Bush’s immigration plan
A lesson in racist demagogy
By
Deirdre Griswold
Published May 18, 2006 2:13 AM
Demagogy. It’s the stuff politicians
are shoveling out when they say what people want to hear, even as they’re
knifing them in the back.
President George W. Bush’s speech on
immigration, carried live by the media on May 15, was full of demagogy.
He said, “The United States is not going to militarize the southern
border.” But he laid out a plan to send up to 6,000 National Guard troops
to the U.S.-Mexican border. One senator, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois,
calculated that the plan could result in more than 150,000 Guard members being
deployed to the border in the next two years. (New York Times, May 17)
The
deployment of National Guard troops is in addition to Bush’s plan to
increase the number of Border Patrol agents from 9,000 to 12,000.
With the
huge deployment of National Guard troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, most states
already lack the person-power to deal with calamities. In February, governors
from both the Democratic and Republican parties met in Washington and concluded
that “Bush administration policies were stripping the National Guard of
equipment and personnel needed to respond to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes,
forest fires and other emergencies.” (New York Times, Feb.
27)
Hurricanes and floods. Think Katrina and the unanswered pleas for help
by people about to drown. Think grapefruit-sized hail in Tennessee a month ago.
Think the recent floods in New England.
All the scientists are warning
that, with extreme climate change caused by global warming, this is just the
beginning. Yet Bush hasn’t jumped in front of the cameras with any plan to
deal with this dire emergency. In fact, nothing, absolutely nothing, is being
done by the so-called “homeland security” heavies to plan for these
disasters, despite the huge budget at their disposal. They’re too busy
eavesdropping on people’s telephone conversations and setting up juicy
business contracts for the next level of high-tech
surveillance.
Surveillance along the border. Says Bush: “We are
launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in
American history. We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors, and
build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas. We will employ motion
sensors, infrared cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles to prevent illegal
crossings.”
And in people’s wallets. Says Bush: “[There]
should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card
should use biometric technology, such as digital
fingerprints....”
All this will cost billions, which will slip
easily into the pockets of the already super-rich. The workers in this country
will gain nothing from it. Diverting government money from other, needed social
projects will mean new cutbacks in the public sector.
Solidarity is
what’s needed
Since March, literally millions of immigrants have
been marching to demand their right to live and work in this country like anyone
else. This movement mushroomed up after the House passed the draconian
Sensenbrenner-King bill, which would attach heavy criminal penalties to anyone
found without papers and to people who employ or assist them. Bush jumped into
the fray when it became clear that this bill was going
nowhere.
Undocumented immigrants have had a hard enough time even before
this latest assault. With the threat of deportation hanging over them, even if
they have lived and worked here for years, they have been forced into
below-minimum wage jobs, often working on a day-to-day basis with no benefits or
security of any kind.
Increasingly, the right-wing in this country is
discovering that workers are very upset. They are trying to turn that anger
against immigrants. In the distorted world of Pat Buchanan, CNN’s Lou
Dobbs and other demagogues, the problem is not because the big corporations are
in a frenzy of layoffs and cutting wages, pensions and health care; it is not
because the drive to build a world empire, led by Big Oil, is draining hundreds
of billions away from schools, hospitals and all public services.
The lie
they push is that it’s because “illegal immigrants are taking your
jobs and not paying taxes.”
Both parts of this statement are totally
false and calculated to turn worker against worker. It’s the bosses who
decide who to hire and who to fire. Capitalist bosses are scouring the globe
looking for places where they can pay lower wages. They also encourage
immigration when they need labor here—but deliberately deprive immigrants
of their rights, to keep them from winning better conditions.
Bush’s “guest worker” plan aims to do just that. It
would keep employers of immigrants happy and supplied with a low-wage workforce,
but send most of the workers home again before they could get the rights of
citizens.
That’s a prescription for perpetual super-low wages. The
only way to overcome it is by building solidarity among all workers, who can
then struggle together against those who rob them every payday.
As for
taxes, the current law is set up in such a way that two-thirds of those without
papers—or 8 million out of the 12 million estimated to be here—have
taxes automatically deducted from their paychecks.
This is because the
Internal Revenue Service, since 1996, has had a policy of issuing identification
numbers to undocumented workers. These immigrants, who can’t get most jobs
without the numbers, “have Social Security and Medicare taxes
automatically withheld from their paychecks. Since undocumented workers have
only fake numbers, they’ll never be able to collect the benefits these
taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake
numbers—that the Social Security administration stashes in the
‘earnings suspense file’—added up to 10 percent of the Social
Security surplus. The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a
year.” (“Illegal Immigrants are Paying a Lot More Taxes Than You
Think,” Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, May 1)
It’s the
immigrants who are getting ripped off here, by both the employers and the
capitalist government, and not the other way around.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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