Vol.60/No.24 June 17, 1996
Socialists say, ‘Equal rights for immigrants!’
Candidates call for end to deportations
The statement below was released June
5 by James Harris, Socialist Workers
Party candidate for president of the
United States, and SWP vice-presidential
candidate Laura Garza.
Our campaign calls on the labor movement
and every democratic-minded human
being to organize protests demanding an
immediate end to the raids by Ia migra in
New York garment shops, Midwest packinghouses,
and other factories across the country. We must demand a halt to the arrests and deportations
of immigrant workers.
The Clinton administration - with the backing of the
employers - is trying to drive a wedge into the working
class and justify greater use of anti-democratic measures
and the wholesale denial of rights to a growing number of
those who toil on the land or sweat in the factories.
The goal of the raids by the INS cops is not to stop
"illegal" immigration but to create a pariah layer of workers
who are forced to accept poverty wages and inhuman
working conditions. The bosses seek to use these attacks
as a way to drive down the value of labor power of the
working class. as a whole.
The chauvinist, "America First" ideological campaign
that goes along with the cop assaults also seeks to convince
immigrants who have papers to identify with
"Americans" and pit themselves against the undocumented.
Clinton's expanding computerized identification checks
set a dangerous precedent for the entire labor movement.
They open the door widely to legal spying on union militants
and other working-class fighters.
As always when the bosses attempt to deepen divisions
among our class they go after those they think will get the
least support and solidarity.
The attacks on affirmative action, on the gains women
have made in access to jobs and education, and on social
entitlements will be accelerated if the employers and their
government can make it acceptable to hunt workers down, kick them out of their jobs, deny them and their children
medical care, and deport them because they are immigrants.
Workers from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America,
as well as other semicolonial countries, are flowing into
the United States because U.S. capital has penetrated
deeper into their countries forcing miserable conditions
of superexploitation. And often, when working people in
those countries rebel, the imperialist masters respond with
a rain of bullets, as was the case recently with the assault
by the French army on toilers in the Central African Republic.
The labor movement should celebrate the fact that the
U.S. border with Mexico has become more porous. The
new workers coming to the north bring with them valuable
experiences from the class struggle in their countries
of origin. They make the U.S. working class more international
and for that reason stronger.
Many of these immigrant workers, as well as Chicanos
and other U.S. citizens targeted by the steel fences at the
border and by the INS raids, are not willing to roll over
and play dead. The meetings to discuss the impact on the
raids taking place in Iowa, the conviction of two bosses in
that state for brutalizing a worker, and activities around
the country to build the October 12 national march on
Washington for immigrant rights are reflections of this
resistance.
Working people should join these activities and organize
others to demand:
Equal rights for immigrants!
Stop the raids and deportations now!
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