Vol. 77/No. 38      October 28, 2013

The marches for “Immigrant Dignity and Respect” — including more than 2,000 in New York; some 2,000 in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.; and about 3,000 in Chicago — were backed by a wide range of labor unions and immigrant advocacy groups.

“I don’t really know much about the actual law they’re discussing,” Marval Rouse, a laid-off member of Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which had a large contingent at the New York march, told the Militant. “But I have a lot of friends who are forced to live in the shadows. They need to be able to stay here and get work.”

“We deserve basic rights,” Gloria Ponce, a home-care worker, said at the Atlanta demonstration. “We’re not criminals.”

“Things are only getting worse for us,” factory worker Rafael Jiménez said at the Chicago action. “I have marched in Los Angeles and Chicago and I’ll never stop until things change.”

The immigration bill approved by the Senate June 27 would grant a provisional work permit to those who pass a background check along with other onerous requirements, including paying thousands of dollars, and holds out the possibility of permanent residency after 10 years.

The “road to legalization” would not be completed until what the bill calls the Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy is fully deployed. This includes 700 miles of fencing on the Mexican border, doubling the number of border patrol agents to more than 38,000, and making the E-Verify program that bosses use to find out the legal status of potential workers mandatory for all businesses.

The bill would mandate stepped-up prosecution of immigrants for “illegal” entry and initiate steps toward a national ID card for all workers.

It would also increase the number of “guest workers” with temporary work visas who can be deported if they quit or are fired. Berry pickers at Sakuma Farms in Washington state fighting for a union, higher wages and improved working conditions have seen firsthand why the bosses want this program expanded in farms and factories. The company brought in guest workers last month and then made them keep picking berries when union supporters went on strike.

In 2006, immigrant workers organized massive mobilizations against the Sensenbrenner bill, passed by the House of Representatives, branding all workers without “proper” papers as felons. On May 1, some 2 million protested, shutting down scores of factories in what amounted to a nationwide political strike. This fight against criminalizing undocumented workers won broad sympathy among working people throughout the country and the bill went down to defeat.

As the immigration reform bill has stalled in the House of Representatives, opponents of deportations have debated what strategy is needed to advance the fight. A handful of groups have withdrawn their support to the bill, considering parts of it too onerous. Others have called for changes.

Elvira Arellano, a well-known immigration activist who was deported from the U.S. to Mexico in 2007, noted in an Oct. 9 column in New York’s El Diario that relying on Democratic Party politicians to pass a “reform” bill has weakened the fight against deportations. There are now only “a handful of organizations that continue, in an ongoing way, to demand the immediate end to deportations,” she said. Arellano has remained active in defense of immigrant workers both in Mexico and the U.S.

“The majority of pro-immigrant rights, Latino and union organizations have become tools of the Democratic Party,” she said.

“They tell us we should not challenge the president on his record of deportations,” Arellano notes. “They tell us we should be more ‘politically sophisticated.’ … This kind of ‘political sophistication’ has made us impotent.”

A movement needs to be built in the streets to demand “ending deportations and the militarization of our borders and the passage of legalization,” she wrote.

Sara Lobman in New York, Laura Anderson in Chicago and Janice Lynn in Atlanta contributed to this article.
 
 
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