The Clinton administration is leading the bosses' assault on immigrant workers. Following in the president's footsteps, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are debating how much further they can go in denying basic rights to a layer of the working class.

Clinton has pushed for increases in border cops and authorized the use of the U.S. armed forces to aid them. Under his Democratic tutelage the number of raids, arrests, and deportations of immigrant workers has shot up. Clinton has put up a wall that runs into the Pacific Ocean near San Diego and plans to spend millions to build more steel fences. And he is expanding rules for identification checks of workers.

Some Congressional proposals are probing attacks on the rights of legal residents. At the same time, much of the big- business debate seeks to convince immigrants who have papers to identify as "American" and pit themselves against undocumented workers - "illegal aliens" scapegoated as the cause of unemployment, crime, and drug trafficking. These are workers Washington is denying proper documentation to keep them in a permanent pariah status.

Washington's and Wall Street's real aim is to drive a wedge into the working class and justify greater use of repressive measures, and the wholesale denial of rights to a growing number of those who toil on the land and in thousands of U.S. factories. Measures denying children the right to an education, eliminating access to any social benefits, and doing away with legal protections for a chunk of the workforce are a dagger aimed at the entire working class. As always when the bosses attempt to deepen divisions among our class, they go after those they think are the easiest prey, those they hope will receive the least support or solidarity.

The attacks on affirmative action, on the gains women have made in access to jobs and education, and on hard-won social entitlements will be speeded up if the bosses and their government can make it acceptable to deport, harass, and disenfranchise a section of the working class because they are immigrants.

Their steel fences and border walls are aimed at separating Chicano, Mexicano, Puerto Rican, and other workers from the "real Americans."

The danger of accepting the government's claim that it is legitimate to hunt workers down, kick them out of jobs, deny people medical care, and throw kids out of school should be clear to all workers, especially trade unionists.

Any union fighter knows the key to taking on the bosses is unity of the workers - not allowing the employers to pit us against each other. What the government has in store for us can be seen in the use of la migra to go after workers like those who had just voted in the United Auto Workers in one auto parts plant in Michigan.

The battles labor must take on to organize more workers and to defend the unions under attack can never be won without a clear stance in defense of the right of every worker to a job, a living wage, and access to all social entitlements. That's why the labor movement must push the demand for equal rights for immigrants. Millions of these workers are already denied equal protection under labor laws, such as farm workers, who are largely immigrant and Chicano. Many are not entitled to some social programs, live under constant fear of deportation, and cannot get citizenship or vote.

The bosses and their mouthpieces in the capitalist parties, however, are beginning to find out that they are taking on a little more than they bargained for. The walls and divisions they want to enforce will have to be imposed in cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York; in factories like meatpacking plants in Iowa, garment shops in California, and steel and auto plants and farm fields throughout the country. They are launching salvos at a section of the U.S. working class that is large in numbers, integrated in a growing number of cities and towns, and not willing to roll over and play dead. This layer of the working class is in fact giving growing indications of a willingness to fight the rulers' offensive.

The labor movement should welcome the fact that the U.S. border with Mexico is becoming more porous. Workers from Mexico and throughout Latin America are flowing into the United States because U.S. capital has penetrated their countries deeper, forcing harsher conditions of superexploitation. The new workers coming to the north make the U.S. working class more international and thus stronger. Many of these fellow toilers bring with them experiences of how to fight for workers' rights from their countries, and can be recruits to the side of our army - the working-class army labor must forge to defend our hard-won rights from the bosses.

The demonstrations in response to the April 1 beating of Mexican workers by Riverside cops are the latest example of a nationwide movement of Chicano and Mexicano workers that has already emerged - standing up to attacks from the cops, the courts, ultrarightists like Buchanan, and liberals like Clinton. More and more they are taking the lead in conferences and protests to answer the deadly attempts to divide the working class. In fact, the struggle led by the Chicano and Mexicano movement can give impulse to fights by Puerto Ricans, African-Americans, and other oppressed nationalities.

This is a battle all working people can join.

We can participate in planning and helping to get the word out about future events - especially the October 12 national march on Washington - to demand:

Jail the guilty cops!

Stop the raids and deportations!

Equal rights for immigrants!  
 
 
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