Over the last decade, succeeding U.S. administrations have carried out a campaign, with bipartisan backing, to clamp down on the rights of workers born outside U.S. borders. This assault accelerated under the administration of President William Clinton. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1966 and other laws tripled to 15,000 the number of agents for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The hated migra—now a section of the Department of Homeland Security called the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services—is the largest federal police agency in the United States, with a war chest of $1 billion.

Since the mid-1990s Washington has built a network of fences, walls, and electronic surveillance equipment to seal off major urban areas along the border with Mexico, forcing immigrants to risk their lives crossing at more dangerous points, often through the desert and mountainous areas. In the name of “fighting terrorism,” the borders have increasingly become militarized. This has been supplemented by anti-immigrant terror along the border by ultrarightist vigilante groups, who feel emboldened by the employers’ anti-immigrant campaign.

The number of “deportable” crimes has been expanded, targeting both undocumented workers and those with residence papers. Other regulations are used to deprive even immigrants with legal papers from food stamps, limit their eligibility for basic social programs, and deny access to public education to children of undocumented workers.

These measures are not aimed at keeping immigrant workers out of the country. They are used to try to intimidate and keep them in a pariah status with few rights. The purpose is to guarantee a cheap source of labor for the bosses and to divide working people by trying to convince U.S.-born workers that immigrants are to blame for unemployment and other social ills caused by capitalism. Workplace raids by la migra are often used to break strikes and union organizing drives. Bosses eagerly provide the names of those considered “union militants” to the cops.

As a result some 330 workers die every year attempting to cross the border in Texas alone. More workers are attempting the dangerous trek through the desert along the Arizona border where the death rate has shot up over the past decade—145 confirmed deaths last year. Those who die on the Mexican side of the border—or whose bodies are never found—do not make it into the official statistics. They likewise don’t include many others who drown each year trying to reach U.S. shores from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba.

Much of the news commentary about the deaths of immigrants along the border focuses on the system of “coyotes”—the traffickers who extract thousands of dollars from immigrants they bring across the border in sealed trucks, train cars and other vehicles. But the coyotes exist to serve a need of the bosses—to deliver this source of cheap labor. Focusing on these small-time smugglers lets off the hook the biggest traffickers in human beings and murderers of immigrants—the employers, the employers’ government, and their profit system.

Immigrant workers today are an increasing component of the ongoing resistance to the bosses’ offensive against working people. They can be found in the forefront of labor struggles in construction, meatpacking, garment and textile, hotels and restaurants, and the fields, in many cases helping lead fights to organize unions. One example of this combativity is the successful fight to stop the deportation of Róger Calero, which became a pole of attraction for immigrant workers willing to stand up to the bosses.

Those who fight for the interests of working people welcome these brothers and sisters with open arms—we need more troops who can be recruited to the fighting ranks of labor. The internationalizaton of our class weakens the employer-fostered competition between workers of different nationalities and widens the political experiences, cultural scope and world view of the working class. The job of the labor movement is to organize immigrant workers, so we can fight together and not be pitted against one another. It needs to demand: Repeal the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act! Stop the factory raids, arrests, and deportations!
 
 
Related article:
19 immigrant workers die in truck in Texas  
 
 
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