Growing assaults on immigrants by government immigration cops sharply pose the need for the unions to lead a fight for amnesty for all workers in the U.S. without papers. This is the road to end their pariah status, unify the working class and strengthen workers to take on attacks by the bosses and their government.
In recent weeks Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot dead two immigrant workers, in Houston and Biddeford, Maine. This comes on top of the administration’s moves to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, making them liable to deportation.
The rulers’ goal is not to drive all undocumented workers out, but to terrorize them. To make them live and toil in constant fear of being locked up, deprived of the ability to provide for their families and then expelled from the U.S. The rulers hope this second-class status will make them less likely to have union protection, and force them to work longer, for less pay and in more dangerous conditions. And to use this to strengthen their attacks on all workers and the unions to boost their profits and their competitive position against rivals abroad.
The need for an amnesty to advance the unity of working people has been a life-or-death question for the labor movement for decades.
Winning an amnesty would deal blows to the administration’s current raids and deportations. It would lift the fear of expulsion facing millions, including workers whose Temporary Protected Status is under attack. It would deal blows to anti-immigrant prejudice, a tool the bosses use to divide working people.
As long as the capitalist rulers hold power they will keep ICE, or some new and equally brutal immigration police force, with their detention centers, disdain for due process and their deportations. “ICE out” is an ultraleft, utopian demand that points workers away from confronting the real problem. No lasting protection can be won for undocumented workers, or unify the working class, without fighting and winning an amnesty.
The capitalist class seeks to regulate the flow of immigrants to meet their dog-eat-dog needs for a supply of superexploitable labor. They use immigrant labor to intensify competition among workers, above all for jobs. They want native born workers to see immigrants as the enemy, not as who they actually are — fellow working people who share the same enemy.
But an amnesty can be fought for and won. In 1986, 2.9 million immigrant workers were given amnesty under President Ronald Reagan. In 2006 millions of workers — led by immigrants — took to the streets and turned back the Sensenbrenner bill, which would have made being in the U.S. without papers a felony.
Immigrant workers are fellow unionists and fellow fighters. Today they’re standing side by side with native-born workers fighting a boss lockout at the Cargill packing plant in Colorado. They’re leading protests against the ICE shootings in Texas and Maine.
A union-led fight for an amnesty would strengthen the working class, deepen our class consciousness and point a road forward. It would put workers in a better position to defend ourselves in the face of the social breakdowns, wars and growing class battles continually produced by the workings of capitalism.