The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.35           October 7, 1996 
 
 
House Passes Anti-Immigrant Legislation  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS

Two bills attacking the rights of immigrants sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives September 25. The main piece of legislation would increase the number of border cops, speed deportations of undocumented workers, and sharply limit public benefits to legal immigrants. A separate bill would allow states to prohibit undocumented immigrant children from attending public schools. Both were agreed to the day before by a bipartisan House-Senate negotiating committee, set up to reconcile differences between different immigration bills passed by the House and Senate last spring.

The bill on education was originally an amendment to the main piece of legislation, one that Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole had pushed to include. Dole argued the measure was important to the "wonderful California quality of life that is being threatened by the flood of illegal immigration." Congressional Republicans agreed to separate it out, however, and exempt undocumented immigrant children if they are enrolled as of next July. Clinton has said he would veto any immigration bill that included the education provision. The compromised versions of both bills will now go to the Senate for a vote.

The sweep of the main immigration bill now on the floor is very broad. Its provisions include:

Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy criticized the bill passed by the House for being too hard on legal immigrants and not tough enough on undocumented workers. He pledged to sponsor an alternative bill "that does the job right, that genuinely cracks down on illegal immigration and that eliminates the worst features of the current bill." His plan would "increase workplace enforcement and protect American jobs and American workers," Kennedy said at a September 25 news conference. "It will require the administration to conduct a range of pilot programs to develop better methods to deny jobs to illegal immigrants and help employers obey the law."

In fact the current bill does include establishing pilot projects involving a computerized network that allows bosses to tap into a national database to obtain confidential information on the legal and financial status of people looking for work. The program has already been initiated in states with large numbers of immigrants, which would in effect create a national ID system.

The "employee verification plan" started in California involves two cities and 234 companies, employing 80,000 workers. The country's four largest packinghouse companies signed onto the program in late April.

Part of the stepped-up attacks on immigrant rights have been a series of immigration raids at workplaces throughout the country. Some 124 poultry workers were arrested August 28 in raids at two processing plants in Maryland, for instance. Hundreds of workers have been grabbed at Iowa packinghouses. In New York City's garment industry immigration officials seized more than 1,200 people in 86 factories in the eight months leading up to June of this year.

The new welfare law and "antiterrorism" legislation signed by Clinton have also escalated the assault on immigrant rights. The antiterrorism law requires immigrants arriving without documents to have their asylum claims heard by a single INS officer instead of at a hearing with legal representation before a judge, as under the previous law. In addition, any undocumented immigrant already in the United States may be summarily deported without judicial review - a provision also included in the immigration bill.

As result of the Welfare Reform Act - which marks a direct assault on the Social Security Act of 1935 and was signed on August 22 by Clinton - an estimated 1 million immigrants with legal papers will be cut off from the food stamp program. Overall the law will affect 13 million workers and farmers receiving welfare benefits and the 25 million receiving food stamps. Hundreds of thousands of workers will be excluded from Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income regardless of the wages they earn.

"You think, well, people will always have to eat," Ruben Cavazos, Jr., manager of a grocery store in the border town of McAllen, Texas, told the New York Times. "That seems like a basic thing. But what if they simply have no way to pay for their food." Cavazos said more than half his customers buy their groceries with food stamps.

The Times reported that in the last week of September some states began the first cuts mandated by Clinton's welfare law, including dropping immigrants with legal documents from the food stamp program. New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and California are among the states that require new rules for food stamp applicants that had to be implemented by September 21 to avoid federal penalties.

One stipulation of the welfare measure allows public workers to report undocumented workers to immigration authorities. The welfare law overturns a New York City regulation that barred city employees from turning in undocumented immigrants who seek social services.

Dolly Hassan, an immigration attorney with the Citizens Advice Bureau, said many immigrants have become intimidated from going to the hospital for a medical emergency or enrolling their children in school. Clinton's new law "in effect denies people the right to an education," she told the Carib News, a Black newsweekly in New York.

Federal and state anti-immigrant legislation, including California's Proposition 187, has sparked a surge of applications for U.S. citizenship. By September 30, nearly 1.1 million immigrants will have become citizens this year, shattering the record of 445,853 naturalizations set last year. Immigration officials say there are about 10 million non- citizens legally living in the U.S. now.  
 
 
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