The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.27           August 11, 1997 
 
 
Release The N.Y. Detainees!  
Free the 57 immigrant workers from Mexico held incommunicado by la migra in New York City! End all attempts to deport these workers, give them work permits, and grant them asylum! Arrest and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who held them in virtual bonded slavery and brutally exploited them! Equal rights all for immigrants now!

That's what the labor movement, working farmers, students, other young people, and all decent human beings should join forces to demand through marches and other protest actions. This is a necessary response to the treatment by the police and immigration authorities of these Mexican workers who are deaf.

The forced labor and abuse these workers suffered at the hands of their bosses is the fruit of the draconian new restrictions on the rights of immigrants codified in the immigration law passed by a bipartisan Congress and signed by the Clinton administration last year. It is also the fruit of decades-old discrimination against Mexicans and other immigrants. It is the fruit of the scapegoating of immigrant workers for the ills of capitalism that has become the stock-in-trade of bourgeois politicians.

The cutoff of medical and other benefits to tens of thousands of immigrants and the tighter restrictions on obtaining visas and work permits are geared toward creating pariah layers of the working class, with few legal rights, who can be terrorized and superexploited, just like these Mexican workers at Jackson Heights. Divisions and dog-eat- dog competition among the toilers are deepened this way, hurting the entire working class in its struggle to resist takeback demands from the bosses. For the employers and their government in Washington, this simply means higher profits.

Mexicans and working people from throughout Latin America are continuing to cross the borders into the United States because of the abysmal working and living conditions in those countries. These conditions are deteriorating largely because of imperialist domination of these nations. The influx of Mexican and other immigrant workers is making the working class in the United States increasingly multinational, and thus stronger. Toilers from Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere bring with them invaluable experience in resisting austerity against capitalists and landlords in their countries of origin. These experiences can become a factor in the class struggle in the United States as immigrant workers get jobs in factories and in the fields and join organizing drives, strikes, and other labor actions.

These brothers and sisters should be welcomed with open arms by working people in the United States who should join them in demanding cancellation of the foreign debt of Mexico and other third world countries and an end to restrictions on the rights of immigrants.

For a world without borders!  
 
 
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