“After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor”. That is how the August 4th edition of the New York Times describes Obama’s policies towards immigrants.
Besides the militarization of the Mexican border, Obama’s programs to persecute immigrants seem to be an inoffensive soup of letters: 287(g), e-verify, I-9. But they are not. 287(g) empowers state, county and local police to enforce immigration law: to detain undocumented immigrants and deport them. Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa (AZ), is using this legal expansion of his powers to mobilize his notorious backlash against immigrants.
E-verify is a computer program to check the validity of social security numbers. Now 170 thousand companies that have contracts with the federal administration have to check their new and current employees’ social security numbers. For other companies, checking is available but not mandatory.
I-9 is a kind of electronic raid. More than 600 companies were electronically identified as having visible numbers of immigrants and because of that are under inspection. 260 Farm Hill workers had their contracts terminated because of this checking.
Obama officials declare that these enforcements are necessary steps for the Immigration Reform to be launched in the next months. This Reform is not intended to guarantee immigrants rights. Rather, the path for citizenship would be full of obstacles: mandatory English skills, fines for “illegal” immigrants that would go to the end of the line for legalization. The Reform would be completed with the aim of providing the necessary cheap and exploitable labor for the corporations – a guest workers program.
The noisy right-wing politicians and bourgeois media are, as ever, fighting to illegalize all immigrants. Their hypocrisy hides their sponsors: the corporations and landowners that benefit from this cheap “illegal” labor.
Human rights organizations are accusing Obama’s programs of racial profiling when searching for “illegals” (Latinos are the main targets) and inaccuracy of Social Security controls. The inhumanity of the detentions centers and their officials like Joe Arpaio are mentioned as well. These are all real issues. Nevertheless the main issue to be addressed is: do immigrants have the right for citizenship or not?
La Voz de los Trabajadores fights for legalization for all. All workers contribute to the wealth of this country. Consequently they should be entitled to decide the destiny of this wealth as citizens. This right is in the origin of the United States, a nation of immigrants. We support the legacy of the Russian Revolution that gave citizenship to all workers wherever the country they or their parents were born and we fight for a world without borders.
It is time to go back to the streets!
The Farm Hill workers are leading the way. They formed a workers’ council and are calling all immigrants, human rights organizations, unions, churches, parties to rebuild the huge mobilizations that stopped the Sensenbrenner legislation in 2006. That is the only way to stop Obama’s backlash against immigrants.
La Voz de los Trabajadores (Workers Voice) supports the Farm Hill workers and make ours their call and their struggle. We urge the AFL-CIO and Change to Win particularly to split away from the Democratic Party and take the lead. The majority of immigrants are workers and the unions should be the champions for immigrant’s rights. Immigrants should gather their coworkers and demand that their unions mobilize their bases and take this fight to the streets.
See the call from Farm Hill workers in www.immigrationcoalition.org
