The two cases involved challenges by immigrants to some of the most notorious aspects of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, signed into law by the Clinton administration.

In a June 25 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that some noncitizens convicted of crimes in the United States may not be deported--as the 1996 law required--unless they first have an opportunity to mount a legal challenge in front of a federal court.

Under the 1996 law, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was given the power to deport individuals at the point of entry, such as an airport. The process, called "expedited removal," denied these immigrants the right to a lawyer or to any judicial hearing--a denial of the constitutional guarantee of due process.

The law retroactively defined a range of misdemeanors and other "crimes"--as minor as jumping a subway turnstile--as aggravated felonies for which a person could be deported, even if the offense had been committed decades ago. Tens of thousands of people, including legal U.S. residents, have been deported under this provision.

Both the Clinton and the Bush administrations defended the legislation, arguing that the federal courts did not have the right to review the executive branch's prerogative to carry out immigration law.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia echoed the two administrations' argument that Congress had removed federal court jurisdiction over the executive branch's ability to conduct immigration policy, and that "expedited removal" of "criminal aliens" did not violate the Constitution.

In the second decision, issued June 28, the Supreme Court ruled against a provision in the 1996 law allowing the U.S. government to detain indefinitely a "deportable" immigrant simply because the government of their home country will not take them.

The Clinton and Bush administrations had insisted that U.S. law allowed indefinite, even lifelong, jailing of these immigrants.

Speaking for the court majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said such a position was a "serious constitutional threat" under the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process. The ruling states that after six months of detention, if deportation did not seem likely within the "reasonably foreseeable future," the government would have to present additional reasons to keep someone in jail.

There are currently some 20,000 people under INS detention, 3,000 of them with deportation orders and no country of destination. Many are permanent residents who were locked up in INS prisons after completing sentences on criminal charges.  
 
Wave of immigration
Washington's immigration laws have been the object of continuing protests by immigrant workers and defenders of their rights. They have also come under criticism by capitalist politicians who want to modify some of the most egregious aspects of the laws in order to clean up the image of the U.S. justice system, while keeping intact U.S. employers' ability to superexploit immigrant labor.

The debate takes place as the massive wave of immigration to this country, especially from Latin America and Asia, continues unabated, changing the face of U.S. society. An estimated 300,000 people cross the U.S.-Mexico border every year. U.S. officials estimate that, that in addition to those with legal residence, some 5 million people are working in the United States without immigration papers.

Many industries, from meatpacking to construction, hire large numbers of immigrant workers, as bosses seek sources of cheap labor. As millions of workers from abroad have become part of the U.S. working class, many have become increasingly confident to assert their rights, from union-organizing drives to protests against deportations.

In this situation, the U.S. rulers have felt it necessary to make some adjustments to the sweeping legislation adopted with bipartisan support in the 1990s.

Former INS commissioner Doris Meissner, whose agency oversaw the Clinton administration's sharp step-up in attacks on immigrants, was quoted in a July 1 New York Times article saying, "The immigration policy debate shows how unsettled we are right now about how we view immigration. And maybe that's to be expected because looking back, we know from the census that this has been the largest decade of immigration in history in terms of numbers. Over 10 million people came to this country in the 1990s."

Commenting after the June 25 Supreme Court ruling, Pamela Falk, a law professor at the City University of New York, told the Times that the decision "reflects the reality of the census in a new view that immigrants are part of the mainstream of the U.S. political system."

During a July 10 visit to New York, President George Bush tried to portray the White House as sympathetic to immigrants and announced several proposed changes in immigration policy, mostly cosmetic. One was to establish "a six-month standard from start to finish for processing applications for immigration," he said.

He also called for extending a temporary provision adopted by Congress allowing immigrants to apply for "green cards"--permanent residence--while residing in the United States. Under the 1996 immigration act, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave the United States and return to their homelands for years while applying for their green card.

Despite the legal changes registered in the recent court rulings, the body of anti-immigrant legislation remains mostly in force.  
 
Anti-working-class policies
Besides the provisions that were taken up by the Supreme Court, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act contains numerous other reactionary clauses. Among other things, the law required that a Social Security number be included on drivers licenses by the year 2000, a provision later removed before that time. Currently 29 states use a Social Security number as the driver's license or show it on the license. Such measures, which have sparked demonstrations this year by immigrant workers from California to Minnesota, are a probe by U.S. officials to move toward establishing a national ID card for all U.S. residents.

A second law passed by the Clinton administration in 1996, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, established secret evidence courts. The Illegal Immigration Reform law expanded the power to use secret evidence against immigrants accused of being "terrorists." The legislation also allows the government to deny the right to bail to such accused individuals.

In March, a bill called the Secret Evidence Repeal Act was introduced in Congress, seeking to limit the use of secret evidence to deport or detain immigrants. The FBI testified last year that it had used "secret evidence" in 11 cases, and the INS has admitted that it has used such "evidence" in about 50 cases from 1992 to 1998.

In addition, the 1996 immigration law tripled to 15,000 the number of immigration cops, making the INS the largest federal police agency. Factory raids and deportations have hit record highs, and 1,000 working people are estimated to have died trying to cross from Mexico to the United States since 1996. These increased deaths are a result of the INS stepping up patrols along the border, forcing workers to cross through more remote, desert areas.

Immigrant workers have answered the attacks on their rights with repeated protests, gaining increased support from other workers. In this context, the AFL-CIO leadership, which had previously supported employer sanctions in the name of protecting "American jobs," has endorsed the call for an "amnesty" for undocumented workers already in the United States, and for the repeal of the law decreeing sanctions on employers who hire undocumented workers, a measure bosses use as a club to try to intimidate workers from speaking out or organizing for their rights on the job.

In one sign of the times, four Mexican-born workers in New York successfully sued their boss, a contractor called Quick and Professional, for not paying their wages. The judge ruled that the employer had to pay them $3,290 in back wages. The four workers, three of whom are undocumented, proudly appeared in a photo accompanying a news article on their case in the New York Spanish-language daily El Diario/La Prensa.
 
 
Related articles:
Changing face of working class
Youth resist attacks by cops and rightists against Asians in UK
 
 
 
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