The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.11           March 22, 1999 
 
 
Equal Rights For Immigrants!  
The Clinton administration's assault on the rights of workers who are immigrants is part of the capitalist rulers' preparation for broader class warfare. The record number of deportations and immigration jails overflowing with immigrants who have no judicial recourse run parallel to the soaring incarceration rates across the United States. More working people are being thrown in prison and spend more time incarcerated. New prisons are being completed at a rate of one per week. More men and women are being gunned down by police, from New York to Riverside, California.

Clinton's cold-blooded "welfare reform," throwing millions off the rolls with no jobs or income, is of a piece with this. The logic of this course is the end of Social Security, unemployment benefits, Medicare "as we know them" - the rudimentary social wage that the working class has wrested from the bourgeois class in the battles of past decades. Class- conscious fighters need to explain how these moves tear at the solidarity of the working class, intensifying the dog-eat-dog competition for jobs that the bosses depend on.

In the name of lower crime rates and "civility," the U.S. rulers seek acquiescence from large layers of the middle class and a section of better-off workers for their heightened brutality. They target the most vulnerable layers of the population, to pave the road for broader and deeper assaults on the working class as a whole. Their aim is to create a superexploited group of workers who can be worked harder, paid less, and kept more intimidated and isolated from the rest of the workforce.

But the working class is an international class - that's why solidarity and internationalism are the watchwords for working people in defending ourselves against the ever- intensifying attacks by the bosses. The rulers intend for immigrant workers to be blamed by other workers for their troubles and targeted by an increasingly insecure middle class.

Growing numbers of workers face FBI "investigations," U.S. Marshals enforcing picket line injunctions, and other police intervention in their strikes. Farmers are fighting discrimination and foreclosures by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They are in the best position to understand how the inroads against the rights of immigrants today will be aimed at much broader layers of the working class tomorrow. For workers and farmers who are involved in struggle today, it is essential to not only link up with each other but with broader social struggles that advance the interests of the toiling classes as a whole, including to demand equal rights for immigrants.

 
 
 
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