by Travis Morales
[download this article as a pdf]
Over the last few weeks in an historic outpouring, millions
have demonstrated in the streets across the country in opposition to the
Sensenbrenner bill (H.R. 4437) and other proposed Congressional laws that would
make felons out of the 11 to 12 million undocumented people in the U.S. and
those who aid them in any kind of way.
The Sensenbrenner bill (H.R. 4437) and others would also greatly
increase the militarization of the border with 700 miles of more walls and
thousands of more Border Patrol agents.
I spoke at the March 25 demonstration in Los Angeles and I will tell you
that despite press reports, one to two million people marched. Marches in other
cities included up to 500,000 in Chicago, and hundreds of thousands more in DC,
Phoenix, Milwaukee, New York, Houston, Charlotte, and many other cities with
more marches planned for April 10 and May 1. Crowds roared in defiance, ‘¡AquÃ
estamos y no nos vamos!’ (Here we are and we won’t go!) In Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities,
these were the largest demonstrations ever or at least in the last one hundred
years.
And especially, we must praise the youth. On March 27,
40,000 high school and middle school students throughout the greater Los
Angeles area walked out of their classrooms and into the streets. Hundreds of
students blocked and shut down two major freeways in Los Angeles, the Hollywood 101 and Harbor 110. In Arizona, Texas, Nevada,
Georgia, New York, and Virginia (where Black and Latino students walked out
side by side), tens of thousands of high school students have walked
out. The Dallas Morning News reported
that students who walked out in Houston were chanting slogans and wearing
stickers that said, ‘Drive Out the Bush Regime.’ Some of the youth have been
publicly making the link between these attacks on immigrants and Katrina and
the occupation of Iraq.
As someone who has been active in the immigrant rights
movement over the last 20 years, organizing against mass roundups and
detentions, the deathly militarization of the border, capture and deportation
of Haitians, INS concentration camps, and the post 9/11 secret detention of
Muslim, Arab and South Asian immigrants, this outpouring of resistance has been
unbelievable, incredible, inspiring, and tremendously challenging. I’m someone who thinks the treatment of immigrants at the
border and in the cities and rural areas has always been an injustice, but I
have to say some of the outright and open bigotry, intolerance and outrageous
injustice, now, is really bad, worse than it has ever been in my lifetime of 53
years ( the Minutemen, Sensenbrenner, and all the rest. Anyone with a heart must praise and
support this determined struggle of immigrants.
As the Call for the World Can’t Wait, Drive Out the Bush
Regime says, ‘We, in our millions, must and can take
responsibility to change the course of history.’ Do you want to know what this
means? Look at the millions of
immigrants in the streets and especially the youth walking out of school and
blocking streets and freeways in the face of lockdowns, police beatings and
arrests. In World Can’t Wait, we
have talked a lot about the need to take independent historical action and
break out of the established political framework. This is it!!! This is how
change will come. And this is why a lot
of politicians are scrambling to get at the head of this and channel it back
into relying on them. But let’s be clear.
If the Democratic Party leadership has refused to stand up to the Bush
regime and all the horrors it is bringing down on the people, do you really
think it will fight for immigrant rights?
Do you really think the Democratic Party leadership that did nothing to
call out the Bush regime for leaving 100,000 mainly Black and poor people to
die in New Orleans is going to fight for the lives of immigrants?
Anyone who sees the burning necessity to drive out the Bush
regime needs to unite with and learn from this struggle. Just think of where we would be if this kind
of outpouring had burst forth in opposition to the Downing Street Memo
revelations, the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Alito, the NSA spying
revelations, and the banning of abortion in South Dakota. Just think of where we would be in stopping
the whole fascist trajectory of the Bush regime and actually driving it from
power!
Why is this happening, what would these proposed laws do if
passed, and how should all those who hate the whole trajectory of the Bush
regime respond?
Immigrants, especially the undocumented, are vilified as criminals,
parasites, drains on social services, potential terrorists, and thieves
stealing jobs from Americans. What is
the reality? Who builds the houses and
buildings, picks and processes the crops, cooks the food, does the landscaping,
makes the hotel beds, and cleans the offices?
We are told that immigrants take the jobs that ‘Americans’ won’t
take. Why won’t ‘Americans’ take these
jobs? Because these are slave jobs!
Immigrants take these jobs because they have no choice. Why would millions of people leave their
families and their communities, travel thousands of miles, and face death in
the desert, death at the hands of racist vigilantes or the Border Patrol,
discrimination, horrible and slave like working conditions, and the constant
fear of arrest and deportation? People
come here to survive and feed themselves and their families. This is a question of life and death for
millions. And now, after enduring all of this, people face the prospect of even
greater assaults on their lives. That is why they have taken to the streets.
Let’s look at what
life has been like for immigrants since 9/11. More walls have been built at the
border with more Border Patrol agents and hi-tech surveillance equipment. The stated purpose has been to make crossing
the border much more difficult by pushing people into crossing through more
remote and dangerous areas. In the last
ten years, over 4,000 people have died crossing the border, not counting the
many whose bodies will never be found in the deserts, mountains and rivers. As
the border militarization has increased over the last few years so too have the
number of people dying. Armed racist
vigilantes, including the Minutemen (who are a separate fascist force in
society who do not totally agree with the Bush program), with cooperation from
the Border Patrol and praise from government officials like California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger, are hunting, capturing, and, according to some reports,
killing immigrants. A subsidiary of
Halliburton was awarded a contract to build “temporary immigration
detention centers” in the US for Homeland Security Department. A
government spokesperson said that the centers could be at unused military sites
or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people.
At the same time, immigrants are portrayed as the enemy
within, a dangerous threat. Listen to
the worlds of Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado, “[Immigrants]
need to be found before it is too late. They’re coming here to kill you, and
you, and me, and my grandchildren.” As we say in the Callf,
Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry,
intolerance and ignorance.
Immigrants face discrimination,
jobs with the lowest pay and most dangerous conditions, the threat of arrest
and deportation if they complain or organize for better pay and working
conditions, denial of a whole host of government services that they fund
through income taxes and Social Security taxes (which, by the way, they pay
like everyone else), and the constant fear that when they walk out the door,
they will never see their families again.
No wonder people in their millions are saying, ‘¡Ya basta!, Enough
already!’ and taking to the streets.
People refuse to be treated this way.
That is why people carried signs that said, ‘We are not animals.’
Personally, I wholeheartedly
welcome the millions of people who have crossed the border, with our without
papers. ¡Bienvenidos! They have every
right to come here.
This is not a theoretical discussion about a country’s right
to protect its borders or determine who is allowed to enter. This is about the right of millions to live
in the concrete reality of the world today.
And this is about the whole fascist direction of the Bush regime and
what stand people will take and what people will do in the face of moves to
criminalize the very existence of millions and establish an official apartheid
system under so-called ‘guest worker’ or ‘temporary worker’ programs.
Look at history. In
1935, the Nazis passed the Nuremburg Laws that began the legal process of
stripping Jews of German citizenship, and leading to the denial of any rights
as human beings. Remember the words of
Paster Martin Niemoeller, except in this case they first came for the Muslim, Arab
and South Asian immigrants after 9/11 and now they are coming for the
undocumented immigrants. This is the
direction of these proposed laws in Congress and the whole atmosphere being
created in this country. Is this the
kind of world in which we want to live?
No! Whatever you think about immigration and border, in the concrete
reality of the Bush regime, to go along with these laws means going along with
and supporting the Bush regime’s right to hold people without charges, expand
detention centers, declare people ‘illegal’ or ‘enemy combatant’ or whatever
with absolutely no legal rights, and institute apartheid for millions.
Much has been written and said about the various
Congressional bills. The Sensenbrenner bill (H.R. 4437) that was passed in the
House of Representatives last December has received the most attention and the
most opposition. Bush praised the Sensenbrenner bill,
saying, “This bill will help us protect our borders and crack down on
illegal entry into the United States… Securing our borders is essential to
securing the homeland.” It went to the Senate where the
criminalization of the undocumented provision was removed. As things stand now, the Sensenbrenner bill
is still the bill that has passed the House, the Senate Judiciary Committee has
reported out its own bill (the Specter bill) after making changes in the
Sensenbrenner bill, Senator Bill Frist has proposed a bill similar to the
Sensenbrenner bill, and there is the McCain-Kennedy bill, that along with the
Specter bill, has a so-called ‘path to legalization and citizenship’ for the
undocumented and ‘guest workers.’
While there are differences in these bills, some major, they are all
bad. See the addendum to this article
where some of the horrendous provisions are listed.
We have read a lot about the ‘guest workers’ and ‘temporary
worker’ provisions of some of these bills and Bush’s ‘guest worker’
proposal. Enrique Morones of Border
Angels, whose members would be felons under the Sensenbrenner bill for placing
water stations in the desert, hit the nail on the head. On the O’Reilly Factor he called Bush’s
proposal a ‘rent a slave program.’ All
of these proposals would codify and legalize a de facto apartheid system for
immigrants. Undocumented immigrants in
the U.S. and people outside the U.S. would be able to apply for and receive
work permits with no guarantee that these will be renewed or that they will be
able to obtain permanent residency or citizenship if they want these. They would still be in a very vulnerable
position, required to return to their home countries if they go without work
for more than 60 days. Just like in South Africa for Black people, immigrants
would be able to come here to work but this would be temporary.
Some of the proposals like the Specter bill and the
McCain-Kennedy bills contain much touted provisions leading from temporary work
permits to permanent residency and citizenship. What is not mentioned is that with all the stipulations very few
will qualify. In order to work in the
U.S., by law, everyone whether a citizen or non-citizen, must fill out an I-9
form and show certain documents proving they have a right to legally work. The great majority of immigrants have had to
use fake Social Security cards and other fake documents so they could work.
Under the Specter bill, this great majority of immigrants would be
automatically disqualified because they used fake documents and would be guilty
of an aggravated felony and face mandatory deportation! And in the meantime, with temporary work permits,
millions will still face discrimination, low wages, unsafe working condition,
and fear of losing their jobs and being deported. But the difference is that,
now, all of this will all be legal.
What about the border and the right of the U.S. government
to determine who enters the country? Reality
is not so simple. You cannot burn the
house down and then barricade the doors as people try to flee. Why do I say this? Because, in their great majority people are fleeing countries
dominated economically and politically by the U.S. and this has resulted in
hunger, poverty, economic crisis and repressive governments. For example, according
to a 2004 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, at least
1.5 million Mexican farmers lost their livelihoods under the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). They
cannot compete with U.S. government subsidized agricultural products such as
grain and pork that have poured in to Mexico under NAFTA. Hence, their farms go broke, they lose their
land or their jobs, and they go north looking for work. There is a reason that people on the East
Coast of the U.S. now have fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter when they
did not in years past. Land in Mexico
that once grew bean and corns to feed the Mexican people is now controlled by
U.S. agribusiness who raise fruits and vegetables for export to the U.S.
To be blunt, there are many people
who correctly oppose the Bush regime’s unjust and illegitimate wars, torture,
concentration camps overseas, massive spying and moves toward a theocracy but
get sucked into supporting the militarization of the border on the basis of
fighting the ‘war on terror’ and protecting American lives or succumb to the
lie that immigrants steal American jobs or go along with the argument that the
government just has to something about the ‘immigration problem.’ Well, I have to ask, does anyone really
think, given everything the Bush regime is doing, that it really cares about
the lives of people in the U.S.? Or
full employment? And why can the U.S.
government steal entire countries but people cannot come here to survive? There is no ‘immigration problem.’ The
problem is persecution of millions of people based upon the color of their
skin, the language they speak and where they were born.
Will supporting or even just not
opposing the militarization of the border, the criminalization of the
undocumented, indefinite detention, ‘show us your papers’ laws and mentality,
creation of apartheid conditions for immigrants, and expansion of detention
centers strengthen the whole fascist trajectory of the Bush regime? Yes.
Do we want to live in a world where desperate and hungry people die in
the thousands at the border for the crime of trying to survive? Do we want to live in a world where some
people have the right to live and others do not? Do we want to live in a world where people are jailed because
they show compassion by giving food and water to those who face death? No, no, no!!!
I know that among people opposing the Bush regime, we
have many different views on these questions.
But for the millions and millions who are deeply disturbed and angered
by all the outrages of the Bush regime, I think we need the following basic
orientation if we are going to drive out the Bush regime and not fall prey to
its divide and conquer tactics. All
people have a right to live and meet basic needs. People should not be declared criminals and those who aid them
should not be declared criminals. All
of us have the responsibility to defy and resist unjust laws, struggle alongside
our sisters and brothers who are facing these outrageous laws and stand with
them.
Addendum on the various laws being considered:
At this point, only the Specter and Frist bills are before
the Senate. All of these bills have
horrible provisions too numerous to detail. The Detention Watch Network, www.detentionwatchnetwork.org
has summaries of these various bills written by other organization posted on
their website. While some of these
summaries mistakenly uphold some of the legalization provisions of these bills,
they do a good job in detailing the horrible consequences of these bills.
Some of these horrible provisions are:
⢠The Specter bill,
as passed by the Judiciary Committee, bars many people from ever getting
‘lawful status’ ( through new programs or through current routes.
Under the Specter bill, any person who simply admits that she
put false information or omitted information on documents ( for example on I-9
documents required by employers or an adjustment application ( would be unable
to take advantage of legalization provisions or to ever get a green card
through a family member petition. In order to work in the U.S., by law,
everyone whether a citizen or non-citizen, must fill out an I-9 form and show
certain documents proving they have a right to legally work. The great majority of immigrants have had to
use fake Social Security cards and other fake documents so they could work.
Under the Specter bill, this great majority of immigrants would be guilty of an
aggravated felony and face mandatory deportation!
⢠Expansion of Term
‘Aggravated Felony’ ( leading to mandatory deportation
The Specter and Frist bills would expand the sweeping
âaggravated felony’ category to include minor crimes such as âaccessory’ roles
in the conduct of others, additional document-related offenses, and suspected
gang related offenses where there was no conviction for any crime. The Specter bill expands this term to
include minor accessory roles in the conduct of others; drunk driving offenses
(even misdemeanors); document-related offenses; and convictions for providing
assistance to undocumented employees, family, and neighbors (with very limited
humanitarian exception).
⢠Expanded Expedited
Removal ( a speedy and rubber-stamped deportation
The Specter and Frist bills would greatly expand the system
of âexpedited removal,’ a system that allows the government to deport an
individual without any hearing or access to a lawyer. Department of
Homeland Security could remove an immigrant without a court hearing simply by
claiming that s/he is not a lawful permanent resident and has been convicted of
an aggravated felony or firearm offense.
People who may have a basis to fight their deportation will be deported without
being able to present their cases. People would be denied fair hearings
⢠Expansion of
Mandatory Detention and Increase in Detention Beds
Congress recently authorized a massive expansion of
detention beds, and the Specter bill increases this even more by adding 10,000
more beds and allowing closed military bases to be used to imprison
immigrants.
Both bills requires mandatory detention for all immigrants,
except nationals of Cuba or Mexico, who attempt to
enter the US unlawfully and are apprehended at a port of entry. There is no individual hearing and only a
limited exception to parole people.
In the Specter bill, a separate provision would effectively
lead to the mandatory detention of many immigrants who fail to file a change of
address form with DHS within 10 days.
⢠Authorizing
Indefinite Detention
The Specter bill overturns U.S. Supreme Court decisions and
allows the government to indefinitely detain thousands of immigrants with final
orders of deportation. Both bills allow the government to jail indefinitely
foreign-born individuals who cannot be deported to their country of origin
through no fault of their own. The provisions would also limit the ability of
non-citizens who are being indefinitely detained to seek a hearing regarding
their detention. This would be applied
retroactively to individuals that are now out on orders of supervision.