Congress Must Face Reality: Immigrants Want Equality
By David Bacon
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 07 April 2006
Oakland, California - Senators will pat themselves on the back
this week for agreeing to their most pro-corporate, anti-immigrant bill in
decades. Tens of thousands of people may be forced to leave the US as a
result. Millions more would have to become braceros - guest workers on
temporary visas - just to continue to labor in the jobs they've had for
years.
More workplace enforcement will result in firing thousands of
others, creating a climate of fear that will make defending workplace rights
and joining unions riskier than ever. And a border like an armed camp will
continue costing the lives of hundreds of humble farmers and workers every
year, crossing toward a shattered dream of a better life.
No wonder people have been in the streets for weeks, with even
bigger demonstrations and marches yet to come. These are ordinary people,
not activists, come out of working-class homes all over the country. A
million in Los Angeles. Half a million in Chicago. Tens of thousands
crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. Hunger strikers in San Francisco.
Demonstrations in states where the immigrant community has been virtually
invisible until now, like North Carolina, Tennessee. Border towns like
Tucson. Cities from Santa Rosa to Omaha.
Everywhere, immigrants and people who support them are
condemning the draconian measures passed by the House of Representatives in
December, especially the provision that would make undocumented people
federal felons.
But the demonstrations have a positive demand as well, one that
shames especially the Senate's sleight-of-hand by which second-class guest
worker programs are called "a path to legalization," and the only way
families can gain legal status for their undocumented members is to spend a
decade or more working as braceros. Contrary to Senate proposals for
deportations and bracero visas, people carry signs demanding amnesty. These
myriad marchers - families with children and grandparents in tow - have a
simple alternative.
Equality.
Many unions support them. Among the most outspoken are the
Teamsters in Orange County, heart of the anti-immigrant offensive, where the
mayor of Costa Mesa told his police department to begin picking up
immigrants who lack visas. Teamsters Local 952 says people need real legal
status, not a guest worker program. A recently passed resolution condemns
both Congressional proposals, because they "do nothing to remove the
economic incentives that unscrupulous employers have to hire and exploit
immigrant workers, and fail to really address the fact that we have 11
million undocumented workers in this country contributing to our
communities."
The union "opposes any form of employer sanctions because they
have historically resulted in 'employee sanctions' in the form of firings of
workers for union organizing and discrimination practices on the job," and
"opposes guest worker legislative proposals because such modern day 'bracero
programs,' create an indentured servitude status for workers."
The AFL-CIO says the same, pointing out that if there are jobs
for 400,000 braceros a year (the goal of the Senate reform bill), those
immigrants should be given 400,000 green cards, or residence visas, instead,
which would guarantee them equal status in their workplaces and communities.
The Senate bill, the AFL-CIO says, "tears at the heart of true reform and
will drive millions of hard-working immigrants further into the shadows of
American society." Instead, "we should recognize immigrant workers as full
members of society - as permanent residents with full rights and full
mobility that employers may not exploit."
When Senator John McCain, co-sponsor of the Senate's main guest
worker plan, tried to defend it to a building trades union audience in his
home state this week, he was booed. He told the construction workers that
even at $50 an hour they wouldn't be willing to pick lettuce, implying that
only Mexicans were willing to do farm labor. For some in the audience,
McCain's remarks recalled former California Senator George Murphy, who
infamously declared in the 1960s that only Mexicans would perform stoop
labor because "they're built so close to the ground." Needless to say,
McCain didn't actually include in his bill any wage guarantee for
guestworkers, much less $50/hour (about 5 times what lettuce cutters make
today.)
A concerted effort by some lobbyists is under way in Washington,
however, to convince legislators that guest worker status, while unpleasant,
is something immigrants themselves are prepared to accept. But outside the
beltway, their proposal is meeting a rising tide of rejection. In New York
City, Desis Rising Up & Moving and 20 other grassroots groups formed
Immigrant Communities In Action, and condemned both House and Senate bills
for not halting the wave of detentions and deportations visited on Muslim
communities since 9/11.
Another coalition, which includes the National Mobilization
Against Sweatshops, the Chinese Staff and Workers' Association, and the
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, also rejects guestworker
programs. Like the Teamsters, these groups say Congress should abolish
employer sanctions instead, since they're often used to retaliate against
undocumented workers who demand labor rights.
The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights criticizes
both the Senate and House bills because they hold "no promise of fairness in
immigration policy and would undermine the rights, economic health and
safety of all immigrants and their children. Congress needs to go back to
the drawing board to come up with genuine, positive and fair proposals."
Are there any such proposals before Congress?
Yes, although beltway advocates have tried to smother the most
progressive of those alternatives with silence. A year ago, Congresswoman
Sheila Jackson Lee and Congressional Black Caucus members introduced HR
2092, which would give permanent residence visas to undocumented people
already here, and outlaw discrimination based on migrant status. Jackson Lee
believes Federal policy should not pit migrants against native-born, as do
guestworker programs. Her legislation would instead fund job training and
creation in communities with high unemployment, so that both immigrants and
non-immigrants can find work.
In the House's mad December rush to pass the Sensenbrenner bill,
criminalizing the undocumented instead of legalizing them, Jackson Lee's
bill couldn't even get a hearing. The Congresswoman is the ranking Democrat
on the House Immigration Subcommittee. In the Senate her proposal received
no more consideration, from either Democrats or Republicans. Yet her bill is
the only real effort to find common ground between immigrants and the
working communities of citizens and long time residents that they seek to
join.
In their predictable beltway logic, guestworker advocates are
counseling the huge demonstrations to feature US flags, and carry signs
saying, "We are America." But covering a corporate labor scheme with
patriotic rhetoric won't convince marchers to support it. Immigrants do want
to be part of US society, and do want to work, but they're not likely to
start holding signs saying, "I want to be a guestworker," or chanting
"Braceros si! Migra no!"
Hundreds of thousands of people are saying no to Washington's
repressive bills, but Congress and its coterie of beltway lobbyists clearly
aren't listening. It's time for Washington to face reality. A huge
outpouring of people is demanding real equality. They won't be satisfied
with second-class status.
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David Bacon, Photographs and Stories <http://dbacon.igc.org> .
________________________________
David Bacon is a California photojournalist who documents labor,
migration and globalization. His book The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on
the US/Mexico Border was published last year by University of California
Press.
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