By David Bacon
TruthOut (4/15/13)

In San Diego, California, nine activists completed six days of a hunger strike outside the Mission Valley Hilton Hotel on April 10 -- the day demonstrations took place across the U.S. demanding immigration reform.  Hunger strikers were protesting the firing of 14 of the hotel's workers, after Evolution Hospitality, the company operating the Hilton franchise, told them that it had used the government's E-Verify database to determine that they didn't have legal immigration status.
"The company says that E-Verify is making them do this, even though many of the workers have been working here for years," said Sara Garcia, a supporter and hunger striker from House of Organized Neighbors, a local community organization.  "But they started firing them when the workers were organizing a union."
 "I clean 16 to 18 rooms a day, and they pay me $8.65 an hour.  No one can live on that," explained Leticia Nava, a fired worker.  " I'm a widow with three children who depend on me.  What is happening is not just. We are immigrant workers, and the only thing we're asking is to work.  That's not hurting anyone."
Garcia and Nava accuse the company of using the government system for immigration enforcement in the workplace, a database called E-Verify, in order to retaliate against 14 women for their union support.  But they also say that the E-Verify system is used much more extensively, to fire workers even where no union organizing is taking  place.

"Many companies are doing the same thing.  They're manipulating the system because what they're really interested in is low wages," Nava charged.  "This isn't the first time this happened to me.  I was fired the same way two years ago.  Now children are all scared because they see it's harder for me every day. Tomorrow I'll have to go out and find another job, and E-Verify makes that more and more difficult.  The impact on us is not just money - it affects all aspects of my life." 
Nava and Garcia joined the tens of thousands of  immigrants and immigrant rights activists who demonstrated on April 10, calling  for the reform of U.S. immigration laws.  Yet on the same day, legislators  drafting reform proposals in the U.S. Senate proposed changes that would make  Nava's experience more widespread than ever, which were then
contained in a bill  they introduced a week later.
Both Garcia and Nava agreed that getting rid of  E-Verify should be part of immigration reform.  "This part of the law is inhumane and unjust," Garcia says.  "It has economic, psychological and even moral effects.  Instead of children worrying about schoolwork they're worried about how they'll survive or even just eat."  Nava declared simply, "This part of the law should be eliminated."Congress, however, proposes to exact a price for the legalization of undocumented immigrants.   The "Gang of Eight" Senators drafting the reform bill announced they intend to expand the E-Verify system to cover all employers, and make its use mandatory.  This was only one of  a number of measures that would increase the severity of many of the anti-immigrant measures already part of U.S. law.

The Hilton workers and their supporters, as well as the union helping them, UniteHere, all believe that immigration reform should include a legalization process.  They want one that would give the 11-12 million undocumented people living in the United States a quick and accessible way to gain legal status.  
That demand ran through all of the hundreds of demonstrations around the country, from the 30,000 people on the mall in front of the Capitol Building in Washington DC to the thousand marchers in downtown San Francisco.  It was a demand voiced by hundreds of janitors and security guards in Silicon Valley, and  by teachers and elementary school students in Berkeley,  California. 
The Senators, however, are proposing a plan that would require undocumented people to spend a decade in a provisional status  before even being able to apply for permanent legal residence.  Then they would  have to maintain that status for another three years before they could apply to  become citizens, and gain basic political rights.  The citizenship process is so  overloaded that processing applications now takes months, even years. And instead of anticipating the logistical bottleneck of millions of people applying  for citizenship at the same time, the Senators declared that legalization  applicants would get no dedicated process.
People seeking legal status would have to "get  in the back of the line" - their visa applications would be processed only after  all other pending applications. That could have people waiting even more years.   Today the government is still processing visa applications for some relatives of  U.S. citizens and residents that were filed over two decades ago. The  undocumented would only become eligible for residence if they learned English,  and were continuously employed for 10 years, or were family members of someone  who was.

 The Senators further announced they would charge each applicant a penalty of $500 to file an application, another $500 six years later, and a further $1000 before they could apply for residence, on top of fees to cover the costs of the program.  Leticia Nava, for instance, would have to raise $2000 right away for herself and her children, and would acquire an additional obligation of $6000 plus fees.  At $8.65 an hour, paying it would be hard.  The idea of long waiting  periods and obstacles was criticized by AFL-CIO President Richard
Trumka, who  warned, "Families, including siblings and children must not pay the price of our  broken policies." 
An even greater shift in U.S. immigration policy is in the works, however.  The Senators chipped away at the family preference system itself.  They announced that there would no longer be a category allowing visa applications for the brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens.  At the same time their bill would create a new program eventually giving 120,000 visas a year to people with the work skills demanded by U.S. employers, rated on a point system.  The undocumented could apply for these "merit-based" visas, but would compete against others. 
This moves U.S. immigration policy backwards in  time.  Through the cold war it was structured to allow employers to bring workers, called braceros, to labor on the railroads and in the fields. At the same time, ferocious immigration enforcement led to the deportation of as  many as a million immigrants a year -- called "wetbacks" -- who tried to work  outside of that guest worker program.  The civil rights movement abolished the bracero program, and with the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, a family based system replaced it. 
 

"Even before the braceros we had contract labor, like the system that brought my ancestors, Chinese farmers, to build the railroads and set up irrigated agriculture here," explained Rev. Deborah Lee of the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights in Oakland, California. "Whether we were Chinese migrants or braceros, we were just labor.  Companies could spit you out and send you back home.  They still can - we still have programs like that.  We need to recognize the humanity of people.  We're not just workers -- we're
human  beings.  We need a system in which we can create families, have our spouses  come, raise our children and be part of society.  So the Senators are really  changing the definition." 
Even more direct labor supply schemes will be  part of the Senators' bill.  Currently the three main official guest worker visa  programs, H1B, H2A and H2B, allow employers to recruit about 250,000 workers outside the country every year, and bring them with visas that require them to  work in order to stay.  Some allow workers to change jobs (H1B), while others  require them to remain with the employer who contracted them (H2A and H2B).   Some, but not all, visa programs require employers to recruit locally first  (H2A), and allow workers to eventually apply for residence (H1B). 
 In parallel with the Senators' deliberations, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced agreement on yet another such program, called the W visa.  It would allow employers to recruit workers
to  fill labor shortages documented by a new Federal commissioner, require them to  recruit locally first, and peg wages of guest workers to an employer's existing  wage scale or to prevailing wages in the industry in which they're recruited.   Workers would be able to change jobs, but could not remain out of work for  longer than 60 days or they'd have to leave the country.
Ana Avendaño, assistant to AFL-CIO President Trumka and director of immigration and community action for the AFL-CIO, wrote that under this proposal  "employers have the comfort of knowing that, as the economy picks up, workers-foreign or domestic-will be available to fill jobs that will fuel economic growth.  Workers have the comfort of knowing that local workers will have the chance to apply for those jobs."

Making a deal on a new guest worker program is a means to win over Republican Senators and Representatives who respond to employer lobbying. In its mobilization efforts around the country, the AFL-CIO and other Washington DC-based lobbying groups have announced their central priority is a "pathway to citizenship" - that is, a legalization program for the undocumented.
This goal is painted in broad strokes.  "There is absolutely no distinction," said President Trumka at an event kicking off an April 10 rally, "between workers who  were born in this country and those who came here to build a better life. We're  all in the same boat, every one of us who works for a living. We rise or fall together."
Other organizations, however, have been critical of those aspects of the Senators' plan that will increase enforcement and expand labor supply programs.  Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen warned "CWA will monitor any proposed changes to visa programs like the H-1B visa, which are sought after by business but have cost U.S. technicians  and other workers tens of thousands of jobs."  The Senate bill would raise the  numerical limit on those visas.  Columbia professor and former labor organizer  Mae Ngai noted in the New York Times "From the agricultural 'Bracero  Program' of the 1940s and '50s to the current H-2 visa for temporary unskilled  labor, the programs are notorious for employer abuse."
In Washington State, Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community2Community, a farm worker group that organizes cooperatives  and advocates for immigrant rights, worried that once undocumented agricultural  laborers gained legal status they would face competition from guest workers  brought into the country by growers.  She noted that the state's agricultural  lobby is pushing intensely for guest workers.  The Senate bill transforms the  existing H2A agricultural guest worker program into two new ones -- W2 and  W3, and sets up a special legalization process for farm workers in  exhcange for making the programs more attractive to growers.

"Farm workers deserve an opportunity to begin building healthy sustainable careers in the food system," she explained.  "As long as corporate agriculture is allowed to legally bring in an exploitable workforce our food system will continue to decline and farm worker families will continue to be the lowest paid  workers in the country, working one of the most dangerous jobs, so consumers can  eat cheap food and corporations can continue to get richer!"
Many of the  April 10 rallies highlighted other problems with U.S. immigration law.  In  Berkeley, California, a group organized by teachers and the Alameda Central  Labor Council lined a pedestrian bridge across the freeway.  They were led by  children from Jefferson Elementary School, who spoke to the crowd.  One, Kyle  Kuwahara, read a letter he'd written to President Barack Obama, protesting the  decision by U.S immigration authorities to refuse to allow fourth-grade student  Rodrigo Mendoza, along with his family, to return home to Berkeley after a  vacation in Mexico. 
"He has been in our school for five years and he is a friend of mine," Kuwahara wrote. "Rodrigo is not free to come back.  In school we are learning about all these important people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks who fought for people's civil rights and freedom. So what about Rodrigo's freedom? Who is fighting for his freedom?"
The Mendoza family's crisis higlighted the massive enforcement wave of the last four years, in which over 2 million people have been detained and deported.  Almost all the April 10 rallies demanded a moratorium on mass deportations while Congress debates reform proposals.  Some even demanded that the huge system of privately run immigrant detention centers be dismantled.

Many in the Berkeley crowd had also engaged in a long fight to save the jobs workers at a local foundry, Pacific Steel Castings.  In December and January a year ago, 214 undocumented workers were fired after the Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement (ICE) agency examined company records in a process called an I-9 audit.  After identifying workers who had no legal immigration status, or "work authorization," ICE then sent the company a letter demanding it fire them.  The same process has led to the firing of hundreds of thousand of workers across the  country during the Obama administration.
 City councils throughout the  East Bay sent letters to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano pointing out that the  firings would not only be a disaster for the families involved, but would damage  local communities.  Political pressure succeeded in delaying the firings, but  couldn't stop them.  Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin accused ICE of undermining  her city's already-devastated economy in the middle of a recession.  "Their  firing is a violation of their human rights," she said at the time. "When they  say that [immigration] raids are targeting criminals, it's not true. People who  are just trying to make a living are being targeted big time."
The  company and the workers' union, Molders Union Local 164, released a joint  statement, in which Pacific Steel declared, "These terminations were not only  devastating to the workers and their families, but also to the workforce at PSC  ... [We] implore the protestors to direct their attention to the Department of  Homeland Security and federal policy makers."  The union also criticized "the  broken and unfair laws used by the government to disrupt and destroy the lives  of many of our friends and colleagues."
A month before the April 10  demonstrations, one union even went on strike against the firing of three  workers in an E-Verify check.  The workers lost their jobs when Waste  Management, Inc., fired them for lacking "work authorization."  The company sent  them the notice in the middle of a bitter conflict over the union contract with  Local 6 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
 

"I believe the company is trying to intimidate workers," said ILWU organizer Agustin Ramirez.  "For a long time workers didn't fight with this company. But recently they decided to terminate the contract, which expired years ago.  The company was threatening their jobs, and by terminating the contract they could go on strike.  So WMI used this way to try to stop them.  It was like WMI was telling the workers, 'since you dare to question what we do, then we'll question  your documents.'"
The ILWU filed an unfair labor practice charge,  accusing the company of "unilaterally implementing the E-Verify employment  eligibility verification program" and "terminating employees for alleged lack of  authorization to work in the United States," among other charges.  Then the  workers struck for a day over the company's legal violations.
"While the  company is using immigration law for retaliation," Ramirez said, "the real problem is the law itself, because it makes firing the punishment for lacking  legal status.  The reality is that all the workers have families here, and are  trying to stabilize their situation.  One even came to the U.S. when she was  only three, and has an application for the Dream Act program [which defers  deportation for students for two years and gives them work authorization].  The  company fired her anyway."
Fights against the use of E-Verify have grown over the last two years -- at Hilton and Waste Management, at the Mi Pueblo Supermarkets and at many other worksites.  Immigrant workers have organized marches and demonstrations against the I-9 audits, which have hit not only union  molders at Pacific Steel, but union janitors in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Minneapolis, Seattle and other cities, and non-union workers at Chipotle restaurants and the American Apparel clothing factory.

In the 1990s a similar wave of firings directed against unions and organizing drives gave political weight to immigrant activists inside the AFL-CIO, as they fought for a pro-immigrant policy.  They argued that "employer sanctions," the law that provides the legal basis for E-Verify and I-9 audits, was an inherent violation of workers' rights - to organize, and to work and support their families.  At the AFL-CIO convention in 1999, they were able to convince the federation to call for repealing the law. 
In 2009, however, the AFL-CIO Executive Council adopted "The Labor Movement's Principles for Comprehensive Immigration Reform." Point two calls for "A secure and effective worker authorization mechanism."  Yet the massive wave of immigration-related firings is the way work authorization is actually enforced.  Local fights against firings inevitably question support for sanctions in Washington DC.  They suggest that instead of treating increased enforcement as something to be traded  for legalization, that ending it should be part of labor's immigration reform  program.
Rev. Deborah Lee of the Interfaith Coalition predicts that unions  and immigrant rights organizations may eventually be divided over whether to  support Congressional reform proposals, since they call for vastly increased  enforcement.  "A lot of families are suffering now because of earlier immigration deals trading legalization for enforcement.  We need to think long term -- if the deals today are going to create more problems for families in the  future."
In some communities anger against previous tradeoff deals is  palpable.  The Coalicion de Derechos Humanos in Tucson called comprehensive immigration reform "primarily a vague promise used to attract immigrant and Latino voters, [while] border communities have suffered the costs of irresponsible and brutal enforcement policies, resulting in death and violence."  Increased border enforcement was part of the tradeoff for immigration amnesty in 1986, and was beefed up again in the Clinton administration immigration reform package of 1996.
 A recent study found the federal government spends more on border and immigration enforcement than on all other law enforcement agencies combined. The bill drafted by the Senate "Gang of Eight" would spend at least another $3.5  billion immediately on border enforcement, with the possibility of $2 billion  more later.  It would include building more walls, and using drones and other  means of electronic surveillance.  Moving forward with some aspects of legalization would only come after the government made plans for the surveillance and cutting down undocumented migration, and showed efforts to implement them.  The special court in Tucson that tries 70 young migrants, brought before judges in chains and sentenced to time in a federal lockup for border crossing, would be expanded to process 210 per day. 
Derechos Humanos also called for the repeal of  employer sanctions and the E-Verify system.  It advocates ending guest worker  programs because they increase job competition and pit resident workers against  those brought to the U.S. by employers.  Instead "job creation and training  programs should be implemented for all unemployed workers, ensuring a healthy  and robust workforce," according to a recent statement responding to the Gang of  Eight proposal. Rising demands for a more rights-based reform than the one on  the table in Washington will certainly make negotiations more difficult.  In the  past, those calling for one have been accused of undermining efforts to achieve  what's "politically possible," at least according to the beltway calculations.   But these voices won't be easily shut out of the national debate.
Jon Pedigo, a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in San Jose, organized a breakfast for people of faith as part of the April 10 actions in the heart of Silicon Valley.  In his homily the Sunday before, he told parishioners, "The authorities will try to silence these voices by dismissing them as irrelevant. We have learned through these 50 years of organizing campesinos, low wage workers, and immigrant families that you cannot shut down the conversation. You cannot SILENCE the truth of our woundedness. We must confront authorities with stories of children's fearing that their parents might be taken away from them and deported. The voices of mothers whose children have been torn from their arms cannot be ignored."

By: Patricio Gomez (Mexican American Political Association)

Mass mobilizations are on the order of the day throughout the nation headed towards Washington, D.C. and for those who cannot, well, they are headed to the local federal building in their vicinity or simply the municipal city hall.  And their resounding demand is for comprehensive immigration reform NOW! Immigrant rights coalitions or networks or alliances from this or that state, estimated 35 in all, and hundreds of cities are united to make this happen in 2013.  There is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their friends and family will hit the bricks to demand reform.  And, this is just the beginning.  We still have May Day, the International Workers’ Day celebrated on May 1st, ahead of us. Heaven help the politicians. The only question is will these mobilizations exceed the numbers that raised their heads, fists, and voices in 2006?  

We were robbed of the possibility of immigration reform in 2006 and again in 2007 under the Bush administration.  President Obama failed us in 2008 and during the succeeding four years, his first term, instead of immigration reform we got massive Migra raids into personal homes, mass deportations, expansion of E-Verify at the workplace, Secured Communities networking local police with federal authorities, and continued construction of the U.S.–Mexico border fence – begun under President Bill Clinton at the insistence of Senator Diane Feinstein.  Hey, these are all Democrats. Can anyone seriously entertain with a straight face that they did so because of the Republicans?  I don’t think so.  That’s not to say that the Republicans were not supportive and demanding more. They were, big time.

By the end of this year some two (2) million of our family members will be deported from the U.S. This is greater than the 1950s under Operation Wetback, the infamous deportation military operation, under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former Five Star General and Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. Even the Department of Homeland Security admits that more than 65 percent of those deported have no criminal record.  Again, by close of 2013 approximately 2,450 deaths will have occurred at the border under Obama – family members
attempting to reunite with their loved ones on the American side.  No one likes to talk about these statistics when it comes to a Democratic administration. It’s down-right embarrassing when you consider that the majority of Latino voters cast in favor of candidates from this political party –tweedledee, the twin of tweedledum.

Now comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) means different things to different folks.  President Obama’s take on CIR includes a temporary visa of 8 years along the “path to citizenship” (thirteen to fifteen years in all); a bracero-type program to accommodate big business, not just in agriculture; a more aggressive crack-down on employers for hiring undocumented workers and expansion of the E-Verify program; further militarization of the border; and he’s even throwing in the kitchen sink for good measure.  The senate version is expected to look very similar with perhaps even additional years of temporary status, and certification of border enforcement effectiveness.  The house version will be a mix between these two, however, leaning more to the right. It’s hard to imagine moving any further.

But, the people’s version of CIR is something quite different. Once people start marching and demanding their rights there is no telling where things will end up. Immigrants are clamoring for legalization for all and a direct and immediate path to citizenship with minimal, but reasonable requirements.  Demands to end border militarization and interior raids can be heard in every march.  Immediate permanent residency for Dreamers is a recurring slogan.  No bracero-type programs for workers, farm laborers or others, precedes even Cesar Chavez as popular sentiment amongst immigrants even today. Free wage labor is their cry, not indentured servitude. Yes, these are the demands of the immigrants on the move and things look much different from 2006.

Seven years is not a long time for political organizing, however, much can certainly change. There is also a fundamental difference between mobilizing to oppose an anti-immigrant legislation, as was the case in 2006 with HR-4437 the Sensenbrenner Bill, and marching in favor of the real prospect of immigration reform. The people and their organizers have learned much in seven years.  If alliances were tenuous and newly created in 2006, the same have had seven years to mature and be tested with many anti-immigrant state measures, multiple election cycles, more sophisticated use of both English and Spanish media, many defiant acts of civil disobedience by Dream youth, and really important, virtual social networking, which was only in its infancy in 2006 (remember My Space). Today, it is not possible to open a Facebook page without being introduced to a new immigrant rights coalition or Dream Team in Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Chicago, North Carolina, Florida, not to mention the biggies of California, Texas, and New York.  

Immigrant families have the titanic battles of Arizona under their belt and the recall of the author of the nasty SB1070. Dreamers forced the hand of Obama and we won the Deferred Action Program by executive order – a legal waiver of sorts for 1.2 million undocumented youth.  Families have withstood the humiliating separation of their brood due to Obama’s deportation policies.  And, Latino voters stupefied the Republican Party in the November presidential elections with their strong tilt for the president even surprising the White House.

Truly there is no turning back.  Once enlightened by civic action the formerly politically illiterate cannot live any longer in the same way with blinders. They have found the word and now own it. La Raza is on the move and no one can tell where things will end up…. 


4/10/13 – Patricio.gomez93@yahoo.com. 
Authorized to republish. 
Find me on Facebook, Twitter (@SinFronterasSal), and Tumblr. 
http://www.mapa-ca.org/news.html

By:
Patricio Gomez (Mexican American Political Association)


The AP Stylebook finally declared that it will cease using the term “illegal immigrant.” It’s about time.  According to their corporate spokespersons, “The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term“illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.” 

The specific instruction in the stylebook now reads, “illegal immigration: Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal
immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.”

AP has opted to better label behavior and not people, similar to labeling a person “diagnosed with schizophrenia” instead of schizophrenic,” for example.  As this relates to an undocumented entry into a country, it would be preferable to describe it as “someone in a country without permission.”  Ironically, AP had previously excluded the use of the term “undocumented” as being an imprecise description.  Someone could have entered a country without permission, yet still have different types of documents in their possession, they observed.

This is significant considering that newspapers throughout the country, and even internationally, use the AP Stylebook as a reference for correct language usage in their reporting. In fact, it is also used as a refuge by editors and publishers when confronted about the continued use of the derisive term “Illegal,” both print and electronic.  They have argued that their point of reference in language usage is the AP Stylebook as the rock solid code of language not to be tampered with. 

For years the Los Angeles Times and other major metropolitan newspapers have been challenged for their language usage.  Lou Dobbs was drubbed out of CNN for his persistent anti-immigrant tirades and constant baiting use of “illegal.”  Fox News’ right-wing television pundits, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, KFI-Clear Channel Communications’ shock jocks, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of the John and Ken Show, and syndicated radio windbag, Rush Limbaugh, darling of the Tea Party and oxycontin addict, have all been roundly slammed for their denigrating use of the terms “illegal aliens” and “Illegal immigrants”

However, even supposed left-of-center newspapers published by the Village Voice, which has local editions in California, Arizona, and New York, all major immigrant population centers, continue to use racist terminology in reference to immigrants. The most infamous example is the “Ask a Mexican” column penned by Gustave “Gus” Arellano, editor of OCWEEKLY, which includes a racist stereotypic graphic of a toothy mustachioed Mexican wearing a big sombrero. The son of Mexican immigrants who legalized their status through the 1986 IRCA immigration reform, Arellano doesn’t even speak Spanish fluently and is flippant about his continued use of “illegal” as irreverent shtick and hyperbole – all at the expense of immigrants.  A better
explanation for his language and behavior is self-loathing.

What these corporate media outlets have in common, whether from the political left or right, is that they are corporately owned by whites with a predominantly white audience.  Probably never before in the history of the country has the corporate media been so monopolized in cross multiple mediums, and almost entirety in the hands of whites and Jews.

What’s behind this use of language to label people in a denigrating manner as has historically occurred in the U.S.?  The corporate media, part of the 1% as popularly known now-a-days, can control the narrative about a people when they can define them by such labels.  Labels, then, are used to define the identity, role, and quality of groups of people.  The objective is to stigmatize them as a social group in society’s eyes and thusly control them in the economy.  Ultimately, it’s about how they are used in the economy in the interest of those who control the economy.  If society’s majority can bring itself to view another social group as inferior, less than human, less than the norm, thus, dehumanized, than that social group can be exploited, abused, and mistreated without a near whimper by the larger society. 

It’s no accident that people of color have predominantly been the object of derisive name-calling, racist labels and stereotypes – blacks, Native Americans, immigrants of working stock, Mexicans and Latinos generally, Asians, but even women and gays.  It’s all about keeping working people divided by promoting fear of differentness, prejudice, and homophobia.  The beneficiaries are the owners of the principal means of expressing ideas.

In the 1970s the legendary labor and immigrant rights leader, Bert Corona, coined the saying, “No Human Being is Illegal.”  In 1986, Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, affirmed, “You who are so-called illegal aliens must know that no human being is ‘illegal’. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, and they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?”

So the fight between ideas and over labels continues unabated.  The AP Stylebook thinking heads finally conceded to the light. Chalk one up for the immigrants.

Patricio.gomez93@yahoo.com –authorized to republish. Join me on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr (SinFronteras2013). 4/04/13 

Most mainstream supporters of "reform" are pro-immigration, but anti-immigrant.

March 6, 2013



INJURY IS when politicians call those who toil without legal papers at some of the hardest jobs in America a bunch of cheating freeloaders. Insult is when these same politicians claim to be on our side.

Here is Barack Obama speaking about immigration in his State of the Union address:

Real reform means establishing a responsible pathway to earn citizenship, a path that includes passing a background check, paying taxes and a meaningful penalty, learning English, and going to the back of the line behind the folks trying to come here legally.

Obama was referring to a plan from a bipartisan group of senators that involves guest workers, further militarization of the border and a "path to citizenship."

In other words, businesses that exploit immigrants would get more indentured servants, businesses that hunt and jail immigrants would get more contracts, and immigrants themselves would get nothing but a vague promise of equality--someday--if they pay taxes for benefits they never received, return to their home country, and wait. "No nos llaman. Les llamaremos." ("Don't call us, We'll call you.")

"Earned citizenship" and "going to the back of the line" are clever buzzwords to make us imagine the spoiled brats of this country aren't the rich kids, but their maids and gardeners, who have arrogantly cut in front of the decent folk waiting patiently to work in the U.S.

The metaphor that our immigration system is one big line is false. There are different lines for different people, and the lines for Mexicans and Filipinos take 20 years longer than the lines for Germans and Swedes. Some states in this country used to have separate lines like that for water fountains. If I remember correctly, they also had buses where some folks were told to "go to the back."

As for earning citizenship, I'm not sure what more you can do than generate lots of American wealth by working your ass off on farm or construction site, all the while dealing with wage theft, sexual harassment and racial harassment, and paying more money in taxes than you receive in services. By way of comparison, here's how I earned my citizenship: I got born to someone who happened to be here. (Thanks mom!)

The idea that people like the day laborers who cleaned up the wreckage of Hurricane Sandy haven't earned their citizenship fits right in with a culture that alternately ignores and shits on all of its workers. This is a place that thinks people who spend 30 years on an auto assembly line don't deserve their pensions, but that Steve Jobs earned every penny because he "made" an iPhone that he neither designed nor produced.

But native-born workers are supposed to feel flattered by the concept of earned citizenship, which implies, like the old "membership has its privileges" ad campaign, that we belong to an exclusive club. Unfortunately, the perks of belonging to Club USA--like Social Security and Medicare--seem to be going up in smoke.

Heck, it turns out that American citizenship doesn't even protect us from being assassinated in our own country by our own government without even being convicted of a crime. I'll be honest with you. I never even stopped to consider that particular privilege until I found out I didn't have it.

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WE TALK about the immigration debate as if there are two sides but there are actually three sides and two debates--one about immigration and the other about the rights and humanity of immigrants. Here's a little table to help sort it out:

Most of the supporters of "immigration reform" who appear on the news are pro-immigration and anti-immigrant. That is to say, as representatives of corporate interests, they want a steady stream of super-exploitable workers, which is why they favor guest-worker programs and hypothetical paths to citizenship that will keep the undocumented in a state of suspended animation, without clear rights for decades to come.

Supporters of immigrant rights who don't know what to make of this triangular situation should consider the debates over slavery in the early 19th century. Today we learn about a two-sided struggle between slave owners and abolitionists. But at the time, anti-slavery forces had to deal with a third side known as the American Colonization Society (ACS).

The ACS, led by the powerful Sen. Henry Clay, was against slavery and slaves, whom they viewed as immoral, unintelligent and unfair competition to white labor. Their plan, supported at times by Abraham Lincoln, was to buy slaves from their owners and send them to Africa to start an American colony.

Some Obama apologists who have become experts at finding silver linings in miserable compromises might think that slaves and their supporters viewed the ACS as a positive first step towards ending slavery. Let the record show that the great abolitionist Frederick Douglas took a different view:

No one idea has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward the colored people of this country than that which makes Africa, not America, their home. It is that wolfish idea that elbows us off the sidewalk and denies us the rights of citizenship. The life and soul of this abominable idea would have been thrashed out of it long ago, but for the Jesuitical and persistent teaching the American Colonization Society.

Douglass' spirit was alive and well in 2006 when millions of women, children and men protested proposed anti-immigration legislation by proudly waving the flags of both their native and adopted countries, and demanding the rights of citizenship. The Bush administration responded cruelly with a wave of workplace raids and deportations that drove the undocumented movement underground. But many protesters took heart when a Democratic presidential candidate promised to change the Bush policy.

I guess you could say that Barack Obama kept his word because he did change Bush's policy in two ways: First, by doubling the number of deportations, and second, by issuing a series of false statements that undocumented workers without criminal records wouldn't be targeted so he would appear to be a champion of immigrant rights.

It's typical Obama: Talk like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while you act like Bull Connor.

If you think that comparison is too harsh, save your concern for those more deserving. On every single day in the first half of 2011--weekends included-more than 250 parents of children born in the U.S. were deported. If that rate is indicative of Obama's entire first term--and Homeland Security hasn't provided data for any other period--that means more than a quarter-million mothers and fathers had to make an unbearable decision about their children: whether to leave them without a parent or without their country.

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OF COURSE, in 2013, no crime against humanity is enough to keep the Republicans from labeling you a softy, and so the debate rages on about whether Obama has done enough to "secure our borders."

What does that phrase even mean? It's not as though the thousands of miles of ocean, desert and forest that make up the boundaries of the United States can just be caulked up like floorboard.

And why do these people not seem to care about the actual menaces that easily penetrate our borders? I'm talking about oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, hurricanes fueled by climate change from the Atlantic, and Justin Bieber tours swooping down from Canada.

We can expect the proposed immigration legislation to keep moving further to the right in order to appease the Republican know-nothings who will still vote against it in the end. Obama doubtless thinks he can pass almost anything without having to worry about losing support among immigrant communities.

Sadly, he might be right about some of the best-funded immigrant organizations based in D.C. But he should be wary about taking for granted the support of the young immigrant activists who have been fighting for the DREAM Act, which would decriminalize those who emigrated as minors. While most progressive groups folded themselves into Obama's reelection campaign last year, the DREAMers occupied his campaign offices.

Marco Saavedra went a step further, purposely getting locked up in a detention center so he could report on the many immigrants without criminal records who are being deported, despite Obama's claims to the contrary. Tell me Marco Saavedra hasn't earned his citizenship.

Back in 2006, the DREAM Act was seen by immigrant rights activists as a demand of the moderate wing of the movement. At the time, there was a widespread call for a general amnesty, while the DREAM Act put forward amnesty for a more limited group of youth. Today, the DREAMers are the radicals, boldly declaring themselves "undocumented and unafraid."

Seven years of broken political promises have surely played a role in transforming these activists. But I also think that many of them have grown tired of listening to politicians who support the DREAM Act saying things like, "We should not hold innocent children responsible for the sins of their parents."

It doesn't take a PhD in political science to recognize that anyone who talks shit about your mother like that doesn't really have your back.


Columnist:Danny Katch

Danny Katch is a New York City based writer, activist and wiseass. He is the author of America's Got Democracy! The Making of the World's Longest Running Reality Show and has contributed to other long-titled books such as Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action that Changed America and 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals Who Changed U.S. History.

View Original Article Here: http://socialistworker.org/2013/03/06/obstacle-course-to-citizenship