When her husband Victor Perez-Lopez was deported to Mexico, Rosa Lopez had few choices. With no money to care for her child, knowing things would be much worse in Mexico, Rosa did what she had to do for her son. "When his momma brought this baby here and left him, tears rolled down her face and mine, too," family friend and childcare worker Julie Rodas said. "She said, 'Julie, will you please take care of my son because I have no money, no way of paying rent?'"1 Victor, Rosa, and their child were the victims of a recent immigrant raid in Stillmoore, Georgia, that tore dozens of families apart and cut off their only means of providing for their children.

Thirty-five year-old Herminia Silva of Oaxaca, Mexico and her daughter Adriana traveled for five days to cross the border to reunite with her husband Feliciano and their two sons, Eliseo and Feliciano, Jr., in Illinois.2 Poisoned by a cactus plant, gangrene infection spread throughout her body. Given prompt medical attention, her injury would not have been life threatening. She soon died in a hospital bed after making her way back to her family. 3

These women’s stories should be the starting point for a discussion on the rights of immigrant workers. The corporate media has recently taken notice of the lives of immigrants in the context of a debate in Congress over homeland security and a declining economy that has at times sounded hysterical and at other times downright racist. Both documented and undocumented immigrants, however, have been under attack for much longer.

Contrary to the popular myth of America as a melting pot that always welcomes tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the ruling class, the class with the most wealth and therefore the most political power, in the United States has a long history of hostility to immigrants and has actively sought to pit the native-born workers against those born elsewhere. In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, giving the President arbitrary powers to exclude or deport foreigners deemed dangerous and to prosecute anyone who criticized the government. The Act was used mainly to imprison immigrant editors and pamphleteers. Under pressure from California and other Western states, Congress passed the nation's first immigration restriction targeting a specific ethnic or racial group, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated “Operation Wetback” in 1954 to remove undocumented workers, specifically Mexican nationals, from the southwestern US twelve years after the government negotiated with Mexico to create a guest workers program to bring Mexican workers into the US. During World War II, Japanese immigrants and their native-born children were rounded up and held in internment camps.

The latest wave of anti-immigrant hysteria began in the 1994 with the launching of Clinton’s Operation Gatekeeper, described by San Diego State University Professor of Chicano Studies Justin Akers-Chacón as “a U.S. government strategy to seal off popular border-crossing points using a combination of new border fences, an increase in border personnel, and the latest military hardware and training.” Contrary to the operation’s promotion as a policy of “prevention through deterrence,” the militarization of the southern border was instead “a death sentence for many immigrants crossing the border and the latest policy directed at controlling the flow of Mexican labor.” There have been more than 600 documented deaths of immigrants seeking to cross the border since Operation Gatekeeper took effect. 4

Racists in California launched their own anti-immigrant attack at the state level by putting Proposition 187 on the state ballot in the same year as Clinton’s border plan. After a prominent support from Republican Governor Pete Wilson and a media smear campaign which conjured images of invading hordes of Mexican women having children and living in luxury on taxpayer dollars, the initiative passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote, but was later overturned by a federal court.

The War on Terror has afforded the government new opportunities and new weapons with which to wage war on working people, regardless of immigration status. In the wake of 9/11/01, hundreds of people around the country were rounded up in raids promoted by the government as efforts to crack down on terrorists right here in America. The majority was of Arab descent. Not a single one of those arrested has ever been charged with terrorism.5 The Immigration and Naturalization Service was restructured and placed under the control of the Department of Homeland Security. While Clinton’s anti-immigrant purges of the 90s focused on workers directly impacted by the treacherous NAFTA treaty, the Bush Administration has invoked fears of a terrorist attack and expanded the targets to all dark-skinned people who happen not be born in the United States.

The US House recently voted to build a 700-mile fence along the southern border. The construction of a border fence serves two functions: to enrich the construction and related firms who will win contracts for these jobs and to make crossing the border more dangerous for those forced by economic conditions to migrate. The debate over immigration cannot be rationally understood without examining the social conditions that create the need for working people to travel great distances, oftentimes at great peril to their own lives, to take low-paying jobs, often hazardous to their own health. The economic impact of free trade agreements like the bipartisan NAFTA and CAFTA continues to destroy the traditional economies, especially farming, in Mexico and Central America, forcing workers take move north to look for work to support their families. While politicians from the Democratic and Republican parties employ different rhetoric in their proposals for solving the “immigration crisis”, both parties eagerly support free trade agreements that create the conditions for mass migration in the first place.

The media debate over immigration reform frames the issue in xenophobic terms, painting undocumented workers as “outsiders,” a foreign body invading the homeland. The reality is quite different. Immigrants, documented and undocumented, blend seamlessly into our communities because they are a part of our communities. The question is not whether they take jobs away from citizens or whether they take jobs citizens won’t take. The question is why so many employers are willing to pit native-born workers against foreign-born workers in an effort to push down the wages of all workers. Union organizer Clark Gilman mocks the argument some employers put forth that immigrants are doing jobs Americans don't want. "There aren't enough American citizens willing to live eight people to an apartment for $60 a day working six 10-hour days a week.”

Big business – in particular industries with low-wages and high numbers of on-the-job injuries such as construction, restaurants, hotels, and agriculture -- favors a guest worker program. As many as 25% of the workers in the construction industry are undocumented. According to the Seattle Times, the construction industry, led by the Associated General Contractors of America and the National Association of Home Builders, opposes any national policy that would deport vast numbers of illegal immigrants, saying they help alleviate a chronic shortage of workers, that is, a chronic shortage of workers within the US who are willing to work for lower wages and fewer benefits. By hiring undocumented workers, big industries get away with paying lower wages, fewer benefits, and even further exploiting employees whose immigration status renders their legal and workplace rights doubtful. Some employers simply refuse to pay undocumented workers their wages when the work is done, challenging undocumented workers to report them to unsympathetic government authorities. Some are now touting the benefits of undocumented workers, claiming they work harder for less money. This sounds less like a compliment than an excuse not to pay living wages.

In the meantime, corporate profits before taxes in construction were $21,932,000,000 in 2002, at the beginning of the recovery from the recession of 2001-2002. 6 The construction industry as a whole saw its biggest increase in growth in twenty years in 2004. 7 Profits have increased since then. Instead of paying higher wages to all workers, CEOs prefer to pocket the surplus value created by exploited labor in the form of profit. Workers have been working harder and longer for less money to produce more for their bosses to keep.

The language of the anti-immigrant movement is based on the notion of “illegal” people. No worker is illegal. As Natívo Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Association and organizer of one of the largest demonstrations in US history this past May, argues “All serious economists recognize that labor produces value…. If all workers (labor) produce value, wealth for the country, immigrant workers do so to a greater degree. They do not enjoy a collective bargaining agreement, vacations, pensions, health insurance, etc. as do many other workers, particularly those who belong to a union. Therefore, they are producing greater value for the employer. It is no secret why corporations "outsource" and go abroad in search of cheaper labor, land, natural resources, etc. But only labor, of the three factors just mentioned, produce value over and above what is required to sustain the worker. Certainly this value is not considered illegal, therefore, neither should the producers of such value be considered illegal.”8 We don’t clamor that the produce in our grocery stores picked by “illegal” immigrants be confiscated or that homes constructed with “illegal” labor be destroyed. Why are the workers who create value in our society deemed “illegal” but not the value they create?

Documented and undocumented workers alike should be raising the demand for a higher wage for all, full union rights, and amnesty. The bosses can certainly afford it, as corporate profits are higher today than they have ever been in history. In 1973, 40 percent of construction workers were unionized, according to economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., liberal research group. Today, organized labor's share of the industry work force has fallen to 13 percent. As corporate profits have radically increased over the last thirty years, workers’ real wages have declined. As the power to demand concessions from employers has decreased, so have wages for all workers.

Working people should reject the racist ideology that divides workers and take up demands for all workers, regardless of immigration status. The immigrant rights movement must be examined in terms of the social dynamic at work: as part and parcel of Corporate America’s decades-long attack on all workers. In such light, the next step in this new civil rights movement is clear: native-born workers must stand alongside immigrant workers and support the demand of all workers for higher wages, more union rights, more civil rights, and unconditional legalization for all undocumented workers. They’ve already paid for citizenship in blood, sweat, and tears. We must support amnesty for all, equal rights for all workers, and an end to deportations because an injury to one is an injury to all.

1 Bynum, Russ. “Immigration raids leave Georgia town bereft, stunned.” Seattle Times, September 16, 2006.
2 “Immigrant Herminia Silva Dies Crossing Border.” Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate Justice and Peace/Integrity of Creation, August 8, 2006 (http://www.omiusajpic.org/docs/border-immigration/press_release_herminia_silva.htm).
3 Sustar, Lee. “Don’t let them deport Elvira Arrellano.” Socialist Worker, Issue 599, September 1, 2006 (http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/599/599_04_Elvira.shtml).
4 Akers, Justin. “Operation Gatekeeper: Militarizing the border.” International Socialist Review, Issue 18, June-July 2001 (http://isreview.org/issues/18/gatekeeper.shtml).
5 Smith, Sharon. “Stoking fear to attack immigrants.” Socialist Worker, Issue 457, September 13, 2003 (http://www.socialistworker.org/2003-2/457/457_07_Detentions.shtml).
6 Evans, Donald L., Secretary, Department of Commerce; Cooper, Kathleen B., Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, Economics and Statistics Administration; Landefeld, J. Steven, Director, & Marcuss, Rosemary D., Deputy Director, Economics and Statistic Administration; Bureau of Economic Analysis. “Corporate Profits: Profits before taxes, Profits tax liability, and Dividends.” September 2002.
7 McConnell Jr., William, PE, Vertex Engineering Services, Inc., “State of the U.S. Construction Industry, 2005/2006.”
8 Jacobs, Ron. “An Interview with Natívo Lopez: ‘The Immigrants’ Rights Movement is in Good Hands.’” Counterpunch, August 28, 2006. (http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs08282006.html)