Self-confidence and pride in hailing from Mexico or other nations is up. Fear of employers or the immigration cops is down. As Jesús Hernández, one of 33 workers fired from the Universal Form Clamp plant in Bellwood, Illinois, for joining the 100,000-strong mobilization for immigrant rights in Chicago March 10, told the press, “The march was exactly for what we are here today, for our rights to be respected.” After standing up for themselves, all 33 got their jobs back.

And there are other victories, partial but meaningful for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. On March 17, the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration division announced it would end its practice of using fake workplace safety meetings as sting operations to round up and arrest undocumented workers. A proposal that would require “guest workers,” after working six years as temporaries, to return to their country of origin before applying for permanent residency was not included in the bill the Senate Judiciary Committee approved, two days after more than half a million marched in Los Angeles.

The wind may be blowing against the Sensenbrenner bill the House of Representatives approved in December, which includes provisions that have justifiably outraged immigrant workers, such as criminalizing all the undocumented and those aiding them.

All the “immigration reform” proposals debated in Congress, like the McCain-Kennedy bill—touted by many capitalist politicians as a pro-immigrant alternative to the Sensenbrenner proposal—or its variant the Senate Judiciary Committee just passed, are aimed at perpetuating divisions in the working class. The goal of these bills is not to expel those without papers or to slow down immigration. Not only is that impossible—the number of the undocumented has reached 5 percent of the workforce—but the U.S. bosses need immigrant labor to maintain their edge over foreign competitors. Their purpose, as our March 27 editorial said, is to maintain a more vulnerable section of the workforce to assure bosses a pool of superexploited labor and fatten their profits.

The working class in the United States has become more internationalized and thus strengthened as immigrant workers become more integrated into society. Working people have reason to celebrate and get encouragement from the sea of Mexican and other flags that recently filled the streets of Los Angeles, proving California is becoming as much a part of Mexico as the United States. Now is the time for the labor movement to demand that all undocumented workers get immediate permanent residency. Now is the time to press for organizing all workers, native- and foreign-born, into trade unions to fight the employers’ attacks on the wages, job conditions, and dignity of all working people. Now is the time to build and join the mobilizations for immigrant rights continuing through the national day of action on April 10.
 
 
Related articles:
‘We’re workers, not criminals’
Over half million protest anti-immigrant bill in L.A.
Marches, high school walkouts spread across U.S.
 
 
 
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