G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
The Racist War on Immigrants
By Stephen Lendman
Created Mar 29 2007 - 9:18am
Emma Lazarus' memorable words on Lady Liberty's pedestal once had meaning as
a new nation grew. No longer in a country hostile to the tired, the poor,
the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless and many others not
making the grade in a white supremacist Judeo-Christian state worshiping
wealth and privilege. No welcome sign is out for the unwanted poor and
desperate. At best, they're ignored to subsist on their own. At worst,
they're scorned and abused, exploited and discarded like trash or labeled
"terrorists" in a post-9/11 world of mass witch-hunt roundups aimed at
Muslims because of their faith or country of origin and Latinos coming north
to survive the fallout from NAFTA's destructive effects on their lives.
Immigrants of color, the wrong faith or from the wrong parts of the world
are never greeted warmly in "America the Beautiful" that's only for the
privileged and no one else. They're not wanted except to harvest our crops
or do the hard, low-pay, no-benefit labor few others will do. The ground
rules to come were set straight away in our original Nationalization Act of
1790 establishing the first path to citizenship. It wasn't friendly to the
wrong types as permanent status was limited to foreign-born "free white
persons" of "good moral character," meaning people like most of us - our
culture, countries of origin, religion and skin color.
Left out were indentured servants, slaves, free blacks, native Americans
being exterminated, and later Asians and Latinos whose "appearance" wasn't
as acceptable as the whiteness of English-speaking European Christian
settlers and the mix of others from Western European countries like Holland,
Germany and Scandinavia. The law scarcely changed for 162 years until the
1870 15th amendment loosened it enough to include blacks by 1875, no longer
slaves but hardly free and in 1940 gave Latin Americans the same right.
After the war in 1945 it extended it further to Filipinos and Asian Indians.
Original native Americans, whose land this was for thousands of years, only
were enfranchised and given the right of citizenship in their own land when
Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924 after most of them were
exterminated in a genocidal process still ongoing, never mentioned in the
mainstream, and for which no redress was ever made or likely will be.
The 1952 Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act (INA) only
grudgingly did what no law before it allowed. For the first time it made
individuals of all races eligible for citizenship but imposed strict quotas
for those from the Eastern Hemisphere with different standards for
caucasians from the West. But nothing is ever simple and straightforward in
"America the Beautiful." In the early Cold War atmosphere of Joe McCarthy's
communist witch-hunts, anyone accused of leftist sympathies could be
targeted, and any alien so-tagged could be deported, and like today no
evidence was needed.
>From the INA to the present, immigration laws kept changing for better or
>worse, but one thing was constant. White Christian Western Europeans are
>welcomed. Others, especially people of color or the wrong religion, get in
>grudgingly in lesser numbers and receive unequal or harsh treatment when
>they arrive. The 1996 Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) and
>Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)proved it showing
>Democrat presidents can be as mean and nasty as Republicans, especially
>with help from a Republican-controlled Congress.
The 1996 acts were ugly and repressive ignoring the rights of due process
and judicial fairness. They allowed Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) agents to detain legal immigrants without bond, deport them without
discretionary relief, restrict their access to counsel, bar them from
appealing to the courts, and can be applied for even minor offenses little
more than youthful indiscretions. These laws under a Democrat president
"feel(ing) our pain" showed no more compassion or equity than later ones
under George Bush in force today. They allow no second chances and deny
targeted legal immigrants their day in court. Their harshness tears apart
families unjustly made to suffer by a nation hardening its stance to the
wrong kinds of immigrants. They're sent an unwelcome message now much worse
in the age of George Bush with his permanent wars on the world and homeland
"terrorists" meaning anyone called that on his say alone.
It started post-9/11 with the 2001 USA Patriot Act even harsher in its
updated Patriot Act II version. Enacted to combat "terrorism," it's done on
the border with more guards to spot, detain, arrest and incarcerate Latinos
entering the country for a way to survive. For being undocumented and on the
pretext of being suspected "terrorists," they may be indefinitely detained
or deported the way it works under any despotic national security police
state. It's even worse for Muslims, 5000 of whom were rounded up and held
early on with only three of them ever being charged with an offense. And it
got far worse for them after that still ongoing.
Today, federal immigration courts can hold secret hearings for anyone here
illegally or charged with a law violation, no matter how minor. Those
convicted can then be incarcerated or deported to their country of origin
often to face arrest and torture. It's now open season on anyone targeted
with legal protection no longer shielding innocent victims Justice
Department (DOJ) or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) go after. They
includes poor and desperate mostly undocumented Latinos from Mexico and
Central America coming el norte because NAFTA, CAFTA and other neoliberal
unfair trade agreements called "free" destroyed their ability to earn a
living at home leaving them no other choice but come north or perish.
It shouldn't be that way, and promises were made early on that "free trade"
lifted all boats with higher wages and more jobs. Instead millions of jobs
were lost while real wages fell under the effects of a globalized market
system crafted for investor elites to profit at the expense of ordinary
working people paying the price. They've been devastated since by a
sustained massive wealth transfer to the top of the economic pyramid that in
the US alone has been a generational process of well over $1 trillion
annually to corporations and the richest 1%.
For the past 13 years, NAFTA and the rest of globalized trade provided cover
for imperialism on the march for power and profit. It prospers from economic
and shooting wars of conquest with an engineered race to the bottom driven
by giant predatory corporations allied with friendly governments in their
service at the expense of ordinary working people paying the price. The
result - mass and growing poverty, human misery, and ecological destruction
great enough to threaten the ability of the planet to sustain life.
Blame it on the globalized market system. It's the main reason millions
around the world are on the move each year as reported by the International
Labor Organization. In 2005, the number reached an estimated 200 million
fleeing poverty and conflicts, often leaving families behind, heading for
developed countries for jobs and safety unavailable at home.
The toll South of the Border alone after 10 years of NAFTA was devastating
on Mexico's poor and getting progressively worse.
-- Real wages down 20% and the wealth disparity between rich and poor far
greater than in 1994 (NAFTA's first year).
-- Two - three million small farms now gone with Research Director Raul
Hinojosa of the North American Integration and Development Center at UCLA
predicting 10 million small farmers will eventually be forced off the land,
many heading north in desperation.
-- Mexico's banks, railroads, airlines, mines and other industry sold off to
foreign investors, mainly US ones with possible plans under the new Calderon
government to sell off the country's crown jewel - Petroleos Mexicanos
(PEMEX), the state-owned national oil company up to now kept free from Big
Oil predators itching to get their hands on the company and now may have
their chance.
-- Two million hectares of tropical forest turned over to private developers
displacing many thousands of people to make way for "development" and
clear-cutting forests.
-- Crushed homegrown industries unable to compete against subsidized US
giants like behemoth Wal-Mart (Wal-Mex) now the country's largest private
employer and biggest retailer in Latin America.
The Message to Immigrants On Our Southern Border - No Vacancy, or Enter As
Indentured Servants with No Rights
Post 9/11, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed establishing the
repressive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and in March, 2003 its
largest investigative and enforcement arm - the US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency (ICE) charged with protecting the public safety by
identifying and targeting "criminal" and "terrorist" threats to the country,
most of whom, in fact, are just desperate people whose NAFTA-ruined lives at
home force them el norte to survive.
ICE was established to head them off at the border or hunt them down
ruthlessly once here. It's comprised of four integrated divisions with
responsibilities over the nation's infrastructure, economic security,
transportation system and the subject of this essay - policing our southern
border with Mexico going after people the color of the earth victims
suffering for what we did to them by our made-in-Washington trade and other
unfair economic policies. So the gloves are off, anything goes, and ICE is
free to rampage with its large share of DHS's total budget now up to $43
billion, heading for $46.5 in the president's submitted FY 2008 budget.
On the Homeland Security web site, ICE openly boasts about what it should be
condemned for. At FY-end 2006 on October 30, it listed what it called
"historic results (and) new records for enforcement activity" including:
-- Total work site arrests sevenfold greater than in FY 2002.
-- Ended the former practice of "catch and release" ICE called "the greatest
impediment to border control." It substituted the harsher practice of catch
and incarcerate or catch and deport - or hound, threaten, catch, brutalize,
incarcerate, then deport victimized people who'll try again to survive.
-- Removed a record high number of 186,000 "illegal aliens" and increased
its detention bed space by 6300 to a FY-end total of 27,500 with an average
daily number of incarcerated or detained immigrants up to 26,000 since July
and rising.
-- Increased the number of "fugitive operations teams" nationwide from 18 to
50 charged with locating, apprehending and removing "criminal aliens"
meaning alien victims called criminals. Through its Operation Return to
Sender, ICE arrested 14,356 aliens and deported 4716 of them from May 26 to
September 30, 2006. ICE intends having 75 teams operating by end of FY 2007
to up the numbers considerably which they'll do.
-- Created a national center operating at all ICE detention facilities to
deport "criminal aliens" when released from incarceration. Most will be
back.
-- Completed a record high number of "arms and strategic technology"
investigations by doubling the number of personnel assigned to do them and
by implementing new electronic data entry procedures to track immigration
"violators" and "fugitives."
-- Claimed it dismantled the large Colombia Cali drug cartel to stem illegal
narcotics trafficking while failing to acknowledge other US agencies, most
notably CIA, have a long sordid history of drugs trafficking worldwide as an
important revenue source with CIA now partnered with Northern Alliance
warlords in Afghanistan (among others around the world) having turned the
country into a narco-state, according to a UN report, supplying 92% of the
world's opium used for heroin.
-- Conducted financial investigations of human smuggling and other
immigration related cases resulting in asset seizures of $42 million or
double the amount gotten in FY 2004.
-- Through its Operation Community Shield arrested 3700 since February, 2005
including 2290 suspected "gang members."
-- From worksites, arrested 716 workers (and a few employers getting mere
wrist slaps) on "criminal" charges and 3667 individuals on "administrative"
charges - a sevenfold increase in total arrests from FY 2002.
-- Worked with Department of Justice (DOJ) in document and immigration
benefits fraud cases resulting in 235 investigations, 189 arrests and 80
convictions.
-- Expanded its partnership with state and local authorities training 40
state and county law enforcement officers as part of the 287(g) program of
immigration enforcement with additional partnerships to come.
ICE listed a disturbing array of other FY-end 2006 "achievements" involving
enhanced intelligence gathering and analysis; targeting "national security
threats;" detecting, tracking and arresting visa violators; "enhancing
border security;" targeting transnational gangs, human smugglers and sexual
predators; targeting money launderers and others committing financial crimes
while granting de facto immunity to large US banks, including major
international money center ones, known to launder drug money as one of their
major profit centers; and much more.
DHS/ICE Billions for the Border
With a budget increased by 50% over five years ago, DHS/ICE has billions to
use guarding our borders from "dangerous" poor people. Ignored is that those
working here pay billions more in federal, state and local taxes for
performing services (in jobs others don't want) than they get back in meager
benefits like sub-standard education for their children in inner city or
other public schools and inadequate health care when they're sick.
Still they come from need, not choice in a risky, dangerous journey starting
with what it costs for help getting here. It's plenty extorted by Coyote
smugglers and other predatory intermediaries treating them like pollos
(chickens) once on their way north. They get crammed in trucks and cars,
travel after dark, and aren't prepared for the hazards they'll face
including 115 degree or higher summer temperatures crossing an unforgiving
desert that end up killing hundreds each year from exposure who when found
are just anonymous John Does leaving families behind never knowing what
happened or what to do next.
And handling those risks depends on getting past heavy DHS/ICE border
security in place post-9/11. They're ready and waiting with video cameras,
state of the art motion sensors, infrared goggles, other security
electronics and helicopters with forward-looking infrared (FLIR) scopes plus
an unforgiving thuggish army of 6000 or more National Guard troops as part
of Operation Jumpstart. They supplement the Border Patrol agent staff of
12,349 heading for 17,819 proposed for FY 2008, double the number it had in
FY 2001.
Add to this army an extremist well-funded volunteer force in place called
the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) or "Minutemen" for short. Their
name comes from those "ready in a minute men" dating back to the mid-1600s
when volunteers were trained to be first on the scene to defend their
communities in case of conflict. Today's Minutemen on our southern border
are for offense, not defense. All they defend is white supremacy and racial
hatred against poor, desperate people unable to survive at home. Left no
other choice, they come north, but doing it pits them against these
ultra-hard right volunteer paramilitary thugs licensed to kill. They man the
southern border by the thousands hunting down and terrorizing anyone caught
entering the country without visas.
They're supported by other anti-immigrant hate groups and organizations like
the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR, not to be confused
with the noted media watch group using the same acronym standing for
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting). The racist FAIR is lobbying Congress for
repressive immigration legislation that will deny Latinos and others coming
here basic civil and human rights by stepping up harsh border security,
increasing Gestapo-like crackdowns against those already here, and giving
predatory corporations the right to exploit the ones allowed in or manage to
come anyway. The fate of millions of honest, hard-working immigrant families
depends on exposing and stopping the kind of work these groups do and what
they stand for.
In spite of them and all the other hazards they face, and word gets back
about them, the courageous poor keep coming for a better life to support
their families usually left behind desperate for whatever aid their loved
ones can send back. No amount of manpower, security and technology in place
can stop them. Those caught and sent back try again, eventually
circumventing the obstacles against them on a near-2000 mile long border,
all of which can't be patrolled. But that takes them into the harshest
stretches of desert many each year never leave. And still they come, risking
everything, tens of thousands each year, their numbers growing as NAFTA and
neoliberal market-imposed rules leave them no choice - head north or perish.
Congressional Reform or Deform in 2007
Things could change if trade was fair, not unfair, under made-in-Washington
one-way "free trade" rules legalizing unfairness, especially in areas like
agriculture so crucial to millions of small farmers in developing countries
like Mexico forced off the land unable to compete against heavily subsidized
US agribusiness. But carrots aren't on the legislative docket in Congress,
only assorted sticks in the stalled compromise immigration bill providing no
relief the way things are progressing so far in both Houses.
So-called "immigration reform" stalled last year after the House passed the
repressive HR 4437 Sensenbrenner bill, The Border Protection,
Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Act of 2005, in December, 2005. It
was a law only racists and hatemongers could love. It galled, or
embarrassed, enough senators to clean it up some and pass S 2611, the
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act or Hagel-Martinez bill last May. It was
still bad enough to create a permanent underclass of low-paid workers, allow
employers the right to exploit them, place restraints on wages and benefits,
and create a nightmarish multi-tiered bureaucratic structure for temporary
partial legalization leaving out of the mix millions of undocumented workers
already here and delaying citizenship for those eligible for almost two
decades.
Workers, most unions and others for immigrant rights oppose this bill, but
shamefully it's supported by the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU) and UNITE HERE representing hotel, food service, apparel, textile and
gaming industries with both unions sacrificing their members' rights for
whatever the leadership gets from collaborating with employers and
Washington.
Proposed Immigration Legislation Includes A New Bracero Program
New immigration legislation proposed in Congress leaves in it most of the
harsh measures in S 2611 including a new temporary or guest worker plan with
shades of the infamous Bracero Program in force from 1942 - 1964. It created
a system of indentured servitude ongoing to this day, even after its
official end, with an army of serfs with no rights giving employers the
legal right to exploit over 4.6 million Mexican migrant farm workers. They
were denied basic rights; got only temporary, low-wage jobs; often were
cheated out of pay earned; held in virtual captivity by employers seizing
their documents; denied the right to change jobs freely; forced to live in
squalid conditions; denied medical care or benefits for injuries received;
forced to endure severe harassment and oppression from employers knowing
they could ship braceros home whenever they complained too much about what
they had plenty to complain about. It happened in 1954 when a recession
triggered a political backlash against Mexican communities resulting in the
deportation or flight of over one million Mexican migrant workers and their
families under Operation Wetback including children born here as US
citizens.
Today, 120,000 foreign guest workers receive temporary H-2 visas established
under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 for farm and other
low-skilled work (H-2A for farm and H-2B for the rest), usually for three to
nine months, under conditions similar to the former Bracero Program under
which they were mistreated and cheated on entry, while here and on the way
out in a cycle of abuse sure to be repeated if a George Bush-style guest
worker program becomes law. Even professional workers are harmed under the
H-1B program assuring they, like non-professionals, are marginalized and
mistreated under a system where employers control everything, and workers
are just indentured servants with no choice but to take it or leave it and
go home.
Immigrant rights groups oppose the legislation, and the National Alliance
for Immigrants' Rights wants full legalization for all immigrant workers in
the country and a halt to all raids and deportations - provisions not in the
compromise bill and unlikely to be added. Fear of arrest haunts the
undocumented at a time when terrorism in the news trumps immigrant worker
rights, especially Latinos (and Muslims) getting none.
That came out in a scathing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report based
on thousands of guest worker interviews and dozens of legal cases
documenting appalling abuses of vulnerable immigrants unable to get redress.
SPLC's Immigrant Justice Project director, Mary Bauer, said: "Guest workers
are usually poor people who are lured here by the promise of decent jobs.
But all too often, their dreams are based on lies, their hopes shattered by
the reality of a system that treats them as commodities. They're the
disposable workers of the global economy." SPLC president Richard Cohen
added: "The mistreatment of temporary workers in America today is one of the
major civil rights issues of our time."
New Senate and House immigration bills will soon be debated including
bipartisan legislation unveiled March 22 in the House by Latino Democrat
Luis Gutierrez and Republican Jeff Flake. Sadly, it's little more than the
usual "same old, same old." In this case, it's largely a rehash of last
year's stalled S 2611 bill that rightfully is sure to mobilize immigrants'
rights groups against it. It proposes a repressive guest worker bracero
program with provisions allowing those qualified to get three year visas
renewable for another three years after which workers would be forced to go
home. To be eligible, immigrants would have to learn English, pass criminal
and security checks and pay back taxes ignoring the fact that most all
undocumented workers already pay taxes, give far more than they get back,
and are honest hard-working people.
To get a green card then and be eligible for future legal residency (only
for those arriving before June 1, 2006), they'd then have to go home (under
the so-called "touch back" provision) and start again. They'd also have to
pay a $2000 fine and prove to authorities they're model material enough to
qualify to stay here. More than half the bill is even more repressive. It
contains harsh provisions for stepped up DHS/ICE (paramilitary) border
security above what's now in place with more manpower and a multi-billion
dollar high-tech border surveillance "shield" now under construction. Other
provisions include a mandated biometric system employers must use to verify
workers have legal status while overall this bill, like the others from both
Houses, contains a corporate wish list at the expense of undocumented Latino
immigrants it wishes to exploit. In short, it's appalling and will surely be
opposed on the streets en masse around the country in the spring and summer.
This proposal and others will be on the docket in both Houses for debate in
coming weeks with final resolution planned for late spring or summer unless
protest opposition delays it again or defeats it. Neither House version
improves much over what stalled legislatively last year, and only mass civil
rights protests like the historic ones in dozens of cities last spring have
a chance to do it or find a way for real immigration reform benefitting
people, not the special interests exploiting them with help from Congress
and the administration.
Support for continued exploitation is driving the political process, even
from unexpected places showing how long the odds are for legislative
justice. It's coming from the National Council of La Raza, "the largest
Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States (working)
to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans." NCLR reaches millions of
Hispanics in and outside the country. It was founded in 1968 by noted labor
organizer, community leader and author Ernesto Galarza who wrote about
braceros being "indentured aliens" and prototypical "production (men) of the
future" stripped of all political and social rights in what he called an
"input factor" to suck worth from and discard. He and labor leaders like
Cesar Chavez and others all campaigned to end the program.
His organization today, under President Janet Murguia, is now an apologist
for corporate America lobbying for braceros at home like the ones they
exploit around the world in a global race to the bottom affecting working
people everywhere. In a February 11 Washington Post op-ed piece, she wrote
her "organization and many (unidentified) Latino leaders (support) a
significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration
reform." Incredibly, Ms. Murguia denounced the original bracero program for
its abuses while advocating a new version of the same thing now. It's no
surprise because NCLR also supported NAFTA before it passed opposing US and
Mexican labor and community-based organizations against it at the time for
all the damage it would do now apparent.
The new guest worker program NCLR supports, in proposed House and Senate
legislation, will embrace all the faults of its bracero predecessor. It will
create a large desperate, defenseless immigrant workforce vulnerable here to
the same kinds of abusive exploitive practices corporate giants inflict on
their overseas workers - denying their right to organize, receive fair wages
and benefits or be guaranteed basic civil and human rights everyone should
have by law. These rights can only come through legislation guaranteeing all
immigrants permanent legal residency, a fairly defined path to citizenship,
and provisions for family members to immigrate so they all can be together.
Immigrant and other civil rights groups also need to lobby and protest for
repeal of the 2006 Deficit Reduction Act denying immigrants the right to
receive Medicaid that's also harming tens of thousands of poor US citizens
having trouble complying with new requirements. They include showing
passports or a combination of an original or certified copy of a birth
certificate and driver's license proving their legal status in the country.
This is another example of the Bush administration's racist war on Latinos
and the poor with Congress going along in a long-term bipartisan effort to
roll back the country's social safety net till nothing in it remains. It's
time human, civil rights and other progressive organizations of all stripes
mounted a combined effort to fight back, no longer being willing to see the
social state destroyed in service to wealth and privilege at the expense of
society's most vulnerable that includes the immigrant population giving
America back much more than it receives and now getting even less.
They may also have to take on another potential opponent - the nation's
oldest and best known environmental group, the Sierra Club founded in 1892
by noted naturalist writer and wilderness preservationist John Muir, that's
up to now been neutral on immigration but no longer. It's leadership split
on the issue with one side called Support US Population Stabilization
(SUSPS) focusing on population control that includes restricting immigration
to preserve the environment. So far, there's no resolution and internal
debate continues, but it needs watching as it's a slippery slope from
advocating responsible world population growth to one focusing on US
immigration that always means those of color, the most vulnerable, and
mainly desperate and impoverished Latinos forced here by made-in-the-US
predatory trade and other neoliberal policies leaving them no other choice.
That should be the Sierra Club's target, not the innocent victims of bad
policies coming here to survive them.
In the Meantime - Terror Raids in the Workplace Continue
Workplace assaults targeting immigrants continue as part of a generational
war on labor including the right of workers to organize and bargain on equal
terms with management. They're also part of the Bush administration's
campaign for a government-controlled (exploitative) new bracero guest worker
program explained by DHS secretary Michael Chertoff's message (through the
media) to Congress for the need for "stronger border security, effective
interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program (because) businesses
(needing) foreign workers....can't otherwise satisfy their labor needs (so
government must help out with) a 'regulated' program." He also told
reporters in Mexico City February 16...."total immigration reform
(addressing) migrants is actually an enforcement enabler because it lets us
focus more on the people that we don't want....criminals and dangerous
folks" - racist code language aimed at Latinos. It's meant to sanction
DHS/ICE detentions and deportations and allow employers the right to abuse
and fire Latino workers on any pretext as part of an endgame strategy,
Operation Wetback-style.
The plan is a shocker. It's to mass-remove an estimated 12 million
undocumented immigrants by 2012 while allowing others under captive contacts
to stay as exploitable guest workers. This was what immigration reform
legislation was all about in 2006 to be repeated when debate begins again in
both Houses and a final bill emerges showing both parties support corporate
interests and will affirm their right to exploit all working people,
starting with guest workers. Part of it includes Chertoff and ICE assistant
sectretary Julie Myers unleashing a paramilitary-style reign of terror
against so-called illegals or undocumented immigrants in the workplace aimed
at easy-to-target Latinos. Both parties want to assure businesses have a
large exploitable documented temporary worker pool they can use as needed,
abuse as they wish, underpay, deny benefits and above all use as a wedge to
destroy organized labor and the rights of all working people in the country.
This is what the racist war on immigrants is all about. It's to empower
employers by creating a workplace of unempowered serfs including US citizens
with few or no rights or job security at the mercy of business to hire and
fire at will and treat their employees as they wish written into the law of
the land. It's to create a "bracero America," corporate America's wet dream.
The Bush administration is using high-profile workplace assaults as a
sinister strategy to get it. Complicit with them are the corporate media
trumpeting the message that desperate Latinos here for jobs to replace ones
NAFTA destroyed are threats to national security. It happened last December
12 in the largest ever workplace raid when ICE storm troops swooped in on
Colorado-based Swift & Company targeting six of its plants. Agents rounded
up 1282 allegedly undocumented immigrant workers, including 170 accused of
identity theft, detained them at the plants, then bussed them across state
lines to be processed with most later released far from home. The raids were
vicious and racist as are all others around the country targeting immigrants
of color. The Hispanic National Bar Association reported December 18
"non-Latinos and light-skinned employees were provided blue wristbands which
exempted them from questioning, while Latinos, persons perceived to be of
Hispanic or Latino origin, underwent immigration processing (the notion
being that) all persons perceived to be Latinos are illegal."
Most immigrant workers at Swift and around the country are
impoverished-by-NAFTA Mexicans or other Latinos driven North for jobs in
desperation resulting from the Global North's failed neoliberal agenda.
They're helpless victims of savage capitalism forced to leave home,
exploited in the workplace, and terrorized by Homeland Security ICE storm
troop enforcers earning their keep at the expense of ordinary working people
targeted as criminals because they're less white than other workers passed
over in the raids.
But that's not how DHS and corporate media trumpeting characterized the
victims. ICE and its media mouthpiece claimed the raids were a major victory
in the war on illegal immigrants, and by implication the so-called "war on
terror" (against innocent people they call "terrorists)." The United Food
and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) representing Swift workers
scoffed at the claims as outrageous denouncing them saying they're "not an
effective form of immigration reform (and) They terrorize workers and
destroy families." ICE also trumpeted a (hollow) victory against criminal
elements supplying phony IDs that could also be used by "terrorists" or as
part of an identity theft scheme victimizing many thousands of US citizens
and lawful residents.
It was subterfuge and part of the current political climate with
headline-making theatrics more important than defending the homeland against
legitimate threats. It showed in the aftermath of this hugely expensive ICE
operation amounting to little more than a PR stunt providing red meat for
hard liners wanting their kind of immigration reform meaning no rights for
workers, especially ones of color. The raid ended up netting 65 "criminal
arrests," many for minor offenses like reentering the country after being
deported, a technical violation rarely resulting in prosecution. The others
were shipped around the country and likely released except for those
voluntarily agreeing to be deported.
The December Swift raid was the largest ever, but immigrant workers
everywhere have reason to fear the same threat that was repeated against
meatpackers from Smithfield Foods' processing plant in Tar Heel, North
Carolina, the largest hog processing plant in the country. Most of its
workers are African-American and Latino, and hundreds of them defied plant
management's refusal to give them the day off by rallying in nearby
Fayetteville honoring Martin Luther King Day January 15.
Retaliation came January 24, when ICE agents raided the plant arresting 21
immigrant meatpackers on trumped up "administrative immigration charges"
meaning they were poor Latinos vulnerable to ICE assaults made to send a
message. DHS supports management rights, not those of working people. The
Tar Heel plant's 5000 workers have been trying to organize within the United
Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) since the early 1990s, but are opposed by
management and its policy of retaliatory firings, intimidation, and beatings
by plant security. Smithfield like other corporate giants plays hardball. So
doesn't ICE acting like Gestapo ruthlessly assaulting working people with
special viciousness reserved for vulnerable Latinos (and Muslims) having no
defense.
Still another ICE assault the AP called "the largest immigration bust in the
history of southern Massachusetts" happened March 6 against Michael Bianco,
Inc. in New Bedford, MA, a manufacturer of high-end leather goods now
producing safety vests and backpacks for the military. In this case,
conditions for workers were deplorable, according to US Attorney Michael
Sullivan, who called them similar to the sweatshops of the early 1900s. He
arrested and charged the owner, three managers and another employee but
freed them pending a court date for hiring undocumented immigrants. It's
likely outcome will be the way it usually is for corporate offenders - a
small wrist slap fine....case dismissed.
Hundreds of workers weren't so fortunate with as many as 350 of them
apprehended and initially detained at Fort Devens for processing. From
there, some were jailed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, others released,
and most were flown to jails in Texas and a few to Miami, far from their
families and facing deportation or incarceration for those unable to prove
they're in the country legally. Most are poor Latino women from Central
America. In the meantime, as in other raids, parents and children are
separated and traumatized, their lives disrupted with an estimated 100
children in this instance, including nursing infants, left stranded with
babysitters and caregivers. Many will end up at the mercy of strangers in
foster care, uncertain of their parents' fate only here to earn enough to
support them. Left unmentioned is that those born here are US citizens
entitled to the constitutional rights they'll never get because they're
less-than-white poor Latinos.
One other example deserves mentioning as well as it's now in the news. This
one is in Pascagoula, Mississippi where hundreds of guest workers from India
are protesting job conditions at Signal International's Gulf coast shipyard
they compare to slavery. Signal brought in about 300 Indian workers in
December and another 300 to work in Texas as part of the H-2B visa program.
Workers got promises of pay and working conditions Signal reneged on plus
workers having to pay recruiting contractor Global Industry (sent by Signal
to India) up to $20,000 to come. They were promised $18 an hour for up to 30
months work but most only got half that amount. They also had to pay Signal
$35 a day to stay in company labor camp barracks inside the yard where
workers described conditions as "very bad (with) 24 of us....in a room in a
barracks that measures 12 feet by 18 feet, sleeping on bunk beds (with) two
toilets for all of us and only 4 sinks."
Workers began meeting at a local church to discuss how to get Signal to
refund their contractor fee, which they said the company promised to do, and
to protest their working conditions. They organized a group called Signal
H-2B Workers United. When the company learned of it, it responded harshly
calling the workers unqualified and cutting their already lower than
promised pay. In addition, eight were declared completely incapable and told
they were being sent home immediately. Outside the yard, dozens of workers
and community supporters protested denouncing the firings and mistreatment.
So far, nothing is resolved, but the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance
and Southern Poverty Law Center are going to court on behalf of the fired
workers to stop their deportations. Other workers still employed are
continuing their actions challenging Signal to refund their contractor-paid
money they're entitled to receive with that issue possibly heading for court
as well.
Plants like Signal's involved Indian workers and wasn't raided because
workers in it were legally recruited by the company. Others, however,
employing Latino immigrants, are savagely assaulted, and so are communities
with programs for day laborers like the Coalition for Humane Immigrant
Rights of Los Angeles targeted in January by ICE sweeps in Southern
California Latino neighborhoods. Coalition leader Antonio Bernabe told
Reuters "The police didn't just take people with deportation orders, they
took anybody--guys who were just hanging out in the street and even from a
Jack in the Box restaurant....and now people are afraid to go out." The
sweep aimed mainly at Latinos, mostly Mexican nationals, sent a message
following George Bush's State of the Union address calling for
"comprehensive immigration reform" combining a (mean-spirited) guest worker
(bracero) worker program with tougher workplace and border enforcement
meaning it's open season on Latinos and working people overall.
Immigrant Communities and Supportive Organizations Respond
Immigrant communities and organizations are fighting back against ICE
rampaging terror raids and are rallying their members and supporters to take
a stand. The Immigrant Solidarity Network is promoting May Day 2007 and a
National Mobilization to Support Immigrant Workers Rights calling for a
"national day of multi-ethnic unity with youth, labor, (and) peace and
justice communities with immigrant workers and building (a)new immigrant
rights & civil rights movement."
Proudly and boldly they proclaim "We are all human! No one is illegal! It's
call to action stands for:
-- No anti-immigration legislation or criminalization of immigrant
communities.
-- No militarization of the border with fences or other barriers.
-- No more immigration detentions, deportations or funding for immigrant
detention centers.
-- No oppressive guest worker two-tiered program allowing employers the
right to pay visa workers lower wages, provide no labor protections, and
offer little or no right to future US citizenship.
-- No employer "no-match" Social Security letters to fire immigrants and
repeal of employer sanction law.
-- Yes to a clear, fair one-tiered path for undocumented workers to gain
legal status and an opportunity for citizenship.
-- Yes to family reunifications through additional visa numbers and
elimination of long family reunification backlog delays.
-- Yes to strengthening existing labor law protection to include all
immigrant workers including their human and civil rights.
-- Yes to the right to organize and bargain collectively on equal terms with
management.
-- Yes to the Dream Act with provisions for states to aid immigrants with
benefits like providing in-state tuition aid and enable students of good
moral character to qualify for legal residency.
-- Yes to extending benefits to LGBT immigrant families, passing the Uniting
American Families Act for same sex and unmarried partners, and lifting the
HIV ban on immigration.
Other organizations as well are working for immigrant rights. They include:
-- The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). It calls
itself the most influential Hispanic advocacy group in the country standing
for open-borders and for all legal and undocumented immigrants to be
entitled to the same rights as US citizens.
-- The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). It calls
itself the most important organization for day laborer rights in the
Northeast standing for real immigration reform so that millions of the
undocumented have a clear path for legalization and citizenship.
-- The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR). It's a
broad-based organization advocating for immigrants, refugees, community,
religious, civil rights, labor and activists. It promotes a just immigration
and refugee policy defending and expanding the rights of legal and
undocumented immigrants and refugees.
-- The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). It advocates for
people of Arabic origin harshly treated post 9/11 and was a co-plaintiff
challenging Section 215 of the Patriot Act allowing for government access to
medical, educational and library records relating to "terrorism"
investigations or others claimed for national security. At least two ADC
chapters publicly condemned immigrant apprehensions, detentions,
disappearances, the denial of legal representation, and "secret military (or
other) tribunals calling these actions chilling "similarities to a police
state."
-- The Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA). It calls itself the most
effective legal fund in the country committed to preserving, safeguarding
and promoting the civil and legal rights of American-Islamic institutions
and Muslim Americans.
-- The Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI) formed in
response to increased workplace raids by the INS, now DHS/ICE. It advocates
for undocumented immigrants' labor rights (mainly Mexicans) confronting
"anti-immigrant policies through grassroots education and action."
-- The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) - an organization involved in
training more than 800 nonprofit personnel and attorneys in areas of
immigration law including naturalization, deportation defense, ethics, and
Delayed Enforced Departure. It condemns the harsh practices now employed
against immigrant communities and in the workplace as unconstitutional.
Street Protest Actions with More Planned
Protests for immigrants' rights are beginning in cities around the country
like the week of them in the San Francisco Bay Area from February 26 through
March 2. Throughout the week, community leaders, people of faith, labor
leaders, teachers and youths rallied against ICE raids and guest worker
programs speaking out for "yes to legalization for all (undocumented
workers)."
Similar actions are planned elsewhere including in Chicago by a group called
the March 10 Movement named after the 500,000-strong largest ever protest in
the city held on that date in 2006. They'll include rallies for passage of
real immigration reform including a path to legalization for all
undocumented workers and an end to detentions and deportations. The first of
the planned marches was held on March 10 - of course - in the city's
downtown area to be repeated each week "until there is a real solution" from
Congress, signed into law. If they follow through, it will mean a long
spring and summer of protest marches.
Last year's mass Chicago march inspired millions of immigrants and
supporters to rally in cities around the country that helped defeat the
worst parts of anti-immigration legislation mostly crafted in the racist
House Sensenbrenner bill now a dead letter. Since then, however, no progress
for reform has been made and pending action from the compromise House-Senate
bill and most recent new House proposal will continue an ongoing war on
immigrants only mass opposition street protests have a chance to stop the
way last year's actions achieved modest success now stalled and slipping.
That's how things are now in a nation dedicated to permanent war, a
bipartisan criminal class in Washington beholden to capital, and workers
everywhere losing out in a race to the bottom. Poor Latinos (and all
Muslims) face some of the worst of it, and those in Mexico and Central
America face a Hobson's choice. Wither at home under NAFTA and CAFTA or try
making it north to suffer abuse and neglect in an uncaring state dedicated
to keeping its tired and poor and huddled masses permanently that way.
That's the message from Congress in the kind of "immigration reform" being
crafted, but Latinos and others on the streets have other ideas.
At over 45 million strong, Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in the
country and fastest growing with its Mexican component rising fastest of
all. Nowhere is this more apparent than in California where about one-third
of all Latinos live and make up over one-third of the state's population of
36 million. It's even more pronounced in Los Angeles where Latinos are now a
majority providing a future glimpse of America with this group becoming more
dominant than ever but still marginalized, demeaned and denied real equity
and justice in a country clinging to its Christian white supremacist roots.
That can only change with mass civil disobedience street protests, employer
boycotts and a campaign targeting Congress for justice long delayed and
denied and now demanded in the current legislative session. Real change
never comes from the top down. It's always from the bottom up that's
unstoppable when enough people mobilize in the streets and halls of power
for it.
That's where things now are entering spring that promises months of rallies
and protests around the country. With enough of them, Congress might start
hearing the Immigrant Solidarity Network's message that "We are all humans
(and) no one is illegal," and the one from the Mexican American Political
Association that Mexican and Hispanic people want and deserve the same
constitutional and democratic freedoms all others in America are entitled
to. That's what they say and want. Now they're coming out again demanding
it. Stay tuned.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Stephen Lendman
Created Mar 29 2007 - 9:18am
Emma Lazarus' memorable words on Lady Liberty's pedestal once had meaning as
a new nation grew. No longer in a country hostile to the tired, the poor,
the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless and many others not
making the grade in a white supremacist Judeo-Christian state worshiping
wealth and privilege. No welcome sign is out for the unwanted poor and
desperate. At best, they're ignored to subsist on their own. At worst,
they're scorned and abused, exploited and discarded like trash or labeled
"terrorists" in a post-9/11 world of mass witch-hunt roundups aimed at
Muslims because of their faith or country of origin and Latinos coming north
to survive the fallout from NAFTA's destructive effects on their lives.
Immigrants of color, the wrong faith or from the wrong parts of the world
are never greeted warmly in "America the Beautiful" that's only for the
privileged and no one else. They're not wanted except to harvest our crops
or do the hard, low-pay, no-benefit labor few others will do. The ground
rules to come were set straight away in our original Nationalization Act of
1790 establishing the first path to citizenship. It wasn't friendly to the
wrong types as permanent status was limited to foreign-born "free white
persons" of "good moral character," meaning people like most of us - our
culture, countries of origin, religion and skin color.
Left out were indentured servants, slaves, free blacks, native Americans
being exterminated, and later Asians and Latinos whose "appearance" wasn't
as acceptable as the whiteness of English-speaking European Christian
settlers and the mix of others from Western European countries like Holland,
Germany and Scandinavia. The law scarcely changed for 162 years until the
1870 15th amendment loosened it enough to include blacks by 1875, no longer
slaves but hardly free and in 1940 gave Latin Americans the same right.
After the war in 1945 it extended it further to Filipinos and Asian Indians.
Original native Americans, whose land this was for thousands of years, only
were enfranchised and given the right of citizenship in their own land when
Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924 after most of them were
exterminated in a genocidal process still ongoing, never mentioned in the
mainstream, and for which no redress was ever made or likely will be.
The 1952 Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act (INA) only
grudgingly did what no law before it allowed. For the first time it made
individuals of all races eligible for citizenship but imposed strict quotas
for those from the Eastern Hemisphere with different standards for
caucasians from the West. But nothing is ever simple and straightforward in
"America the Beautiful." In the early Cold War atmosphere of Joe McCarthy's
communist witch-hunts, anyone accused of leftist sympathies could be
targeted, and any alien so-tagged could be deported, and like today no
evidence was needed.
>From the INA to the present, immigration laws kept changing for better or
>worse, but one thing was constant. White Christian Western Europeans are
>welcomed. Others, especially people of color or the wrong religion, get in
>grudgingly in lesser numbers and receive unequal or harsh treatment when
>they arrive. The 1996 Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) and
>Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)proved it showing
>Democrat presidents can be as mean and nasty as Republicans, especially
>with help from a Republican-controlled Congress.
The 1996 acts were ugly and repressive ignoring the rights of due process
and judicial fairness. They allowed Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) agents to detain legal immigrants without bond, deport them without
discretionary relief, restrict their access to counsel, bar them from
appealing to the courts, and can be applied for even minor offenses little
more than youthful indiscretions. These laws under a Democrat president
"feel(ing) our pain" showed no more compassion or equity than later ones
under George Bush in force today. They allow no second chances and deny
targeted legal immigrants their day in court. Their harshness tears apart
families unjustly made to suffer by a nation hardening its stance to the
wrong kinds of immigrants. They're sent an unwelcome message now much worse
in the age of George Bush with his permanent wars on the world and homeland
"terrorists" meaning anyone called that on his say alone.
It started post-9/11 with the 2001 USA Patriot Act even harsher in its
updated Patriot Act II version. Enacted to combat "terrorism," it's done on
the border with more guards to spot, detain, arrest and incarcerate Latinos
entering the country for a way to survive. For being undocumented and on the
pretext of being suspected "terrorists," they may be indefinitely detained
or deported the way it works under any despotic national security police
state. It's even worse for Muslims, 5000 of whom were rounded up and held
early on with only three of them ever being charged with an offense. And it
got far worse for them after that still ongoing.
Today, federal immigration courts can hold secret hearings for anyone here
illegally or charged with a law violation, no matter how minor. Those
convicted can then be incarcerated or deported to their country of origin
often to face arrest and torture. It's now open season on anyone targeted
with legal protection no longer shielding innocent victims Justice
Department (DOJ) or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) go after. They
includes poor and desperate mostly undocumented Latinos from Mexico and
Central America coming el norte because NAFTA, CAFTA and other neoliberal
unfair trade agreements called "free" destroyed their ability to earn a
living at home leaving them no other choice but come north or perish.
It shouldn't be that way, and promises were made early on that "free trade"
lifted all boats with higher wages and more jobs. Instead millions of jobs
were lost while real wages fell under the effects of a globalized market
system crafted for investor elites to profit at the expense of ordinary
working people paying the price. They've been devastated since by a
sustained massive wealth transfer to the top of the economic pyramid that in
the US alone has been a generational process of well over $1 trillion
annually to corporations and the richest 1%.
For the past 13 years, NAFTA and the rest of globalized trade provided cover
for imperialism on the march for power and profit. It prospers from economic
and shooting wars of conquest with an engineered race to the bottom driven
by giant predatory corporations allied with friendly governments in their
service at the expense of ordinary working people paying the price. The
result - mass and growing poverty, human misery, and ecological destruction
great enough to threaten the ability of the planet to sustain life.
Blame it on the globalized market system. It's the main reason millions
around the world are on the move each year as reported by the International
Labor Organization. In 2005, the number reached an estimated 200 million
fleeing poverty and conflicts, often leaving families behind, heading for
developed countries for jobs and safety unavailable at home.
The toll South of the Border alone after 10 years of NAFTA was devastating
on Mexico's poor and getting progressively worse.
-- Real wages down 20% and the wealth disparity between rich and poor far
greater than in 1994 (NAFTA's first year).
-- Two - three million small farms now gone with Research Director Raul
Hinojosa of the North American Integration and Development Center at UCLA
predicting 10 million small farmers will eventually be forced off the land,
many heading north in desperation.
-- Mexico's banks, railroads, airlines, mines and other industry sold off to
foreign investors, mainly US ones with possible plans under the new Calderon
government to sell off the country's crown jewel - Petroleos Mexicanos
(PEMEX), the state-owned national oil company up to now kept free from Big
Oil predators itching to get their hands on the company and now may have
their chance.
-- Two million hectares of tropical forest turned over to private developers
displacing many thousands of people to make way for "development" and
clear-cutting forests.
-- Crushed homegrown industries unable to compete against subsidized US
giants like behemoth Wal-Mart (Wal-Mex) now the country's largest private
employer and biggest retailer in Latin America.
The Message to Immigrants On Our Southern Border - No Vacancy, or Enter As
Indentured Servants with No Rights
Post 9/11, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed establishing the
repressive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and in March, 2003 its
largest investigative and enforcement arm - the US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency (ICE) charged with protecting the public safety by
identifying and targeting "criminal" and "terrorist" threats to the country,
most of whom, in fact, are just desperate people whose NAFTA-ruined lives at
home force them el norte to survive.
ICE was established to head them off at the border or hunt them down
ruthlessly once here. It's comprised of four integrated divisions with
responsibilities over the nation's infrastructure, economic security,
transportation system and the subject of this essay - policing our southern
border with Mexico going after people the color of the earth victims
suffering for what we did to them by our made-in-Washington trade and other
unfair economic policies. So the gloves are off, anything goes, and ICE is
free to rampage with its large share of DHS's total budget now up to $43
billion, heading for $46.5 in the president's submitted FY 2008 budget.
On the Homeland Security web site, ICE openly boasts about what it should be
condemned for. At FY-end 2006 on October 30, it listed what it called
"historic results (and) new records for enforcement activity" including:
-- Total work site arrests sevenfold greater than in FY 2002.
-- Ended the former practice of "catch and release" ICE called "the greatest
impediment to border control." It substituted the harsher practice of catch
and incarcerate or catch and deport - or hound, threaten, catch, brutalize,
incarcerate, then deport victimized people who'll try again to survive.
-- Removed a record high number of 186,000 "illegal aliens" and increased
its detention bed space by 6300 to a FY-end total of 27,500 with an average
daily number of incarcerated or detained immigrants up to 26,000 since July
and rising.
-- Increased the number of "fugitive operations teams" nationwide from 18 to
50 charged with locating, apprehending and removing "criminal aliens"
meaning alien victims called criminals. Through its Operation Return to
Sender, ICE arrested 14,356 aliens and deported 4716 of them from May 26 to
September 30, 2006. ICE intends having 75 teams operating by end of FY 2007
to up the numbers considerably which they'll do.
-- Created a national center operating at all ICE detention facilities to
deport "criminal aliens" when released from incarceration. Most will be
back.
-- Completed a record high number of "arms and strategic technology"
investigations by doubling the number of personnel assigned to do them and
by implementing new electronic data entry procedures to track immigration
"violators" and "fugitives."
-- Claimed it dismantled the large Colombia Cali drug cartel to stem illegal
narcotics trafficking while failing to acknowledge other US agencies, most
notably CIA, have a long sordid history of drugs trafficking worldwide as an
important revenue source with CIA now partnered with Northern Alliance
warlords in Afghanistan (among others around the world) having turned the
country into a narco-state, according to a UN report, supplying 92% of the
world's opium used for heroin.
-- Conducted financial investigations of human smuggling and other
immigration related cases resulting in asset seizures of $42 million or
double the amount gotten in FY 2004.
-- Through its Operation Community Shield arrested 3700 since February, 2005
including 2290 suspected "gang members."
-- From worksites, arrested 716 workers (and a few employers getting mere
wrist slaps) on "criminal" charges and 3667 individuals on "administrative"
charges - a sevenfold increase in total arrests from FY 2002.
-- Worked with Department of Justice (DOJ) in document and immigration
benefits fraud cases resulting in 235 investigations, 189 arrests and 80
convictions.
-- Expanded its partnership with state and local authorities training 40
state and county law enforcement officers as part of the 287(g) program of
immigration enforcement with additional partnerships to come.
ICE listed a disturbing array of other FY-end 2006 "achievements" involving
enhanced intelligence gathering and analysis; targeting "national security
threats;" detecting, tracking and arresting visa violators; "enhancing
border security;" targeting transnational gangs, human smugglers and sexual
predators; targeting money launderers and others committing financial crimes
while granting de facto immunity to large US banks, including major
international money center ones, known to launder drug money as one of their
major profit centers; and much more.
DHS/ICE Billions for the Border
With a budget increased by 50% over five years ago, DHS/ICE has billions to
use guarding our borders from "dangerous" poor people. Ignored is that those
working here pay billions more in federal, state and local taxes for
performing services (in jobs others don't want) than they get back in meager
benefits like sub-standard education for their children in inner city or
other public schools and inadequate health care when they're sick.
Still they come from need, not choice in a risky, dangerous journey starting
with what it costs for help getting here. It's plenty extorted by Coyote
smugglers and other predatory intermediaries treating them like pollos
(chickens) once on their way north. They get crammed in trucks and cars,
travel after dark, and aren't prepared for the hazards they'll face
including 115 degree or higher summer temperatures crossing an unforgiving
desert that end up killing hundreds each year from exposure who when found
are just anonymous John Does leaving families behind never knowing what
happened or what to do next.
And handling those risks depends on getting past heavy DHS/ICE border
security in place post-9/11. They're ready and waiting with video cameras,
state of the art motion sensors, infrared goggles, other security
electronics and helicopters with forward-looking infrared (FLIR) scopes plus
an unforgiving thuggish army of 6000 or more National Guard troops as part
of Operation Jumpstart. They supplement the Border Patrol agent staff of
12,349 heading for 17,819 proposed for FY 2008, double the number it had in
FY 2001.
Add to this army an extremist well-funded volunteer force in place called
the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) or "Minutemen" for short. Their
name comes from those "ready in a minute men" dating back to the mid-1600s
when volunteers were trained to be first on the scene to defend their
communities in case of conflict. Today's Minutemen on our southern border
are for offense, not defense. All they defend is white supremacy and racial
hatred against poor, desperate people unable to survive at home. Left no
other choice, they come north, but doing it pits them against these
ultra-hard right volunteer paramilitary thugs licensed to kill. They man the
southern border by the thousands hunting down and terrorizing anyone caught
entering the country without visas.
They're supported by other anti-immigrant hate groups and organizations like
the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR, not to be confused
with the noted media watch group using the same acronym standing for
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting). The racist FAIR is lobbying Congress for
repressive immigration legislation that will deny Latinos and others coming
here basic civil and human rights by stepping up harsh border security,
increasing Gestapo-like crackdowns against those already here, and giving
predatory corporations the right to exploit the ones allowed in or manage to
come anyway. The fate of millions of honest, hard-working immigrant families
depends on exposing and stopping the kind of work these groups do and what
they stand for.
In spite of them and all the other hazards they face, and word gets back
about them, the courageous poor keep coming for a better life to support
their families usually left behind desperate for whatever aid their loved
ones can send back. No amount of manpower, security and technology in place
can stop them. Those caught and sent back try again, eventually
circumventing the obstacles against them on a near-2000 mile long border,
all of which can't be patrolled. But that takes them into the harshest
stretches of desert many each year never leave. And still they come, risking
everything, tens of thousands each year, their numbers growing as NAFTA and
neoliberal market-imposed rules leave them no choice - head north or perish.
Congressional Reform or Deform in 2007
Things could change if trade was fair, not unfair, under made-in-Washington
one-way "free trade" rules legalizing unfairness, especially in areas like
agriculture so crucial to millions of small farmers in developing countries
like Mexico forced off the land unable to compete against heavily subsidized
US agribusiness. But carrots aren't on the legislative docket in Congress,
only assorted sticks in the stalled compromise immigration bill providing no
relief the way things are progressing so far in both Houses.
So-called "immigration reform" stalled last year after the House passed the
repressive HR 4437 Sensenbrenner bill, The Border Protection,
Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Act of 2005, in December, 2005. It
was a law only racists and hatemongers could love. It galled, or
embarrassed, enough senators to clean it up some and pass S 2611, the
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act or Hagel-Martinez bill last May. It was
still bad enough to create a permanent underclass of low-paid workers, allow
employers the right to exploit them, place restraints on wages and benefits,
and create a nightmarish multi-tiered bureaucratic structure for temporary
partial legalization leaving out of the mix millions of undocumented workers
already here and delaying citizenship for those eligible for almost two
decades.
Workers, most unions and others for immigrant rights oppose this bill, but
shamefully it's supported by the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU) and UNITE HERE representing hotel, food service, apparel, textile and
gaming industries with both unions sacrificing their members' rights for
whatever the leadership gets from collaborating with employers and
Washington.
Proposed Immigration Legislation Includes A New Bracero Program
New immigration legislation proposed in Congress leaves in it most of the
harsh measures in S 2611 including a new temporary or guest worker plan with
shades of the infamous Bracero Program in force from 1942 - 1964. It created
a system of indentured servitude ongoing to this day, even after its
official end, with an army of serfs with no rights giving employers the
legal right to exploit over 4.6 million Mexican migrant farm workers. They
were denied basic rights; got only temporary, low-wage jobs; often were
cheated out of pay earned; held in virtual captivity by employers seizing
their documents; denied the right to change jobs freely; forced to live in
squalid conditions; denied medical care or benefits for injuries received;
forced to endure severe harassment and oppression from employers knowing
they could ship braceros home whenever they complained too much about what
they had plenty to complain about. It happened in 1954 when a recession
triggered a political backlash against Mexican communities resulting in the
deportation or flight of over one million Mexican migrant workers and their
families under Operation Wetback including children born here as US
citizens.
Today, 120,000 foreign guest workers receive temporary H-2 visas established
under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 for farm and other
low-skilled work (H-2A for farm and H-2B for the rest), usually for three to
nine months, under conditions similar to the former Bracero Program under
which they were mistreated and cheated on entry, while here and on the way
out in a cycle of abuse sure to be repeated if a George Bush-style guest
worker program becomes law. Even professional workers are harmed under the
H-1B program assuring they, like non-professionals, are marginalized and
mistreated under a system where employers control everything, and workers
are just indentured servants with no choice but to take it or leave it and
go home.
Immigrant rights groups oppose the legislation, and the National Alliance
for Immigrants' Rights wants full legalization for all immigrant workers in
the country and a halt to all raids and deportations - provisions not in the
compromise bill and unlikely to be added. Fear of arrest haunts the
undocumented at a time when terrorism in the news trumps immigrant worker
rights, especially Latinos (and Muslims) getting none.
That came out in a scathing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report based
on thousands of guest worker interviews and dozens of legal cases
documenting appalling abuses of vulnerable immigrants unable to get redress.
SPLC's Immigrant Justice Project director, Mary Bauer, said: "Guest workers
are usually poor people who are lured here by the promise of decent jobs.
But all too often, their dreams are based on lies, their hopes shattered by
the reality of a system that treats them as commodities. They're the
disposable workers of the global economy." SPLC president Richard Cohen
added: "The mistreatment of temporary workers in America today is one of the
major civil rights issues of our time."
New Senate and House immigration bills will soon be debated including
bipartisan legislation unveiled March 22 in the House by Latino Democrat
Luis Gutierrez and Republican Jeff Flake. Sadly, it's little more than the
usual "same old, same old." In this case, it's largely a rehash of last
year's stalled S 2611 bill that rightfully is sure to mobilize immigrants'
rights groups against it. It proposes a repressive guest worker bracero
program with provisions allowing those qualified to get three year visas
renewable for another three years after which workers would be forced to go
home. To be eligible, immigrants would have to learn English, pass criminal
and security checks and pay back taxes ignoring the fact that most all
undocumented workers already pay taxes, give far more than they get back,
and are honest hard-working people.
To get a green card then and be eligible for future legal residency (only
for those arriving before June 1, 2006), they'd then have to go home (under
the so-called "touch back" provision) and start again. They'd also have to
pay a $2000 fine and prove to authorities they're model material enough to
qualify to stay here. More than half the bill is even more repressive. It
contains harsh provisions for stepped up DHS/ICE (paramilitary) border
security above what's now in place with more manpower and a multi-billion
dollar high-tech border surveillance "shield" now under construction. Other
provisions include a mandated biometric system employers must use to verify
workers have legal status while overall this bill, like the others from both
Houses, contains a corporate wish list at the expense of undocumented Latino
immigrants it wishes to exploit. In short, it's appalling and will surely be
opposed on the streets en masse around the country in the spring and summer.
This proposal and others will be on the docket in both Houses for debate in
coming weeks with final resolution planned for late spring or summer unless
protest opposition delays it again or defeats it. Neither House version
improves much over what stalled legislatively last year, and only mass civil
rights protests like the historic ones in dozens of cities last spring have
a chance to do it or find a way for real immigration reform benefitting
people, not the special interests exploiting them with help from Congress
and the administration.
Support for continued exploitation is driving the political process, even
from unexpected places showing how long the odds are for legislative
justice. It's coming from the National Council of La Raza, "the largest
Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States (working)
to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans." NCLR reaches millions of
Hispanics in and outside the country. It was founded in 1968 by noted labor
organizer, community leader and author Ernesto Galarza who wrote about
braceros being "indentured aliens" and prototypical "production (men) of the
future" stripped of all political and social rights in what he called an
"input factor" to suck worth from and discard. He and labor leaders like
Cesar Chavez and others all campaigned to end the program.
His organization today, under President Janet Murguia, is now an apologist
for corporate America lobbying for braceros at home like the ones they
exploit around the world in a global race to the bottom affecting working
people everywhere. In a February 11 Washington Post op-ed piece, she wrote
her "organization and many (unidentified) Latino leaders (support) a
significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration
reform." Incredibly, Ms. Murguia denounced the original bracero program for
its abuses while advocating a new version of the same thing now. It's no
surprise because NCLR also supported NAFTA before it passed opposing US and
Mexican labor and community-based organizations against it at the time for
all the damage it would do now apparent.
The new guest worker program NCLR supports, in proposed House and Senate
legislation, will embrace all the faults of its bracero predecessor. It will
create a large desperate, defenseless immigrant workforce vulnerable here to
the same kinds of abusive exploitive practices corporate giants inflict on
their overseas workers - denying their right to organize, receive fair wages
and benefits or be guaranteed basic civil and human rights everyone should
have by law. These rights can only come through legislation guaranteeing all
immigrants permanent legal residency, a fairly defined path to citizenship,
and provisions for family members to immigrate so they all can be together.
Immigrant and other civil rights groups also need to lobby and protest for
repeal of the 2006 Deficit Reduction Act denying immigrants the right to
receive Medicaid that's also harming tens of thousands of poor US citizens
having trouble complying with new requirements. They include showing
passports or a combination of an original or certified copy of a birth
certificate and driver's license proving their legal status in the country.
This is another example of the Bush administration's racist war on Latinos
and the poor with Congress going along in a long-term bipartisan effort to
roll back the country's social safety net till nothing in it remains. It's
time human, civil rights and other progressive organizations of all stripes
mounted a combined effort to fight back, no longer being willing to see the
social state destroyed in service to wealth and privilege at the expense of
society's most vulnerable that includes the immigrant population giving
America back much more than it receives and now getting even less.
They may also have to take on another potential opponent - the nation's
oldest and best known environmental group, the Sierra Club founded in 1892
by noted naturalist writer and wilderness preservationist John Muir, that's
up to now been neutral on immigration but no longer. It's leadership split
on the issue with one side called Support US Population Stabilization
(SUSPS) focusing on population control that includes restricting immigration
to preserve the environment. So far, there's no resolution and internal
debate continues, but it needs watching as it's a slippery slope from
advocating responsible world population growth to one focusing on US
immigration that always means those of color, the most vulnerable, and
mainly desperate and impoverished Latinos forced here by made-in-the-US
predatory trade and other neoliberal policies leaving them no other choice.
That should be the Sierra Club's target, not the innocent victims of bad
policies coming here to survive them.
In the Meantime - Terror Raids in the Workplace Continue
Workplace assaults targeting immigrants continue as part of a generational
war on labor including the right of workers to organize and bargain on equal
terms with management. They're also part of the Bush administration's
campaign for a government-controlled (exploitative) new bracero guest worker
program explained by DHS secretary Michael Chertoff's message (through the
media) to Congress for the need for "stronger border security, effective
interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program (because) businesses
(needing) foreign workers....can't otherwise satisfy their labor needs (so
government must help out with) a 'regulated' program." He also told
reporters in Mexico City February 16...."total immigration reform
(addressing) migrants is actually an enforcement enabler because it lets us
focus more on the people that we don't want....criminals and dangerous
folks" - racist code language aimed at Latinos. It's meant to sanction
DHS/ICE detentions and deportations and allow employers the right to abuse
and fire Latino workers on any pretext as part of an endgame strategy,
Operation Wetback-style.
The plan is a shocker. It's to mass-remove an estimated 12 million
undocumented immigrants by 2012 while allowing others under captive contacts
to stay as exploitable guest workers. This was what immigration reform
legislation was all about in 2006 to be repeated when debate begins again in
both Houses and a final bill emerges showing both parties support corporate
interests and will affirm their right to exploit all working people,
starting with guest workers. Part of it includes Chertoff and ICE assistant
sectretary Julie Myers unleashing a paramilitary-style reign of terror
against so-called illegals or undocumented immigrants in the workplace aimed
at easy-to-target Latinos. Both parties want to assure businesses have a
large exploitable documented temporary worker pool they can use as needed,
abuse as they wish, underpay, deny benefits and above all use as a wedge to
destroy organized labor and the rights of all working people in the country.
This is what the racist war on immigrants is all about. It's to empower
employers by creating a workplace of unempowered serfs including US citizens
with few or no rights or job security at the mercy of business to hire and
fire at will and treat their employees as they wish written into the law of
the land. It's to create a "bracero America," corporate America's wet dream.
The Bush administration is using high-profile workplace assaults as a
sinister strategy to get it. Complicit with them are the corporate media
trumpeting the message that desperate Latinos here for jobs to replace ones
NAFTA destroyed are threats to national security. It happened last December
12 in the largest ever workplace raid when ICE storm troops swooped in on
Colorado-based Swift & Company targeting six of its plants. Agents rounded
up 1282 allegedly undocumented immigrant workers, including 170 accused of
identity theft, detained them at the plants, then bussed them across state
lines to be processed with most later released far from home. The raids were
vicious and racist as are all others around the country targeting immigrants
of color. The Hispanic National Bar Association reported December 18
"non-Latinos and light-skinned employees were provided blue wristbands which
exempted them from questioning, while Latinos, persons perceived to be of
Hispanic or Latino origin, underwent immigration processing (the notion
being that) all persons perceived to be Latinos are illegal."
Most immigrant workers at Swift and around the country are
impoverished-by-NAFTA Mexicans or other Latinos driven North for jobs in
desperation resulting from the Global North's failed neoliberal agenda.
They're helpless victims of savage capitalism forced to leave home,
exploited in the workplace, and terrorized by Homeland Security ICE storm
troop enforcers earning their keep at the expense of ordinary working people
targeted as criminals because they're less white than other workers passed
over in the raids.
But that's not how DHS and corporate media trumpeting characterized the
victims. ICE and its media mouthpiece claimed the raids were a major victory
in the war on illegal immigrants, and by implication the so-called "war on
terror" (against innocent people they call "terrorists)." The United Food
and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) representing Swift workers
scoffed at the claims as outrageous denouncing them saying they're "not an
effective form of immigration reform (and) They terrorize workers and
destroy families." ICE also trumpeted a (hollow) victory against criminal
elements supplying phony IDs that could also be used by "terrorists" or as
part of an identity theft scheme victimizing many thousands of US citizens
and lawful residents.
It was subterfuge and part of the current political climate with
headline-making theatrics more important than defending the homeland against
legitimate threats. It showed in the aftermath of this hugely expensive ICE
operation amounting to little more than a PR stunt providing red meat for
hard liners wanting their kind of immigration reform meaning no rights for
workers, especially ones of color. The raid ended up netting 65 "criminal
arrests," many for minor offenses like reentering the country after being
deported, a technical violation rarely resulting in prosecution. The others
were shipped around the country and likely released except for those
voluntarily agreeing to be deported.
The December Swift raid was the largest ever, but immigrant workers
everywhere have reason to fear the same threat that was repeated against
meatpackers from Smithfield Foods' processing plant in Tar Heel, North
Carolina, the largest hog processing plant in the country. Most of its
workers are African-American and Latino, and hundreds of them defied plant
management's refusal to give them the day off by rallying in nearby
Fayetteville honoring Martin Luther King Day January 15.
Retaliation came January 24, when ICE agents raided the plant arresting 21
immigrant meatpackers on trumped up "administrative immigration charges"
meaning they were poor Latinos vulnerable to ICE assaults made to send a
message. DHS supports management rights, not those of working people. The
Tar Heel plant's 5000 workers have been trying to organize within the United
Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) since the early 1990s, but are opposed by
management and its policy of retaliatory firings, intimidation, and beatings
by plant security. Smithfield like other corporate giants plays hardball. So
doesn't ICE acting like Gestapo ruthlessly assaulting working people with
special viciousness reserved for vulnerable Latinos (and Muslims) having no
defense.
Still another ICE assault the AP called "the largest immigration bust in the
history of southern Massachusetts" happened March 6 against Michael Bianco,
Inc. in New Bedford, MA, a manufacturer of high-end leather goods now
producing safety vests and backpacks for the military. In this case,
conditions for workers were deplorable, according to US Attorney Michael
Sullivan, who called them similar to the sweatshops of the early 1900s. He
arrested and charged the owner, three managers and another employee but
freed them pending a court date for hiring undocumented immigrants. It's
likely outcome will be the way it usually is for corporate offenders - a
small wrist slap fine....case dismissed.
Hundreds of workers weren't so fortunate with as many as 350 of them
apprehended and initially detained at Fort Devens for processing. From
there, some were jailed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, others released,
and most were flown to jails in Texas and a few to Miami, far from their
families and facing deportation or incarceration for those unable to prove
they're in the country legally. Most are poor Latino women from Central
America. In the meantime, as in other raids, parents and children are
separated and traumatized, their lives disrupted with an estimated 100
children in this instance, including nursing infants, left stranded with
babysitters and caregivers. Many will end up at the mercy of strangers in
foster care, uncertain of their parents' fate only here to earn enough to
support them. Left unmentioned is that those born here are US citizens
entitled to the constitutional rights they'll never get because they're
less-than-white poor Latinos.
One other example deserves mentioning as well as it's now in the news. This
one is in Pascagoula, Mississippi where hundreds of guest workers from India
are protesting job conditions at Signal International's Gulf coast shipyard
they compare to slavery. Signal brought in about 300 Indian workers in
December and another 300 to work in Texas as part of the H-2B visa program.
Workers got promises of pay and working conditions Signal reneged on plus
workers having to pay recruiting contractor Global Industry (sent by Signal
to India) up to $20,000 to come. They were promised $18 an hour for up to 30
months work but most only got half that amount. They also had to pay Signal
$35 a day to stay in company labor camp barracks inside the yard where
workers described conditions as "very bad (with) 24 of us....in a room in a
barracks that measures 12 feet by 18 feet, sleeping on bunk beds (with) two
toilets for all of us and only 4 sinks."
Workers began meeting at a local church to discuss how to get Signal to
refund their contractor fee, which they said the company promised to do, and
to protest their working conditions. They organized a group called Signal
H-2B Workers United. When the company learned of it, it responded harshly
calling the workers unqualified and cutting their already lower than
promised pay. In addition, eight were declared completely incapable and told
they were being sent home immediately. Outside the yard, dozens of workers
and community supporters protested denouncing the firings and mistreatment.
So far, nothing is resolved, but the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance
and Southern Poverty Law Center are going to court on behalf of the fired
workers to stop their deportations. Other workers still employed are
continuing their actions challenging Signal to refund their contractor-paid
money they're entitled to receive with that issue possibly heading for court
as well.
Plants like Signal's involved Indian workers and wasn't raided because
workers in it were legally recruited by the company. Others, however,
employing Latino immigrants, are savagely assaulted, and so are communities
with programs for day laborers like the Coalition for Humane Immigrant
Rights of Los Angeles targeted in January by ICE sweeps in Southern
California Latino neighborhoods. Coalition leader Antonio Bernabe told
Reuters "The police didn't just take people with deportation orders, they
took anybody--guys who were just hanging out in the street and even from a
Jack in the Box restaurant....and now people are afraid to go out." The
sweep aimed mainly at Latinos, mostly Mexican nationals, sent a message
following George Bush's State of the Union address calling for
"comprehensive immigration reform" combining a (mean-spirited) guest worker
(bracero) worker program with tougher workplace and border enforcement
meaning it's open season on Latinos and working people overall.
Immigrant Communities and Supportive Organizations Respond
Immigrant communities and organizations are fighting back against ICE
rampaging terror raids and are rallying their members and supporters to take
a stand. The Immigrant Solidarity Network is promoting May Day 2007 and a
National Mobilization to Support Immigrant Workers Rights calling for a
"national day of multi-ethnic unity with youth, labor, (and) peace and
justice communities with immigrant workers and building (a)new immigrant
rights & civil rights movement."
Proudly and boldly they proclaim "We are all human! No one is illegal! It's
call to action stands for:
-- No anti-immigration legislation or criminalization of immigrant
communities.
-- No militarization of the border with fences or other barriers.
-- No more immigration detentions, deportations or funding for immigrant
detention centers.
-- No oppressive guest worker two-tiered program allowing employers the
right to pay visa workers lower wages, provide no labor protections, and
offer little or no right to future US citizenship.
-- No employer "no-match" Social Security letters to fire immigrants and
repeal of employer sanction law.
-- Yes to a clear, fair one-tiered path for undocumented workers to gain
legal status and an opportunity for citizenship.
-- Yes to family reunifications through additional visa numbers and
elimination of long family reunification backlog delays.
-- Yes to strengthening existing labor law protection to include all
immigrant workers including their human and civil rights.
-- Yes to the right to organize and bargain collectively on equal terms with
management.
-- Yes to the Dream Act with provisions for states to aid immigrants with
benefits like providing in-state tuition aid and enable students of good
moral character to qualify for legal residency.
-- Yes to extending benefits to LGBT immigrant families, passing the Uniting
American Families Act for same sex and unmarried partners, and lifting the
HIV ban on immigration.
Other organizations as well are working for immigrant rights. They include:
-- The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). It calls
itself the most influential Hispanic advocacy group in the country standing
for open-borders and for all legal and undocumented immigrants to be
entitled to the same rights as US citizens.
-- The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). It calls
itself the most important organization for day laborer rights in the
Northeast standing for real immigration reform so that millions of the
undocumented have a clear path for legalization and citizenship.
-- The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR). It's a
broad-based organization advocating for immigrants, refugees, community,
religious, civil rights, labor and activists. It promotes a just immigration
and refugee policy defending and expanding the rights of legal and
undocumented immigrants and refugees.
-- The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). It advocates for
people of Arabic origin harshly treated post 9/11 and was a co-plaintiff
challenging Section 215 of the Patriot Act allowing for government access to
medical, educational and library records relating to "terrorism"
investigations or others claimed for national security. At least two ADC
chapters publicly condemned immigrant apprehensions, detentions,
disappearances, the denial of legal representation, and "secret military (or
other) tribunals calling these actions chilling "similarities to a police
state."
-- The Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA). It calls itself the most
effective legal fund in the country committed to preserving, safeguarding
and promoting the civil and legal rights of American-Islamic institutions
and Muslim Americans.
-- The Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI) formed in
response to increased workplace raids by the INS, now DHS/ICE. It advocates
for undocumented immigrants' labor rights (mainly Mexicans) confronting
"anti-immigrant policies through grassroots education and action."
-- The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) - an organization involved in
training more than 800 nonprofit personnel and attorneys in areas of
immigration law including naturalization, deportation defense, ethics, and
Delayed Enforced Departure. It condemns the harsh practices now employed
against immigrant communities and in the workplace as unconstitutional.
Street Protest Actions with More Planned
Protests for immigrants' rights are beginning in cities around the country
like the week of them in the San Francisco Bay Area from February 26 through
March 2. Throughout the week, community leaders, people of faith, labor
leaders, teachers and youths rallied against ICE raids and guest worker
programs speaking out for "yes to legalization for all (undocumented
workers)."
Similar actions are planned elsewhere including in Chicago by a group called
the March 10 Movement named after the 500,000-strong largest ever protest in
the city held on that date in 2006. They'll include rallies for passage of
real immigration reform including a path to legalization for all
undocumented workers and an end to detentions and deportations. The first of
the planned marches was held on March 10 - of course - in the city's
downtown area to be repeated each week "until there is a real solution" from
Congress, signed into law. If they follow through, it will mean a long
spring and summer of protest marches.
Last year's mass Chicago march inspired millions of immigrants and
supporters to rally in cities around the country that helped defeat the
worst parts of anti-immigration legislation mostly crafted in the racist
House Sensenbrenner bill now a dead letter. Since then, however, no progress
for reform has been made and pending action from the compromise House-Senate
bill and most recent new House proposal will continue an ongoing war on
immigrants only mass opposition street protests have a chance to stop the
way last year's actions achieved modest success now stalled and slipping.
That's how things are now in a nation dedicated to permanent war, a
bipartisan criminal class in Washington beholden to capital, and workers
everywhere losing out in a race to the bottom. Poor Latinos (and all
Muslims) face some of the worst of it, and those in Mexico and Central
America face a Hobson's choice. Wither at home under NAFTA and CAFTA or try
making it north to suffer abuse and neglect in an uncaring state dedicated
to keeping its tired and poor and huddled masses permanently that way.
That's the message from Congress in the kind of "immigration reform" being
crafted, but Latinos and others on the streets have other ideas.
At over 45 million strong, Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in the
country and fastest growing with its Mexican component rising fastest of
all. Nowhere is this more apparent than in California where about one-third
of all Latinos live and make up over one-third of the state's population of
36 million. It's even more pronounced in Los Angeles where Latinos are now a
majority providing a future glimpse of America with this group becoming more
dominant than ever but still marginalized, demeaned and denied real equity
and justice in a country clinging to its Christian white supremacist roots.
That can only change with mass civil disobedience street protests, employer
boycotts and a campaign targeting Congress for justice long delayed and
denied and now demanded in the current legislative session. Real change
never comes from the top down. It's always from the bottom up that's
unstoppable when enough people mobilize in the streets and halls of power
for it.
That's where things now are entering spring that promises months of rallies
and protests around the country. With enough of them, Congress might start
hearing the Immigrant Solidarity Network's message that "We are all humans
(and) no one is illegal," and the one from the Mexican American Political
Association that Mexican and Hispanic people want and deserve the same
constitutional and democratic freedoms all others in America are entitled
to. That's what they say and want. Now they're coming out again demanding
it. Stay tuned.
--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson