino and immigration advocacy organisation.

Construction workers and supporters pray during a vigil and press conference by advocacy group Casa on March 29 to remember the six workers killed in the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse: Photo: AP

And, as was widely reported in the wake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s spectacular demise, at least three members of this community were among those fatally struck by two drivers while doing roadwork a few miles northwest of the port just days before the bridge fell.

While American politicians compete with each other to take the hardest line possible on immigration, the ones they malign day in and day out are outside working in extreme temperatures, next to traffic that might veer into them, to ensure that the ideologues that vilify them can get to their offices.

The baseless election denialism and other conspiracy theories that undergird the new Republican Party might be new, but narratives that demonise immigrants are not.

The Irish, Jews and southern Europeans that made up the lion’s share of immigrants to the US in the early 20th century were portrayed by many established Americans of Anglo-Saxon descent as prone to criminal behaviour or threats to the country’s social fabric.

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While black Americans were held back by Jim Crow laws, government-endorsed redlining, lynching and other forms of violence that made a joke of the idea that blacks were emancipated after the Civil War, many of the maligned Europeans coming to America’s shores with different languages and religious devotions managed to accumulate wealth, start businesses and secure their socio-economic footings.

Republicans have made the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion – or DEI – initiatives that seek to address the centuries of discrimination against black Americans a top priority, along with their blanket portrayals of Latino immigrants as criminals out to destroy the country, in spite of all of the facts.

According to an analysis of federal labour statistics and census data by UCLA economist and professor Robert Fairlie published in February, some 670 out of every 100,000 immigrants, or 0.67 per cent, established businesses last year on a monthly basis, compared to 0.35 per cent for the total population.

The data goes on to show the lie that Latinos and blacks are a net negative economically, with a 0.6 per cent business start-up rate for the former and 0.34 per cent for the latter, against 0.28 per cent for white Americans.

Community leaders discuss supporting families of the bridge collapse victims at a taqueria in Baltimore on March 27. Photo: Reuters

These statistics and countless others show how the vast majority of those leaving their lives behind to come to the US with nothing but a determination to live the American dream play an essential role in building the country.

Without bothering to put forward clear proposals for the problems they rant about, anti-immigrant politicians pin their electoral survival on fanning fear of the darker-skinned “other”, who take jobs that none of them would ever want their children to do.

There’s a reason that the fearmongering politicians never show data that supports their narrative about immigrants: there isn’t any.

They should hope that enough new immigrants make it into the construction crews of Baltimore and Washington so they can get to their jobs.

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief