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Vol. 82/No. 9 March 5, 2018
(front page)
Demand amnesty for immigrant workers!
Propertied rulers debate who to let in, keep out
Omaha World-Herald/Kent Sievers via AP
Sept. 10 Omaha, Nebraska, protest. Socialist Workers Party says Amnesty
for all immigrants!
BY SETH GALINSKY
Democratic and some Republican senators on the one side and President
Donald Trump on the other are blaming each other for the failure to pass
legislation that would block the deportation of thousands of immigrant
“dreamers” who came to the U.S. before they were 16.
Meanwhile, the number of immigrants crossing the border is rising again,
as bosses seek cheap labor in the midst of an uptick in production.
Last September President Trump announced he was phasing out the Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals program, created by former President
Barack Obama by executive order. Trump said he wants to hang onto the
dreamers too, but it has to be done by Congress.
Six bills were introduced but none was able to get the 60 votes needed
under current Senate rules to be approved. The bill backed by Trump
would grant the deferred status to some 1.8 million youth, far more than
the 800,000 applicants approved under Obama’s program.
The bill coupled the reprieve for the dreamers with new restrictions on
immigration. It would limit family-based visas to parents and nonadult
children; end the immigration lottery, which provides a road to the U.S.
for tens of thousands; and authorize billions of dollars to extend the
already existing wall on the Mexican border.
A bipartisan Senate bill that also failed would have increased those
eligible to be dreamers to some 3.2 million, and without restrictive
measures Trump demanded. Backers of this bill knew it didn’t have a
chance of passing, much less overcome a presidential veto. Their goal
was to score points against Trump, with an eye to the 2018 elections.
Two recent federal court rulings have temporarily blocked ending the
DACA program March 10, giving more time for a possible compromise.
Absent from the feigned concern for the dreamers and the rulers’ debate
are the rest of the 11 million undocumented workers in the U.S.
Bosses depend on immigrant labor
The propertied rulers have never been out to halt the flow of
immigrants, only to regulate it based on their needs. By maintaining a
pariah layer of workers — without “proper” papers or with “guest” papers
that give them almost no rights — the bosses get cheaper labor, divide
the working class and keep wages for everyone down. This is essential
for U.S. capital to bolster its competitive drive against rivals abroad.
The liberal press and middle-class left gives the impression that the
Trump administration has engineered a huge crackdown on immigrants. And,
they claim, Trump’s election represents a growing racist and
anti-immigrant wave in the working class.
In January 2017, Obama’s last month in office, 42,463 people without
papers were detained trying to get into the country. By April, under
Trump, that number had fallen to 15,766, a reflection that fewer workers
were trying to cross.
But over the last eight months the number has begun to grow again — a
result of the uptick in the capitalist economy. More than 40,000 people
were arrested in December.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested nearly 106,000
so-called criminal immigrants in 2017 and 38,000 “noncriminals.” This is
higher than similar arrests in Obama’s last year in office, but half the
number arrested each year during Obama’s first term.
In 2008 the government stopped conducting immigration factory raids, due
to their unpopularity among workers, immigrant and native-born alike. In
their place ICE stepped up workplace audits, which lead to the firings
of thousands of workers without papers. Under Obama, the audits
skyrocketed from 503 in 2008 to more than 3,000 in 2013 and 2014. In
2017, after Trump took office, ICE carried out 1,360 audits.
‘Merit-based’ immigration?
A Feb. 6 Wall Street Journal column by liberal William Galston, a
former adviser to Bill Clinton, was titled “The Case for Merit-Based
Immigration,” arguing for restricting legal entry of “unskilled”
immigrants.
“President Trump has proposed moving toward a [merit-based] system,” he
says. “This idea is worth discussing.”
Despite the heated factional rhetoric, this view is shared by most
liberals, including many middle-class leaders of groups protesting for
the dreamers, who are touted as future professionals with “so much to
offer America.”
At least some opponents of deportations are uncomfortable with this
meritocratic, anti-working-class view, and with leaders of immigrant
rights groups abandoning the fight for amnesty for all undocumented
workers.
“There are millions of others that will be left out in the cold under
any deal for the dreamers,” Kevin Appleby from the Center for Migration
Studies told the National Catholic Reporter Feb. 13. “I am a bit
concerned that advocates have not kept talking about the need to bring
everyone out of the shadows, not just the dreamers.”
Related articles:
Amnesty now! No deportations!
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