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NEWS & LETTERS, June -July 2007EditorialImmigrants’ movement still on the marchStrong turnout across the country for the May 1 immigrants’ rights marches indicate that the vibrant movement that emerged in spectacular fashion in 2006 is alive and well. In Chicago--in many ways the epicenter of the movement--the numbers participating exceeded the organizers’ conservative projections. In Los Angeles, a small but energetic march was brutally attacked without cause by police, who fired rubber bullets into the crowd and assaulted journalists (See <a href="MayDayJun07.doc">"LAPD assault on May Day marchers"</a>). These marches, along with the numerous others that took place across the country, demonstrated that a year filled with racist anti-immigrant backlash and government repression has been unable to diminish the movement’s momentum. The anti-immigrant reaction since May Day 2006 assumed a wide range of forms--from the militia organizing efforts of the nativist Minutemen Project to the more sophisticated media campaign of influential CNN host Lou Dobbs. It also expressed itself in punitive raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on workplaces and homes across the country. These raids resulted in stories of families being ripped apart--parents being held in inadequate and overcrowded detention facilities and women and children hiding for days at a time in forests to avoid being arrested. In Chicago, a paramilitary-style raid on a shopping mall in the heart of the Mexican immigrant community in late April helped to galvanize participation in the May 1 march. SENATE BILL The most dramatic development since the May 1 marches was the unveiling of a major immigration bill in the U.S. Senate. The bill was drafted behind closed doors in close consultation with the White House and represents a bipartisan attempt to get the immigration issue off the political agenda for the time being. The bill, while offering a long and expensive path towards citizenship for most of the undocumented workers in the country, substantially alters the past precedent of allowing immigrant citizens to bring family members into the country and replaces it with a system based on individual "merit"--a point system defined by such measures as proficiency in English and completion of education courses. The proposed legislation would also institutionalize a tier of second class "guest workers" who would have no chance at citizenship and--based on past experience with similar programs--would be easy targets for abuse by employers. It also would further militarize the already heavily patrolled U.S.-Mexico border with the construction of a high-tech fence in long stretches of Arizona, California, and New Mexico. While the bill has outraged anti-immigrant conservatives with its route to citizenship for undocumented workers, it has also deeply disturbed immigration rights activists. The elimination of the preference for family members, the establishment of a $5,000 fine, and the requirement that immigrant workers actually return to their home countries to file their applications for citizenship are all being decried as burdensome and punitive. Wrangling over the bill’s contents has begun in earnest, with anti-immigrant forces weighing in forcibly with their reservations. To the chagrin of the conservatives, however, there is strong pressure to resolve the issue in favor of a broadly inclusive path to citizenship because of the desperate need for labor power in many sectors of the U.S. economy. The impact of the process of globalization after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement was that, instead of U.S. corporations relocating their plants to Mexico, the pull of the so-called "China Price" for low wages meant that operations moved from both Mexico and the U.S. to China. At the same time, the removal of import barriers to cheap American corn overwhelmed Mexican agriculture and resulted in people being left with no choice but to leave their small farms and pay smugglers to take them on the dangerous journey north across the border. The same dynamics bring migrants from the countries of Central America and the Caribbean as well, in numbers that exceed by far even those of America’s great periods of immigration of the nineteenth century. LOW WAGE EXPLOITATION Waiting for them north of the border are vast numbers of low-wage, unskilled jobs as agricultural field hands, janitors, meatpackers and restaurant workers. The employees in these industries are dependent on the enormous traffic in forged documentation to provide them with the basic requirements for employment and are forced to live a life burdened with the anxiety of their tenuous legal status. While the employers in these industries are dependent on the ready availability of large numbers of immigrant workers, they also exploit their situation by using the threat of their legal status as a way to control and oppress them. This exploitation has led to immigrant workers being at the forefront of what may yet prove to be a renewal of the U.S. organized labor movement in struggles such as the union organizing drive at the Smithfield Foods meat packing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. and the cross-country boycott efforts of Florida’s Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Whatever deals the politicians and employers may come up with, they will have to reckon with the power of the now-vigilant "Sleeping Giant" of immigrant workers in the U.S.--a force that has dramatically changed the American social and political landscape and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. |
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