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   Vol. 69/No. 21           May 30, 2005  
 
 
Deportations, factory raids decline in U.S.
 
BY PAUL PEDERSON  
Washington has eased arrests and deportations of immigrant workers living and working inside the United States over the past eight years, according to statistics of the Department of Homeland Security. The government figures show a decline in factory raids, deportations, and arrests of immigrant workers in the United States compared to the mid-1990s.

At the same time, the U.S. government has tightened its border control. The turning point here was not the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon but the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act adopted with bipartisan support by Congress and signed into law by William Clinton.

Deportations have declined slightly because the capitalist rulers increasingly need immigrant labor and are stepping up their efforts to integrate workers from the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the world over into the exploitable workforce in the United States. This gives the U.S. rulers an edge over their imperialist competitors. Any effort at wholesale expulsions of undocumented immigrants, or even a substantial curtailing of their flow into the United States, would have adverse economic consequences for the capitalist economy.

Over the past quarter of a century the foreign-born population of the United States has increased from 6 percent to 12 percent, or some 36 million people today. The fate of these workers and those born in the United States are increasingly intertwined in battles against the bosses’ offensive on wages and working conditions.

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has carried out some well-publicized raids and arrests of immigrant workers at workplaces they dub “risk-sensitive” for terrorist attack, there has been a decline since the mid-1990s of factory raids, workplace sting operations, and round-ups of undocumented workers on the job.

In 2003, a total of 445 workers were arrested in what the immigration police call “work site enforcement”—factory and other workplace raids. This represents a 97 percent decline since 1997, when more than 17,000 workers were rounded up in such raids. The spike of factory raids in the mid-1990s coincided with the passage of the 1996 Immigration Act.

Deportations and arrests of workers caught inside the borders have declined since the mid-1990s as well. In 1997, la migra deported more than 61,000 people from the United States. That figure dropped to about 49,500 last year. In 2003, the total of “deportable aliens located,” that is picked up by immigration agents, had hit its lowest point since 1989.

At the same time, regulations for entering the country have been tightened and enforced more strictly at airports, border outposts, and other ports of entry over the last decade. The number of people ruled “inadmissible” at ports of entry has increased substantially—from 52,745 in 1997 to 153,622 last year.

Washington is trying to control its borders without cutting off the inflow of immigrant labor. Politicians in both parties are discussing measures intended to introduce some regulation and a measure of legality to the millions of undocumented immigrant workers that make up a growing share of the U.S. working class. The “guest worker” program pushed by the Bush administration, and a bill that was recently introduced in the Senate aimed at granting work visas to seasonal farm workers, illustrate this trend.  
 
 
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