New INS rules attack all working people in U.S

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SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1987 5 On May 1, 1987, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) put into effect new rules and guidelines for undocumented immigrant workers in the United States. These new rules represent a new level of attacks on the rights of immigrant workers, oppressed national minorities, and the working class as a whole.

To be able to fully assess these new measures, it is necessary to understand the role of immigration in capitalist society.

The U.S. ruling class, like its counterparts elsewhere, has never been antiimmigration. It has been anti-immigrant, yes, but not anti-immigration.

The capitalists have used and incited antiimmigrant racism against various sections of immigrants (Irish, Jews, Italians, Asians, and Latinos) throughout U.S. history.

These immigrants became the scapegoats for the problems of the working class; problems which were caused not by the immigrants but by the inevitable contradictions of capitalist society.

At times, some of the immigrant groups were made to seem "undesirable," if not downright seditious. The deportations of thousands of Italians, Jews, and Russian immigrant workers during the labor upsurge following the First World War was initiated by then-Attorney General John Palmer as a way of stemming the growing radicalization in the labor movement. Palmer perceived this radicalization as a direct export of the successful Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Reserve army of unemployed Immigration, however, has always been a key factor in maintaining what Marxists call the "reserve army of the unemployed." Such an "army" has been used to maintain an overabundance of wage earners who remain unemployed—usually at a minimum rate of 4 percent when the capitalist economy is in an upswing, and higher during periods of recession and depression.

Immigrant workers, a number of whom are always part of this "army," traditionally fill the lowest-paid and most dangerous jobs that the native-born section of the unemployed will not fill. In addition, since ASSO Huddled Masses Yearning To Breathe Free a large number of these workers are undocumented, they are subject to superexploitation by bosses who hold the threat of deportation over their heads.

The ruling rich also use unorganized immigrant labor to stymie union organizing and break strikes.

Simpson-Rodino

The Simpson-Rodino law, and its codification in the new INS rules, is especially insidious because it would now require unions to police their own membership. It would place the same fines and regulations demanded of the employers on the unions-especially unions that have hiring halls.

The INS, moreover, is still discussing the institution of a National Identification Card, which every worker would have to possess in order to prove citizenship. This card would contain a computer chip with enough memory to store a record of the holder's political activities, work record, union affiliation-and any information the ruling class deems necessary to exert total control over the work force.

Such an internal passport system, similar the one used under South African THE HOUSTON POST apartheid, would also make the defense of working-class interests-through organizing, strikes, and political action— infinitely more difficult.

As socialists and internationalists, we in Socialist Action do not believe it is anybody's business—not the boss's or the state's —where a worker is born.

The Simpson Rodino law is an attack on the working class as a whole—not just its most oppressed sectors.

Although the trade-union movement has begun to grapple with some of the problems and implications of the INS rules, no section of the labor movement has a clear fighting program to defend the working class and its most exploited section-immigrant workers.

The ideologues of capitalism are correct when they declare that we live in a global economy. They argue for universal free trade and an unhindered ability to export capital in order to promote their own class interests.

In this same spirit-but from the standpoint of the defense of working-class interests—our socialist program calls for :

1. Complete open borders as fundamental right of workers of all lands to live where they please.

2. Working-class solidarity. If the workers' movement in the United States is truly interested in building unity among working people then it has to recognize that we are united in a class-documented or undocumented-by a common enemy that exploits all of us wherever we live.

3. A united front of labor unions, legalaid organizations, and immigrant self-defense organizations. Such a front must agree on what it is we want to fight.

The starting point is not to decide to accept the Simpson-Rodino law in a more palatable form, but to fight it in its totality. Once we start to accept limited amnesty or a liberal interpretation of the statutes we accept the ruling-class premise upon which the law is based.

4. The fight for full rights of all immigrant workers to receive unemployment compensation, medical aid and education for their children, and the right to vote.

5. Organizing the unorganized. We must begin to rely upon ourselves and our own organizations—not Democratic and Republican "friends" in the legislature and the judiciary. Only through trade-union organization will workers— immigrant and native born-begin to take back from the bosses a little bit of what we produce for them.

6. Independent political action. The Democratic Party is our class enemy, not our friend. Socialist Action believes that one sure road to failure is continued reliance upon the Democratic Party.

The example of the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) in California should serve notice that such a policy is a disaster. The UFW helped elect a Democrat-Jerry Brown—to the governorship of California. Brown in turn established the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which soon after began to victimize the UFW.

The farmworkers' union grew when it focused on its own mass organizing and mobilization. But it shrank when it started to rely upon an instrument of the state as a way of protecting its membership.

The unions and their allies must break with the Democrats and launch a Labor Party based on the working class and all the oppressed—not on "friendly" bankers, capitalist politicians, and back-stabbers.

Only in this way, can immigrant workers-and their American brothers and sisters—protect themselves from victimization and a further erosion of their economic and democratic rights.

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