House panel passes anti-immigrant bill

The House Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives approved a Dec. 15 bill on immigration policy, the Border Security Act of 2005, that if made into law would become the harshest measure to date against undocumented workers.

The bill, H.R. 4437, was sponsored by the committee’s chairperson, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (Republican -Wisconsin), and by the Homeland Security Committee Chair, Rep. Peter King (Republican- New York).

One of the most draconian and repressive features of the bill would make it a federal crime to live in the United States without correct documentation.

The provision would cruelly turn millions of undocumented workers into felons and force immigrants further and further underground.

The bill also broadens the “immigrant-smuggling statute” and punishes anyone who offers support or aid to undocumented families. This means that social service agencies, church groups or immigrant rights activists could be imprisoned for offering support to immigrant workers.

The National Council of La Raza, a Latin@ civil rights group, said the bill’s definition of “smuggling and harboring” undocumented workers is so broad that if a member of a church group found an immigrant dying of thirst in the desert and took him or her to a hospital, church members could be subject to criminal penalties.

The bill would require that undocumented workers of non-Mexican background apprehended in the U.S. be held in detention facilities until they are deported; increase funding for sheriffs in border states; giving them more leeway to arrest immigrants, and tough penalties for bosses who hire undocumented workers.

The bill requires that the Department of Homeland Security expand greatly the system intended to verify the immigration status of all workers in the country.

In addition, it authorizes the DHS to build five fences along 698 miles of the U.S./Mexico border, incorporating more high-tech equipment, such as sensors, radar, satellites, and unstaffed drones.

The measure is being touted as one of the “toughest border security measures in more than a decade.” The Senate is expected to act on an immigration bill early next year.

Behind the hype

Immigrant workers, especially undocumented workers, are a cornerstone of the capitalist economy. There is no doubt that without the labor, cheap and super-exploitable, of immigrant workers, this country would grind to a halt in a New York minute.

Immigrant labor is needed to pick the crops, deliver the food and trim the lawns and shrubbery.

On the very same day these harsh measures were approved, the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, an independent and mainstream think-tank in Palo Alto, issued a report to California.

California, given its location near the Mexican border and its historic significance, is one of the states where the immigration debate is the most heated. More Mexicans live in Los Angeles than in any other city outside of Mexico and is home to a diverse group of immigrants from around the world, including Central Asia, the report says.

There are an estimated 2.4 million undocumented immigrants in California today.

One of the report’s principal findings is that, “Immi gration, legal or illegal, while imposing net fiscal costs on this state, produces a net economic benefit for the country.” It repudiates “that there are wide pockets of poverty and imbalance in the California economy due to immigrants.”

It documented how immigrants have nothing to do with displacing jobs for U.S. born workers, filling the lowest-waged jobs.

Last spring, an owner of a small employment agency that caters to finding workers for New York’s many diners, said in an interview in the New York Times, “If these illegals leave New York City, New York will die. I know.”

The findings that immigrants are central to the U.S. economy are not new. Immigrants have been key to the capitalist economy in this country from its inception.

The measure passed Dec. 15 in the House is not meant to keep out the undocumented. It is not meant to turn the desperately needed wage slaves into felons, although it may do that. After all, the undocumented are still needed to clean up the toxic waste in New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The measures and the increased witch hunt against immigrants sweeping this country are meant to drive immigrants further underground so they can be exploited further, as witnessed by the encouragement and legitimization of vigilantes such as the Minutemen. They are meant to whip up a xenophobic and racist anti-worker hysteria, a diversion from the real problems all workers face in this country. It is meant to divide U.S.-born and foreign-born workers whose common enemy are the bosses, not each other.

One of the strongest supporters of the measure was the United States Chamber of Commerce, an important part of the capitalist class. According to the New York Times, letters from the Chamber warned lawmakers that it “would penalize any legislator who voted against the rule.”

But by pushing immigrants further underground, their labor can be further exploited, an action the Chamber fervently supports.

The solution to repressive measures criminalizing the most oppressed workers is solidarity. Organizing foreign-and U.S.-born workers together in solidarity against the capitalist bosses will beat back this anti-worker offensive.