May Day: Mass rebuff to Arizona law and ICE

Four years ago on May Day millions of immigrants and their supporters forced the capitalist government to back away from the vicious, anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner bill.

This May Day more than 1 million immigrants and supporters demonstrating in more than 100 cities sent a powerful message to anti-immigrant racist forces in Arizona to drop their police-state, apartheid law that legalizes racial profiling.

Fused with the protests against the Arizona law were demands to end raids, deportations and family separations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The demonstrations called for legalization, an end to criminalization of all undocumented immigrants, and for justice and equality across the board.

The massive outpouring of militant immigrants dwarfed the previous turnouts by racist bands of Tea Party riffraff, who have been made to look like an almighty juggernaut by the big-business-owned media since they staged town hall “rebellions” when the health care bill was up for debate.

The May Day showing was a closer reflection of the true potential relationship of forces between the workers and the oppressed masses on the one hand and the ultra-right on the other — once the people mobilize. The rabid anti-immigrant forces that flocked to rallies for Sarah Palin on her Tea Party tour were nowhere in sight on May Day — and for good reason. May Day was truly a big step forward on the road to fighting the right.

Arizona part of a trend

The Arizona law is about stoking racism, scapegoating immigrants, dividing the working class and making it easier for the bosses to get through the economic crisis of joblessness without a workers’ rebellion. But the law, although extreme, is not an isolated event.

ICE raids and the collaboration between the federal government and close to 70 police departments across the country continue. The rhetoric out of Washington, particularly regarding the bill being drafted by Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, is about “border security,” a draconian “path” to citizenship of paying fines, showing proficiency in English, going to the “back of the line,” guest worker programs, etc. These punitive so-called “immigration reform” measures would further persecute and officially stigmatize undocumented workers.

In addition, the talk of a biometric identity card is a potential threat to all workers. Right now there is a Homeland Security background check on all port workers in the country. Many have lost their jobs after the discovery of minor infractions.

The biometric identity card would give all bosses a weapon against all workers. The threat is especially serious for Black and Latino/a workers. They wind up with disproportionately high incidences of incarceration because of a high unemployment rate and because they are racially profiled to begin with. It is quite understandable why, among the many slogans chanted at the demonstrations, “Obama, escucha, estamos en la lucha!” (Obama, listen, we are in the struggle!) was often heard.

The Obama administration has been distant and passive in the face of this patently unconstitutional challenge to the rights of Latino/as and to the jurisdiction of the administration itself. Right-wing legislators in Texas, Utah, Colorado and elsewhere are threatening to follow suit on the Arizona law.

So far Washington has left it up to local forces to resist by legal means this police-state measure, which gives cops the right to ask for the papers of anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” could be undocumented. The mayor of Phoenix, a cop from Pima County, the American Civil Liberties Union and other legal organizations have mounted challenges to the law.

Meanwhile, ICE and the Maricopa County cops under the fascist-minded Sheriff Joe Arpaio continue to carry out raids and arbitrary checks, despite a Homeland Security ruling taking the right to enforce immigration policy away from Arpaio.

This vacillation in Washington not only emboldens the right-wing, anti-immigrant camp in its repression, it strengthens the same racist forces that want to bring the Obama administration down.

While fascist Minutemen types and other ultra-rightists have always been pushing an assault on undocumented workers, the ruling class as a whole and the capitalist government took a more moderate position during the economic boom.

Capitalists need undocumented workers

The bosses did not complain when undocumented workers came across the border to grow their food, build houses and office buildings for the real estate boom, become roofers, dry wall workers, painters, gardeners and landscapers, work in the slaughterhouses, clean homes, take care of children and so on.

The construction companies, real estate developers, hotel industry, meatpackers and other capitalists made billions in profit exploiting undocumented workers, who had little representation and were completely vulnerable.

But once the housing bubble burst, the economic crisis widened and the employers could no longer make an easy profit off the millions of undocumented workers, the ruling class turned toward scapegoating. As unemployment rose in the U.S. from 4 percent to 10 percent, the attitude of the ruling class and the government became harsher.

This was part of a carefully calculated government policy. During the economic boom the capitalists needed around 400,000 low-wage immigrant workers a year. Yet the law allowed only 5,000 low-wage workers a year to enter the country legally. This was insurance that there would be a vast reservoir of undocumented workers to compete for low-wage jobs. It also ensured that, during a downturn, there would be an undocumented population to scapegoat for the unemployment crisis.

NAFTA, agribusiness and immigration

This is precisely what has happened in Arizona. Unemployment has gone officially from more than 4 percent to 9.6 percent in the two years of the crisis. Where there were 150,000 unemployed in Arizona, the number has gone up to more than 300,000. And this is an understatement because tens of thousands of undocumented workers are no longer counted as part of the work force. If they apply for benefits, state workers are required to report them to ICE.

It is difficult to understand why people would leave their families and risk hardship and death crossing the desert to get to the U.S. unless you know that the NAFTA treaty, passed in 1994, opened up Mexico to U.S. agribusiness, destroying a large part of Mexico’s domestic agriculture and leaving millions landless and jobless. The invasion of U.S. corporations forced millions of immigrants to come here in order to feed themselves and their families.

It was a corporate scheme — heads the workers lose, tails the bosses win. And it was consciously constructed.

This is the background to the campaign of intimidation and division being waged against undocumented workers. The only solution can come from the working class and it involves solidarity, both inside the U.S. and between all U.S. workers and Mexican workers. Workers and peasants in Mexico will be forced to come here for survival as long as U.S. corporate imperialism is in Mexico and other oppressed countries.

It is too soon to tell what the magnificent May Day 2010 mobilizations will ultimately accomplish. But they have already given pause to the ruling class and its plans to make immigrants the scapegoats of the economic crisis. This gives an opening to increase the solidarity of all workers and to raise the slogan that there are no borders in the workers’ struggle.