Immigrants & the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has upheld the most onerous part of Arizona’s 2010 punitive law on immigration — the part that authorizes police to check the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if they have reason to suspect that person is here without documents.

Everyone knows that this means racial profiling. Even President Barack Obama said as much, and is being attacked for it by the right-wing. In Arizona, it means you are “profiled” if you look like you come from Mexico or other parts of Latin America.

But there is another aspect to this that’s not often mentioned. It also means looking like you’re a worker. While it is certainly possible that a racist cop might harass a person driving an expensive car or eating in an expensive restaurant for “looking Mexican,” that’s not the main purpose of this decision.

The court’s decision is aimed at the working class in this country, which has been under vicious attack and losing ground to union-busting, wage and benefit cuts, a shift to part-time and “temporary” work — and many other practices meant to squeeze the greatest profits out of the fewest workers. An organized, militant response is the only way to stop this race to the bottom. The bosses know this, and this is where their repressive state comes in.

Laws like the one in Arizona are meant to terrorize the most vulnerable workers, those who are so horribly exploited that they would be in revolt were it not for the threat of jail and deportation, affecting not only them but their families, too. Even with all this repression, however, immigrant workers have been in the forefront of some of the most militant class struggles of the last decade. They can be found in union-organizing drives, plant takeovers, the revival of May Day to celebrate the workers’ struggles around the world — and the bosses hate that.

What is the Supreme Court anyway, that it should have such power? It is the leading body of one of the three branches of the U.S. government — the executive, the legislative and the judicial — that supposedly balance each other out, thus keeping any one arm from being too powerful. Often called “checks and balances,” this is praised as the best of all possible political systems, a paragon of democracy.

In reality, it is a system well suited to the rule of the super-rich capitalist class, which imposes its domination over the working class through the capitalist state, especially its “armed bodies of men” — the courts, the police and the military.

This Supreme Court ruling on immigration comes during a year when both the presidency (the executive arm) and most of the Congress (the legislative arm) are up for election. The strategists for both capitalist ruling parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, know that the Latino/a vote is very important in determining the outcome. Even though the Obama administration has deported more people than ever before, Obama has taken several steps recently considered favorable to immigrants, like allowing some undocumented young people brought here by their parents to stay for a number of years.

And even Mitt Romney, who has baited Obama on immigration, attacking the president from the right, has softened his rhetoric recently.

It is all with an eye to the elections.

So the third arm of the capitalist state — the Supreme Court — has stepped up to attack immigrant workers for them. Why the Supreme Court? Because its nine members are not elected, they’re appointed for life. They can carry out the will of the ruling class and not worry that they’ll be dumped in the next election. It is the most undemocratic body imaginable, and it can play the role of defending the vital interests of the capitalist class in critical moments because it is accountable to no one.

Five out of eight Supreme Court justices signed onto this ruling — including those considered more “liberal.” (A ninth member of the court didn’t participate.) This shows once again that all the time, energy and money that so many unions and progressive organizations spend on electing Democrats has little effect.

The mass struggle is the only thing the ruling class and its representatives listen to — because they have to.