Immigrant Rights

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. 
• 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.