Racist Immigration Enforcement is the present reality of U.S. immigration law. “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (CIR) is what U.S. rulers are using to cover up and increase racist and fascist attacks on immigrant workers. This means rapidly increasing mass arrests of undocumented workers, ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) police raids on homes, jobs, military bases, bus stations and highways, all leading to mass detentions and deportations. These “enforcement programs” have many names. The new ones are called the “Criminal Alien Program” and “Secure Communities.” Police in every city and county are either deputized as ICE agents or are cooperating voluntarily.
This liberal face of fascist enforcement — the campaign for CIR to create a “path to citizenship“— is attracting thousands of anti-racist workers and students to support it. Millions have already marched for immigrants‘ rights. In one southern city, after a mass parish meeting with over a hundred people, the Catholic Church leadership
forbid further meetings unless all speakers were
approved by the church. Some people at the meeting
exposed CIR for building fascism and racism. Many had come to the meeting wanting to ally with
immigrant workers. Misleaders insisted that the only purpose of the meeting was to convince those already friendly to immigrants to send postcards to their congressmen in support of CIR.
U.S. rulers needs CIR so they can force immigrant youth into the military to fight their widening imperialist wars. The last CIR bill in Congress contained the “Dream Act”, which would use the promise of legalization to trick these youth into giving eight years and maybe their lives to the military.
They also need it to expand fascist labor policy in the workplace. CIR in its current form would set up a massive databank called E-verify. All newly-hired workers, both citizens and non-citizen, would have to undergo background checks on their status just to get a job. Since 9/11, the U.S. government has computerized and centralized searching of everyone’s records — not just immigrants — so that even prior marriages in Mexico 20 years ago, or a minor arrest in California in the 1970s, will show up and provide a basis for deportation or denial of work.
CIR’s promise of “legalization” will keep the bait sweet enough to continue to attract millions of workers into a temporary-worker status under the watchful eyes of government agents. Immigrant workers are victims of racist super-exploitation, which impoverishes the whole working class by creating a “reserve army of the unemployed,” which the bosses use as a club over the heads of all workers, including white workers. The CIR will tie immigrant workers to their jobs by making their temporary status contingent on continued employment. This policy means that workers who fight back against rotten conditions risk deportation.
Risking deportation, strikes, demonstrations, jail and getting fired are some of the necessary steps millions of anti-racist immigrants and non-immigrants will have to take to free our class from the bondage of capitalist wage slavery. The alternatives the bosses’ offer lead straight to the barracks, the battlefield and an early grave. Redressing the exploitation of immigrants ultimately requires a revolution, under the red flag of communism, that destroys the national borders capitalists put up to protect their profits by force.