Lee Sui Hin
National Coordinator, National Immigrant Soildarity Network
In the United States, institutional racism, economic exploitation and the brutality against immigrant communities, has been one of the worse human rights/civil rights violations in this country since the end of the slavery.
Every year, there's hundreds of thousands of immigrants migrated to the United States, in addition, an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants--people who cannot get legal residency status in this country because of over stay their visa or crossing the border without proper paper--become one of the greatest human rights tragedies.
Immigrants generated billions of dollars to U.S. economy every year, we are the one who build the Trans-continental railway 150 years ago, and picking food, building houses and cleaning toilet everyday with very minimal slave-wages.
“Understanding the connections between our individual conditions of life and the lives of people everywhere in the world allows us to come together and organize across all borders”
Despite common myth, most of us do pay taxes, yet we cannot receive most government benefits. It's shame that the racist anti-immigrant forces are labeling us "illegal alien," and falsely accusing us come here stealing American wealth, and harm U.S. security.
For the past two years, the United States has been quietly pursuing its largest anti-immigrant campaign in 50 years.
With the U.S. losing the war in Iraq, President Bush, right wing Republicans and even many Democrats are once again using immigrants as scapegoats in order to secure conservative/right-wing votes for the November 2006 midterm elections.
Attacking immigrants is historically nothing new. Since the Chinese Exclusion Act of the 1890's, different immigrant groups have been targeted when they begin arriving in this country: Irish, Jews, eastern Europeans, Japanese, Filipinos have all been the target of attack at various points in U.S. history.
This time the forces of racism are once again spinning rhetoric to blame immigrants--especially the Latino immigrants--for causing all the world's problems-arguing that they could be potential terrorists who wish to harm our country and 'welfare queens' who plan to steal money from our social programs-a potent scare tactic which exploits the fear and anger of the poor and working-class communities, who are the victims of corporate downsizing and the government's budget cuts because of the war in Iraq.
So far the right-wing anti-immigrant forces have successfully created a "common sense" message of links: September 11= counterterrorism = anti-immigrants = invade/occupy Iraq/Afghanistan = tax cut = faith-based initiatives.
One such example, U.S. House Bill H.R. 4437--the "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005" authored by Sensenbrenner and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) and passed December 16, last year.
The H.R. 4437, if become law, would make 11 million or more mainly Mexican undocumented immigrants automatically "felons", and it would fine or jail hundreds of thousands of American employers who employ undocumented workers, and put millions of other Americans who help undocumented workers behind bars as "alien smugglers", and gives power to local authorities to deputize private citizens to enforce the immigration law--such as police officers and anti-immigrant Minutemen Patrol.
In addition, President and others are calling for building a border wall, and sending national guard troops across the US-Mexico border.
There's no proof that any of the so-called September 11 terrorists were entering from the US-Mexico border, and there's no border wall to build long US-Canadian border. This is no doubt a clear racism against immigrant communities from south of the border.
However, we obviously don't really want to get rid of all undocumented workers, because it would be the simplest thing in the world to find them. Everyone knows where undocumented workers work. Everyone also knows that they work at the jobs no one else will take; and that these jobs are the most important and basic. No, we want them here.as long as they don't ask for a living wage and thereby threaten our ongoing massive accumulation of wealth.
It's no secret: Pick any commercial building in downtown LA's Garment or Toy districts, and at least a third or even half the workers in the building will be undocumented. It's also common knowledge that most LA restaurants are staffed with undocumented immigrants, with police or immigrant agents eating in such restaurants everyday. Who harvests the fruits and vegetables we eat daily? College kids? Or someone whose name ends in a vowel?
In conclusion, activists and organizers have a particular responsibility to point out the links between Katrina's impact, immigrant rights, civil liberties, labor rights and the U.S. war in Iraq. Understanding the connections between our individual conditions of life and the lives of people everywhere in the world allows us to come together and organize across all borders. We need to make the connections between: wars in Africa, south America, Asia, Iraq, Palestine and Korea, and sweatshops in Asia as well as in Los Angeles and in New York; international arms sales and the WTO, FTAA, NAFTA & CAFTA with AIDS, hunger, our reproductive rights, child labor and child soldiers; multinational corporations and economic exploitation with racism, homophobia and poverty at home--then we can win the struggle.
Thank You