The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 71/No. 16      April 23, 2007

 
Legalize the undocumented now!
(editorial)
 
Unconditional legalization of all undocumented immigrants now! That needs to become the battle cry of the U.S. labor movement and all working people.

The April 7 march in Los Angeles of some 15,000 people points in the right direction. So do thousands of workers throughout the United States who have responded to factory raids by refusing to buckle to the government and immigration cops and by winning solidarity from fellow workers and their unions. Such fights raise workers’ confidence, boost prospects for unity of the working class, and increase the political stakes.

This is a life-and-death question for the weakening labor movement. A fight to legalize all immigrant workers, coupled with a drive to organize the unorganized, would galvanize the working class and its allies to effectively resist the bosses’ unending assaults on wages, living and job conditions, safety, social security, and political rights. It would undercut the employers’ untiring efforts to pit workers against each other: “legal” against “illegal,” native-born against immigrant, white against Black, man against woman.

This is what the tiny minority of billionaires who rule the United States, and the government that represents them in Washington, are doing with their raids and deportations: divide and conquer. The current “immigration reform” proposals in Congress—by Democrats and Republicans—have the same goal: keep a steady flow of cheap immigrant labor into the country, which the bosses profit from, and maintain millions of workers as pariahs not covered by labor law, who can be superexploited and scapegoated for capitalism’s social ills.

The Gutiérrez-Flake bill introduced in the House, hailed by “friends of labor,” is not about legalization. As many protesters in Los Angeles correctly pointed out, it could take 20 years for immigrants to gain residency under this bill and millions would never make it because of its onerous conditions. It’s as bad as the proposals pushed by the White House, which would impose much stiffer fees for work visas or a green card.

Let’s join immigrant workers in demanding: No to the bosses’ immigration reform! Stop the raids and deportations! Drop the “identity theft” and other charges against those grabbed by la migra! Legalize all the undocumented, now, with no strings attached!
 
 
Related articles:
‘Legalization now!’
15,000 march in Los Angeles;
Reject bosses’ ‘immigration reform’

‘La migra’ raids pork plant in Illinois; 60 workers in jail  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home