The passage of anti-immigrant SB1070 in the Arizona legislature on April 23 marked a heightened period of struggle over the democratic rights of immigrants. The intensified repression of undocumented immigrants under SB 1070 would make being undocumented a state offense.
Local police are to check for a person’s immigration status during routine arrests. The police are to pursue any individual about their legal status if “reasonable suspicion” exists that they may be without documentation, which will inevitably target all Latino and brown-skinned people in a chase to deport immigrants. The authorizing of local police agencies to actively pursue the arrest and detention of undocumented immigrants increases the threat faced by immigrants by placing immigration enforcement in the hands of the local government, in addition to, and supposedly held exclusively by, the federal government. SB 1070 was set to become law on July 29.
The nightmare that is brewing in Arizona is not isolated from the situation of undocumented immigrants in the rest of the United States. Similar measures to SB 1070 are being proposed by politicians in as many as 18 states. Denied any rights and regularly vilified in the corporate media, undocumented workers are confronted by a whole range of repressive measures aimed at preserving their status as cheap, expendable labor. The nefarious Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency carries out a reign of terror responsible for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers every year and leaving those who remain under the constant threat they will be ripped from their families and jobs.
There is nothing that resembles a humane or pro-immigrant policy in the new government leadership. Deportations exceeded over 300,000 in Obama’s first year in office, more than in any year under the Bush Administration. At the same time, the Obama Administration is continuing to criminalize immigrants and militarize the border and is sending hundreds of troops to the border, with more planned in the coming months. Contrary to the token gestures made by Democrat politicians and the liberal media against the “misguided” or “misplaced” legislation in Arizona, the policies favored by the Democratic Party at the national level include the increased militarization of the border, increased police pressure (i.e. ICE collaboration with local police and workplace checks), and punitive measures that include fines. These ultimately aim to culminate in a guest-worker program that creates a class of indentured servants for the bourgeoisie to use, abuse, and discard when no longer needed. In the “bi-partisan” Schumer-Graham Bill, these measures are supplemented by a police-state proposal that would require all residents to carry biometric social security cards to obtain work. This is what Obama’s “bi-partisan consensus on comprehensive immigration reform” looks like.
Immigrants, and especially those undocumented, in the United States and around the world, are almost without exception (outside political refugees) workers who have been displaced from their native countries through the spread and integration of world capitalism. For example, NAFTA, passed in 1994 under the Clinton government, ruined a large portion of Mexican agriculture and is directly responsible for the great surge of Mexican emigration to the United States in the past decade-and-a-half. While maintaining an open immigration policy in times of economic growth, the United States government, like every other capitalist state, implements persecution and repression in times of economic crisis. The attacks on immigrants serve three inter-related purposes:
1.The denial of social and political rights serves to enforce the super-exploitation of immigrant workers, who are made to endure the worst working conditions, the lowest wages, and constant insecurity. The hypocrisy of both Democrat and Republican politicians lies precisely in the fact that the social class which they represent- the owners of the productive enterprises- exploit immigrant labor in the most ruthless fashion for increased profits.
2. The spread of xenophobia and anti-immigrant prejudices among the American working-class is for the purpose of dividing the working-class in their collective struggle against the real social sources of their insecurity, poverty, unemployment, etc- the bosses, owners of large agricultural lands, the bankers, etc. Divide-and-Conquer is the supreme tactic of the ruling-class, and they have employed anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States time and again, from the vilification of the Irish and German in the mid-19th century to the anti-Chinese mobs and internment of the Japanese during the first half of the 20th. The attack on immigrants is a control-mechanism on all working people.
3. The curtailment of immigrants’ rights serves as a pretext for a vast expansion of the police power of the state. From militarizing the border, to creating and extending domestic security agencies, to the proposals for national id cards- these measures collectively aim at strengthening the power and scope of the state, and threaten citizens and non-citizens alike.
The struggle for the rights and full equality of immigrants has re-surfaced under the weight of the attacks leveled against them. 200 thousand marched in Washington on March 22. Hundreds of thousands poured onto the streets on May Day. Protests across the country erupted as workers, students, and community members fought to overturn SB1070.
On Thursday, July 29, hours before SB 1070 was to be implemented, a federal judge blocked some of the more heinous portions of the bill, including the section that required police to check for immigration status while conducting regular operations. Arizona has challenged the ruling while state politicians across the country have not been deterred from trying to implement similar legislation. Utah state Rep. Carl Wimmer said frankly, “The ruling… should not be a reason for Utah to not move forward.” Meanwhile other measures of the bill do go into effect, including new prohibitions on driving and the so-called “harboring” of undocumented immigrants.
No faith in the Obama administration
Let it be clear: this action by the federal courts does not mean the federal government or the Obama administration will legalize or fight for the rights of immigrants. In the first place, the decisions of the court are a response to the mobilizations of hundreds of thousands over the past months in opposition to the SB 1070 and the attacks against immigrants. A goal of the federal government is to retain federal control of immigration enforcement while giving the impression that President Obama is fulfilling his election campaign promise to support the rights of immigrants. Under Obama’s leadership, ICE and Homeland Security are going through a period of massive growth that is setting up an infrastructure capable of deporting the entire undocumented population, what ICE refers to as “Operation Endgame” in one of their founding documents. Workplace electronic raids have increased six-fold since Obama took office. Under Obama deportations are set to reach historic figures of 400,000 people for 2010. Government programs such as 287(g), which deputizes local authorities to take over (federal) immigration functions (alongside other states, run in 4 counties in CA, including Los Angeles) and “Secure Communities” under which local authorities turn over detained individuals to ICE (Obama administration has publicly supported it), already establish cooperation between local police and federal immigration agents in ways strikingly similar to SB 1070. As we can see, we can have no faith in the Obama administration that is in fact extending the persecution of immigrant. It is only the struggle of millions that will win the rights of immigrants.
Building an alternative United Front for Legalization
The immigrant movement is fighting for Papers for All. Yet, the main coalition for immigrant rights, RIFA (Reform Immigration for America), is supportive of Representative Luis Gutierrez’s bill, which combines militarization of the border and the implementation of the E-Verify program with a path to legalization for only a portion of the undocumented population.
It is essential that the organizations that represent the interests of workers, especially the trade unions, mobilize in defense of their immigrant brothers and sisters for the right of all workers to live and work in the country they choose with full protection and rights. Currently, the leadership of most of the major unions either actively support the attacks against immigrants like the E-verify or a guest-worker program, or they resign themselves to passive declarations that never translate into organizing efforts or action. Either way, the trade union leaders weaken the entire working class they are supposed to represent by their lack of action to fight for the protection and rights of immigrant workers, some of them already in unions!
It is necessary to bring together all initiatives that are pushing for Unconditional Legalization / Amnesty for All – without militarization or any further repressive measures, in order to build an Alternative Militant United Front for Immigrant’s Rights.
