Undocumented Immigrants Rights are Immigrants Rights!

by Amee Chew

A historic wave of marches, boycotts, and strikes for immigrant rights, including amnesty and family reunification, has swept the U.S. On May Day, striking workers shut down Los Angeles international airport, and 75,000 Los Angeles middle and high school students were absent from school. The Port of Aztlan in Long Beach, the largest container port of entry in the United States, came to a complete halt. One million people marched in L.A., 700,000 in Chicago, and half a million in NYC.

May Day caused California and other states to suffer multi-million dollar losses. The coordinated protests demonstrated the economic clout of immigrants, including undocumented workers. Spanish-language press especially played an important role in announcing and calling for the demonstrations, but Chinese American workers in California and New York City also participated in large numbers.

These protests were prompted by the now infamous H.R. 4437. This piece of legislation, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, would make even minor violations of immigration laws a felony, resulting in imprisonment and deportation. Babies brought to the U.S. by their parents without a visa, honor roll college students not taking the correct number of courses, or people late in providing change-of-address notices, would all be considered felons. Notoriously, the law also would make anyone who offers assistance to undocumented immigrants a felon  including the staff of community organizations like Chinese Progressive Association. As a result of the outcry, the Senate recently passed a less extreme immigration bill. Now the House and Senate must reconcile their two versions. We need to take a critical look at the legislative proposals on the table, and moreover, continue holding the government accountable and pushing for just immigration policies.

A Look at the Immigration Reform Proposals
Although the Senates legislation has been lauded as more immigrant-friendly, it actually includes treacherous provisions for all immigrants! The Senate provides a very limited path for legalization for those undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. over 5 years  and anyone who has used fraudulent documents, including Social Security numbers, is disqualified. Additionally, we must be wary of guest worker programs which allow foreign workers to come to the U.S., but with few protections or political rights.

The bill sharply increases resources for detention and enforcement  rather than putting a focus on citizenship, family reunification, residency, and services. Immigration detainees are already the fastest growing prison population, with companies rushing to build jails so beds can be filled placing all immigrants at risk for harassment and unjust arrest. Furthermore, the Senate voted to make English the national language  which may chip away bilingual programs, materials, and ballots.

Bush has proposed to build three-tier fences and station 6,000 National Guard troops on the U.S.-Mexico border. Yet immigration enforcement at the border has cost over $30 billion in the past 12 years, and not decreased the number of undocumented migrants. Such fences have proven ineffective because they do not address the root causes of migration  even though they exacerbate conditions for migrants, adding to the 400 yearly desert deaths, not to mention rapes and beatings.

A Racist Backlash Affecting All Immigrants
Todays anti-immigrant laws mirror the anti-Chinese laws of the 1800s. In 1882, the U.S. government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning Chinese immigrants from coming to the U.S., and prohibiting those here from becoming naturalized citizens. This discriminatory law eventually expanded to exclude all Asian immigrants, and was not fully reversed until 1965. To pass these laws, racist politicians blamed Asian immigrants for stealing jobs from white Americans. Today, similar arguments are used to promote laws such as H.R. 4437.

Right-wing groups and politicians have focused their attacks on undocumented immigrants. However, these attacks must be a concern for all immigrants regardless of legal status  they are a strategy for the Bush administration to divide us and undermine the rights of all immigrants. In 1994, Proposition 187 excluded undocumented immigrants in California from social welfare benefits. Two years later, the U.S. government cut off most legal immigrants from public health care, food stamps and cash assistance programs for the needy. The attack on undocumented immigrants is only part of a more general backlash against all immigrants.

Whose Nation of Immigrants?
U.S. immigration policy is primarily shaped by the drive to extract immigrants labor for as little in return as possible. Immigrants, especially non-white immigrants, face a contradiction: U.S. society agrees to include us as economic contributors  but not as people with families we are responsible to, with community lives, with social or political rights. The recent Senate bill follows in this tradition  its provisions are less about guaranteeing civil and human rights for immigrants, than about feeding useful labor to the jaws of businesses. This overarching motive can help us make sense of the extensive history of xenophobia that has been an inseparable part of a country which calls itself a nation of immigrants, whose corporations rely on immigrant workers.

We are here, America cannot exclude us, and yet were supposed to be here to lend our labor only, not raise our voices. Hence we can work here for years without unification with our families; our rights to speak our native languages on the job are under attack by English-only laws; we have fewer protections of our human rights than U.S. citizens; we can enlist in the army to die for this country before we can vote.

After all, the first large-scale non-white immigrants were not actually immigrants, but slaves from Africa. And the mantra that we are a nation of immigrants hides the fact that the first immigrants were conquerors who perpetuated a genocide against Native Americans  a history that many white Americans are surely uncomfortable with, when they think of immigration today.

Who Gets Papers?
U.S. history shows us that immigration policy is biased against non-whites, especially those who are low-skill or wage-workers. Even today, under the quota system, a huge country like China has the same quota as a tiny country like Switzerland. Altogether, the quota system works against Third World countries. Immigration law is also shaped by unfair foreign policies  Cubans who reach Florida are granted amnesty, but Haitians are detained and deported.

Not so surprisingly, undocumented immigrants from China have been an integral part of the history of Chinese in America. Even after World War II, legal immigrants from China were given a quota of only 105 a year. In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake destroyed the birth certificates of all Chinese immigrants. As a result, formerly undocumented Chinese immigrants were able to claim they were native-born citizens, and bring over paper sons and relatives. Thus, many Chinese Americans today who are legal immigrants or citizens are actually the descendants of undocumented immigrants.

When considering undocumented immigrants, we need to ask who has made the laws and why? Furthermore, what do these laws mean for all immigrants, regardless of papers? Who really benefits from criminalizing undocumented immigrants?

We are here because you were there
U.S. policies that criminalize undocumented immigrants are hypocritical. The government, with the backing of business leaders, knowingly supports an international economic system that drives millions of desperate people into this country. Following NAFTA in 1994, millions of Mexican communities were dispossessed of their land and given no other option to provide for their families than to risk their lives finding work in the U.S. In China, similar free trade policies have impoverished and displaced over 120 million farmers and migrant workers.

The forces of corporate globalization are a main cause of migration around the world. Today, corporations are playing one countrys workers against another, by hopping around overseas to drive down wages and increase their profits. The international economic system has not only resulted in lay-offs of U.S. industrial workers. Poor people in the Third World countries that U.S. corporations move to are adversely affected, as well. When U.S. agribusiness uses the WTO to force open the markets of poor countries, they destroy the livelihoods of millions of rural people. These rural workers are driven off the land to cities  whether in China or the U.S.  to work at low wages for multinational corporations.

Moreover, as a world superpower, U.S. military action has also destabilized regions, exacerbating economic hardship and fueling migration. In Latin America, to take one example, U.S. foreign policy includes a brutal legacy of over 60 direct military interventions from 1823 to 2004  including coup detats, blockades, occupations, and the promotion of civil wars to undermine popular governments! Tragically, the U.S. has sponsored undemocratic, violent, and corrupt regimes throughout the region, resulting in crippling poverty, generalized political instability, and widespread discontent in every Latin American country.

Such policies are directly related to migrations of Latinos who pursue the resources and capital stolen from their countries, to jobs in the U.S. The anti-imperialist, immigrant rights slogan, We are here because you were there, describes this process. Others ask, If capital can cross borders, why not people? And many Mexicans say, We didnt cross the border, the border crossed us, alluding to the U.S. military conquest of Mexican territory in 1848. Rather than relying on ineffective border fences and increased enforcement within the U.S., we must consider the wider picture if we seek to humanely control migration.

The Bosses Benefit
Faced with long waiting lists and barriers to legal immigration, over 11 million undocumented immigrants, including nearly 1 million from China, have come to the U.S. in recent decades seeking a better life. The U.S. governments response to the consequences of their own neoliberal trade pacts has been to militarize the U.S./Mexico border and criminalize the very people they displaced.

Business leaders benefit not only from the international economic system that fuels migration  but also from the xenophobic policies that criminalize immigrants once they get here, which they are able to apply to their own advantages.  Employers squeeze more profits from a fearful, exploitable workforce of undocumented immigrants willing to work for low-wages in unhealthy conditions. Women workers are subjected to sexual exploitation and harrassment. If these immigrants are illegal, they are kept at their boss mercy, prevented from organizing, and denied protections of their human rights. Those employers who dont directly hire undocumented workers benefit, too, since the presence of illegal immigrants drives down wages and living standards for all workers.

But is this the fault of the migrants  or of U.S. imperialism abroad and anti-labor laws domestically? Undocumented workers dont drive down living standards because they are illegal  but because they lack fundamental rights. Immigrants dont seek social services because they are lazy  but because our economic system does not provide for poor peoples human needs.

The attack and scapegoating of undocumented immigrants hurts all immigrants. Public and government officials cannot tell who has papers just by looking at them. Many Americans see all immigrants the same ways some of us negatively view undocumented immigrants. Powers to attack undocumented people will be used to racially profile and attack non-whites more generally.

A Strategy to Extend Immigrant Rights
If we want a policy that will benefit all immigrants and expand workers rights, we must have policies that allow immigrants to organize regardless of their status. Undocumented immigrants must be legalized, not criminalized. If undocumented workers were legalized, rather than taking away our jobs by working for less, they would have more power to join us in organizing for better working conditions.

Putting our rights at the forefront, we must be wary of proposals for temporary guest worker programs that masquerade as visa programs or paths to legalization  including plans recently suggested by the Senate and Bush administration. By putting immigrants at the mercy of their bosses for their legal status, and allowing them few labor protections, such programs have resulted in horrendous exploitation of immigrants in the past.

The movement for immigrant rights and amnesty did not start last month, or last year, but has been an ongoing process. Not just undocumented immigrants, but legal immigrants face many unjust immigration laws that should be opposed. Instead of blaming each other we must hold the true perpetrators of these laws accountable. The Chinese Progressive Association supports the human right of all people to work with dignity to support themselves. Undocumented workers rights are workers rights, and people have the right to travel for their livelihoods, whether fleeing poverty, political repression, or war. We must use this opportunity to reach out, work in coordination, and keep our voices heard