Michel Warshawsky must be freed!

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MCCARRAN ACT 6 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1987 STOP THE DEPORTATIONS On Feb. 16, Israeli police launched a spectacular operation against the Alter -native Information Center (AIC), a private agency which provides information on the repression of Arabs and Palestinians by the Israeli zionist state. The office of the AIC in Jerusalem was raided and ordered closed for six months by the government.

Michel Warshawsky, the center's director, and four staff members were arrested in the raid. The four staff members were released shortly after, but Warshawsky is still being held in the Moscobiya Detention Center, a center notorious for the torture of Palestinians.

Israeli police have charged the AIC with collaborating with "illegal organizations"

and "terrorists"-specifically with the ° Popular Front for the Liberation of • Palestine (PFLP). The Israeli state considers anyone in the Palestinian national Kath movement to be a "terrorist." n/ For the last three years, the AIC has held tio news conferences on Israeli abuses of ¿Palestinians' rights and has issued press releases and newsletters to local and foreign §journalists. It has a committee of 20 i directors, consisting of lawyers, trade unionists, professors, social workers, and researchers.

The AIC is also well known for its printing and publishing services. These services are rendered to any organization without discrimination-except for illegal and/or racist organizations.

The Israeli police claimed that after raiding the AIC's office, they discovered newspapers that had been sent by "illegal organizations." But these same newspapers are also received by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and by various foreign embassies in Israel.

The closing of the AIC is yet another example of the Israeli government's continuing attacks on the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian movements. Al-Hamish -mar, an Israeli newspaper, has called the arrest of Michel Warshawsky and the closing of the center "a crime against democracy."

Telegrams and letters of protest demanding the immediate release of Michel Warshawsky should be sent to: Avraham Sharir, Minister of Justice, 29 Salah A-din, Jerusalem, 91010, Israel. Copies should be sent to Ambassador Meir Rosenne, Embassy of Israel, 3514 International Drive, NW, Washington, D.C. 20008.

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… Immigration law attacks rights INS will use new immigration law to victimize American workers as well as undocumented workers who try to improve living conditions.

(continued from page 1: “[Demonstrators in Los Angeles on Feb. 17 protest…]”) support. Peter Rodino is a Democratic Representative from New Jersey. Alan Simpson is a Republican Senator from Wyoming.

Various Congressional Democrats forged a compromise "guestworker" package considered essential to the bill's passage. It guarantees the growers a contrived steady flow of easily exploited and cheap labor, especially from Mexico. President Reagan gladly signed it, of course.

No one involved with the fight for immigrant rights seems to disagree with Marcia Gallo when she says that the new law "will not slow down immigration. It will only make it tougher on those who do come."

Undocumented workers will now have to take even worse jobs and live an even more underground existence. (The new law provides for increased funding for the INS and the U.S. Border Patrol.) As long as immigrants face extreme poverty and political repression in their homelands, they will be forced to come here, documented or not.

The law, itself, admits the possibility that its provisions may spur job discrimination. So it establishes an elaborate but vague series of "sunset" provisions to supposedly guard against discrimination in hiring. It then calls on that well-known champion of civil rights, the Government Accounting Office, to act as the guardian of these provisions.

The law explicitly bars discrimination based on citizenship status or national origin, according to the MALDEF summary, but then goes on to allow an employer to hire a citizen over a lawful — San Francisco Socialist Action Forums • "Platoon," the Vietnam Syndrome and the Antiwar Movement Today.—Vietnam Vets Speak Out"-Speakers: Bill Wat kins, Santa Cruz VFW; Eduardo Cohen, Veteran Speakers Alliance;

Joe Ryan, S.A. staffwriter.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 8 PM • "The Fight Against Racist At tacks"—Speakers: Enola Maxwell Exec. Dir. Potrero Hill Neighb. House returned from Forsyth, Ga; Tammy Lee, sister of young Black man found hanged in 1985; Kwame Somburu, longtime activist and S.A. staffwriter. FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 8 PM ARMY St. RM. 308, TEL. 821-0458 'ECIAL ISSUE permanent resident.

Where does that leave the temporary resident or the refugee-not to speak of the undocumented worker, who only gets hired if he or she will work for less?

Fraudulent amnesty provision Amnesty for immigrants without documentation is supposed to be the humane face of the new law—"Give me your homeless and downtrodden."

The government has mounted a gigantic publicity campaign announcing that undocumented immigrant workers who have lived in the country continuously since before Jan. 1, 1982, can apply for temporary resident papers-which will supposedly lead to citizenship.

A closer look at what's really offered reveals the fraudulent character of this provision. Marcia Gallo. calls it a lot of "hype around amnesty" which only "raises false expectations."

First, no one who arrived atter Jan. 1, 1982, is eligible for amnesty. This is quite a substantial number. Gallo asks, "Why not 1985 or '86?"

Second, those who arrived before 1982 have lived underground and worked under the table—hiding everything, destroying every scrap of proof. The new law demands that they now produce rent, employment, or medical documents; the very things they have been forced to destroy.

The Asian Law Caucus estimates that 80 percent of the undocumented immigrants have destroyed their documents. A cruel joke. Should immigrants try to qualify for amnesty and fail, they will be prime candidates for deportation. It's not surprising, then, that MALDEF advises immigrants to "look at all possible options before applying for amnesty."

Another proposed rule would bar immigrants who do qualify for amnesty from many federally funded programs for five years.

In order to qualify for amnesty, immigrants would have to have been regularly employed and never have been a "public charge." If they could prove employment, they probably paid taxes. Not being a "public charge" means not having used any form of publicly funded social accepting applications yet, and the program won't start up until May 1987, at the earliest.

The new law mandates an unusual procedure in establishing administrative ground rules. Usually the administrating federal agency just publishes the rules and regulations. And that's it.

The Simpson-Rodino Law requires that the rules be published in tentative form and that public response be considered in formulating the final regulations. There is no clear indication, though, just how the INS, which is the main administering agency, will take public response into account.

Opposition to law mounts Before the law was signed in November, opposition to the bill was centered among organizations based in the immigrant communities and immigrant-rights activists and attorneys. But grim reality is now propelling broader forces to join the struggle.

On Feb. 5, two labor-based coalitions held a news conference in Los Angeles to announce their opposition to the proposed rules. These coalitions, according to the Feb. 6 Los Angeles Times, included labor, religious charities, Latino groups, and lawyers' organizations.

Steve Nutter, the Western Regional Director of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), spoke to the press on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights/Los Angeles. He said that "the INS is attempting to turn the unions and hiring halls into an arm of the INS" by requiring them to verify employment eligibility for workers referred under union contracts.

"We're very much against that," Nutter said. "We don't think verification should fall on the shoulders of unions, who are the defenders of workers."

The other coalition at the conference was the Los Angeles LaborCommunity Immigration Network.

In San Francisco, cases have already been reported of union hiring halls "screening" job applicants by requiring identity papers. This practice, as Nutter points out, would turn the unions into an arm of the INS.

The labor movement in the San Francisco Bay Area is also responding to the Simpson-Rodino Law. Jean Quan, staff