Advocacy groups call for May 1 action

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and the National Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty for Immigrants warn about twin threats to immigrant rights

[Received through the Mexico Solidarity Network.]

[3-30-02]

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision removing the labor rights of undocumented immigrant workers which it had previously upheld, the National Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty for Immigrants has called a May 1 nationwide mobilization for immigrant worker justice. Delegations from 23 states will converge on Washington, D.C. to overwhelm Congress with the FREEDOM Act legislative proposal for immigrant legalization.

Simultaneously, hundreds of activists across the country will visit their local Congressional offices. Some cities are organizing speak-outs, marches, and other public actions. For more information, check the web site, www.floc.com.

President Bush has just returned from a trip to Mexico and Central America where he discussed immigration policy. Immigrants are scared of the programs he will push on Capitol Hill after his six- month blitzkrieg of an anti-labor, pro-war agenda.

Bush seems to favor a "bracero" worker visa program much like the H2A program used by exploitative agribusinesses. Under this program, immigrant workers are assigned a boss by the federal government. There are many limitations: (1) they cannot change jobs legally, (2) they do not have the right to vote or a means to gain citizenship; (3) they do not have the right to form unions, and (4) they can be deported and prevented from returning to this country at the will of their employer.

What's scary is the number of good-hearted people who have been sold on this idea. Without a mass movement of opposition, Congress will go for it. People see it as some "compromise" short of "blanket amnesty." "Isn't it better than not having papers at all?" they ask. NO, IT'S MUCH WORSE! This program codifies into law the intimidation and absolute power employers have over immigrant workers. Making undocumented immigrants officially second-class citizens eliminates for big business their embarrassing hypocrisy of heavily recruiting black-market, exploitable labor and using the criminalization of this same labor force to beat it into submission. If the spin-doctors have their way, people in this country will just get used to having once again a legally-mandated servant class.

A worker visa program in which desperate people come here to work under conditions that they have no democratic right to challenge, threatens all of us as organized workers, social justice advocates, and immigrants! That is why we must send a strong message to legislators.

The National Coalition's FREEDOM Act is not "blanket amnesty." It provides for: (1) three-year temporary residency for every gainfully employed, law-abiding undocumented immigrant with a process by which they could earn permanent residency, and (2) a mechanism to legalize future migration flows and demilitarize the border so people who come here to work could visit their families back in home countries regularly enough not to have to smuggle them here under great danger. A copy of this proposal is available for your perusal on www.floc.com.

The battle for immigrant rights has never been at a more critical moment. The Supreme Court decided that employers have impunity to fire undocumented workers with no questions asked for union activity or any other reason. This decision is a devastating blow to all undocumented workers' ability to organize for their rights. It makes undocumented workers even more attractive and vulnerable to employers, who already intentionally recruit them for their exploitability.

We need supporters to help us make some noise and change the course of a very grave turn of events for immigrants in this country May 1, 2002!

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