BY HILDA CUZCO
In the past several months the Clinton administration has escalated factory raids by immigration cops, beefed up the border police, and stepped up the deportation of undocumented workers.

Meanwhile, Democratic and Republican politicians in the Senate are debating a bill to curtail immigration and restrict the rights of immigrants. A version of this measure was approved by the House of Representatives March 21 in a bipartisan vote of 333 to 87. Commenting on the legislation, Republican Congressman Lamar Smith, chief sponsor of the bill, said, "Immigration is not an entitlement, it is a privilege."

Last year the U.S. Border Patrol arrested 1.3 million undocumented immigrants at the Mexican border, 400,000 more than in 1994. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) also announced a record 51,600 deportations in 1995, an increase of nearly 75 percent from 1990.

In January President William Clinton signed legislation raising the INS budget to $2.6 billion. Much of this increase is to hire 800 Border Patrol cops, boosting the total to 5,700 agents. In the last 10 years the number of U.S. immigration police at the border has almost doubled. While other federal budget items get slashed, Clinton is pushing for an increase in next year's budget to add 700 more border cops.

Some $4 million has already been earmarked for a giant fence along the border near San Diego. Last year the Clinton administration built a 10-foot high steel wall along 24 miles of the California border and into the Pacific Ocean, as part of a crackdown called Operation Gatekeeper.

Last December, INS chief Doris Meissner and other U.S. officials tested an "enhanced border control plan" in southern Arizona, supposedly in case of mass immigration caused by a financial collapse in Mexico. "Scores of Border Control agents practiced erecting cyclone-fence corrals, herding immigrants through them for emergency processing, and loading them onto bus convoys for travel to mass detention centers," the New York Times reported December 8. Since January 1995 some 200-300 members of the U.S. armed forces have been sent to reinforce the border police.

Clinton: `American jobs'
In February Clinton signed an executive order that prohibits companies that hire undocumented workers from receiving federal contracts. "American jobs belong to America's legal workers," the president declared on signing the order.

The number of INS inspectors at workplaces has more than doubled to 700. In March immigration cops arrested dozens of meat-packers in Philadelphia; machine operators in Norwalk, Connecticut; and 24 janitors at the State House in Trenton, New Jersey. In February 83 workers were arrested in raids of restaurants around Washington, D.C. In the last six months the INS has arrested 700 undocumented garment workers in New York.

Last summer and fall, the INS arrested 4,000 immigrants in a sweep of workplaces in six southeastern states, called "Operation South P.A.W." The initials stand for "Protecting American Workers" - the main propaganda theme of Clinton's immigration policy.

In Washington, the administration has set the tone in the debate on an anti-immigrant bill by backing a proposal to reduce legal immigration by one- third, a measure Republican presidential contender Robert Dole has so far not endorsed. Ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan has called for a five-year moratorium on legal immigration.

Not to be outdone, however, Dole has supported provisions to restrict immigrants' access to welfare and social security, and advocates use of the military in patrolling the borders. He also calls for declaring English the official language; 23 state governments have already adopted English-only laws.

An amendment to the immigration bill was approved March 20 that would deny public education to undocumented children. House Speaker Newton Gingrich argued for the measure saying the problem is undocumented immigrants who "come to America to live off the law-abiding, American taxpayer." Clinton opposes this provision, preferring his police crackdown at the border and in workplaces.

This provision in the immigration bill echoes Proposition 187, a California ballot initiative championed by Gov. Peter Wilson that was approved in November 1994. Key parts of that measure were declared unconstitutional by a federal judge last November on grounds that only the federal government can regulate immigration. In 1982 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that banned undocumented children from attending public schools.

Among the highlights of the immigration bill, it authorizes adding 1,000 Border Patrol cops each year for the next five years and building a 13-mile triple fence south of San Diego. It would also set up a toll-free number for bosses to verify the status of prospective workers, a measure some call a step toward a national identification card. Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein has already called for such a national ID card with such features as a person's photo and fingerprints.

The Senate is soon due to debate a similar bill. Some senators have expressed hesitations about pushing too fast right now in the probe against "legal" immigrants, preferring instead to foster a wedge between "American" and undocumented workers.

While INS attacks have stepped up, protests by immigrants and defenders of democratic rights have also noticeably increased across the country. The recent police beating of several Mexican immigrants near Los Angeles has become the most recent focal point of such protests.

In Detroit, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union helped initiate an April 2 action by 35 people outside the INS court. They were protesting recent INS raids at three small auto part plants in Detroit suburbs where cops brutalized and arrested workers. At one of these plants, in the city of Romulus, workers had recently voted to join the UAW.

"The INS denied these workers their human rights. They're just working people trying to live and then immigration roughs them up. On top of that, immigration separates families to pressure people not to contest deportation," said one UAW member, explaining why she turned out to protest.

Similarly, in Minneapolis immigrant rights supporters have called an April 11 protest at the federal building in response to a migra raid at the Gold'n Plump chicken processing plant in Cold Spring, Minnesota, nine days earlier. Some 55 workers were arrested and most deported.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home