Members of the U.S. Senate, as well as the Bush administration, are currently
attempting to revive the most recent immigration proposal, which, among
other things, would separate families, heighten worker exploitation, further
militarize the U.S./Mexico border, and provide no realistic path to residency
for the vast majority of undocumented people now living in the U.S. This
legislative proposal, as most “compre- hensive immigration reform” proposals
in the past couple of years, will lead to more suffering and deaths and
is nothing short of a human rights abomination.
Why has it been difficult for the immigrant rights struggle to push for
a just legalization, or amnesty law? What must we do to build a more powerful
and radical movement?
Part of the reason why immigrant rights activists have failed in holding
the U.S. government accountable is because of the tremendous challenges.
First, the intense level of state-sponsored terror against immigrant communities
has made it difficult to organize in those communities. Since early this
year, the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) have harassed, arrested, detained, and deported over 20,000 migrants
under “Operation Return To Sender.” Throughout the country, in cities and
small towns, hundreds of workers are being rounded up at their worksites
and deported. Some recent examples: at an Oregon Del Monte plant uniformed
ICE agents use Gestapo-type tactics to force their way into people’s homes
without warrants; parents in Redwood City, California were picked up as
they dropped their children off at school; and people who “looked immigrant”
were randomly questioned by the ICE on streets in San Francisco, California.
A second challenge involves the way migration has been characterized as
a “criminal” or “illegal” issue, not as a consequence of global economic
policies promoted by U.S. corporate interests. “Illegal immigrants break
the law to get here so have no right to be here,” say racist, anti-immigrant
forces, as well as moderates and even liberals in this country. Criminality,
or illegality, is therefore addressed with punitive policies, including
border and inland enforcement, employer sanctions, and denial of benefits
and services. Such punitive measures have never deterred people from migrating
to the U.S., but do cause intense suffering, the separation of families,
job exploitation, and deaths because migrants are so desperate for economic
survival that they are willing to endure these hardships.
Migrants to the U.S. are not criminals, but rather economic refugees of
U.S. policies, including free trade agreements that displace thousands
of workers and farmers. For example, the North American and Central American
Free Trade Agreements (NAFTA and CAFTA) ended subsidies on agricultural
products in Mexico and Central America. This forced corn grown by indigenous
farmers without subsidies to compete in their own countries’ markets with
corn from huge U.S. producers, sub- sidized by the U.S. farm bill.
Between 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost 900,000 jobs in the countryside, and
700,000 in the cities. After the treaty was implemented, six million Mexicans
came to live in the United States.
A third challenge facing the immigrant rights movement is that corporate
interests are fighting ferociously for “reform” legislation that includes
a new and expansive guestworker program. In his writings, David Bacon describes
how companies like Oracle and Microsoft are looking for ways to revive
the most recent Senate bill, which contains a massive guest- worker program.
Such a program, explains Bacon, treats immigrants as a reserve of cheap
labor. It sets up contract labor programs, allowing employers to recruit
migrants, who must remain employed or else be deported. In exchange for
the promise of legalization, the current Senate bill requires undocumented
workers to spend more than a decade as contract workers with few rights
and no incentive to complain about exploitative working conditions. within
this context, it has been an uphill battle fighting for just legalization
.
So, in view of these challenges, what do we do to build a viable movement
that has the power to push for real changes? The following are a few ideas:
We need to bring organized labor on board. While unions like the AFL/CIO
have come out in opposition to the legislative proposals, the SEIU International
has supported almost all of them, even when these contain guestworker programs
and other anti-immigrant provisions. Labor unions like SEIU must disassociate
themselves from this coalition of Washington lobby groups, large employers,
and conservative think tanks that are promoting new temporary worker programs.
They must follow the lead of immigrant rank and file members and support
proposals that do not betray the interests of workers or of the workers’
rights movement.
We must support grassroots immigrant organizing and leadership much more
aggressively. An overwhelming number of grassroots and membership immigrant
rights organizations have come out against the current immigration proposal.
People on the ground are conscious that negotiating away major rights while
gaining little is not an option. We should work with these groups so that
their message and their power are brought forward. Otherwise, we’re stuck
with the approach of many of the immigration proposals’ proponents, including
a network of lobbyists referred to in the press as “immigration advocates.”These groups, including the National Immigration Forum and the National
Council of La Raza, have all along supported a legalization/enforcement/guestworker
program tradeoff and have sold out the majority of the immigrant community.
As organizers, we must focus less on meaningless negotiations and more
on building power and leadership among those impacted, namely undocumented
immigrants.
We must build multi-racial unity. Immigrants, people of color, poor and
oppressed people in this country continue to bear the burden of attacks,
criminalization and scapegoating. Latino and Asian immigrants, African
Americans, homeless groups, LGBT, and others are successfully working together
and forging alliances. For example, in California’s Bay Area, a group of
African American organizers formed a group called Black Americans For Just
Immigration (BAJI), which works with various immigrant rights organizations
to make the connections of oppression more explicit for people. Immigrant
and African-American organizers in San Francisco have worked together to
make connections between the deportation of Latinos and the displacement
of African Americans from their neighborhoods due to gentrification.
We must define, or characterize, migration as human rights and workers’rights issues. Migration and immigration cannot be adequately discussed
or dealt with unless we address it in terms of economic injustice. Therefore,
we must address the underlying causes of people’s desperation that causes
them to migrate to the U.S.: global economic policies and trade agreements.
A major demand of our movement should be that the U.S. government repeal
NAFTA.
We need to combat immigrant scapegoating by exposing how the U.S. capitalist
system is causing economic and social insecurities in this country, not
migrants. We know that undocumented immigrants do not cause joblessness—corporate
downsizing, corporate outsourcing, and an economy that is based more and
more on prioritizing the military industrial complex do. We know that undocumented
immigrants do not cause crime and instability in this country—poverty,
tax breaks for the rich, and the de-prioritization of resources invested
in human needs do. Let us be on the offensive when it comes to stopping
immigrant bashing.
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We must continue to fight for legalization as the solution, not guestworker
programs. Temporary worker programs are inherently exploitative and they
weaken the labor and workers rights movements. They only benefit the bosses
who want a constant source of cheap, exploitable labor. Instead, we should
support immigration proposals that strengthen family unification, protect
workers’ rights, and make residency easy to obtain.
Despite the many challenges currently facing the immigrant rights movement,
our community is courageous and creative. We will continue to struggle
until we achieve amnesty and justice for all.
Z
Renee Saucedo is an attorney and organizer with La Raza Centro Legal and
the San Francisco Day Labor Program in San Francisco, California.
