| The 
              people of this country have not taken Arizona governor Jan Brewer�s 
              signing of the state�s new immigration law sitting down. The 
              ink wasn�t yet dry on Brewer�s signature when the howls of the fight 
              to uphold human civil and constitutional rights could be heard in 
              the streets, the churches, and the union halls of this country. 
               Many 
              are calling the new law racial profiling of Latinos. Others see 
              it as an attack on all workers. It is both. 
 What�s 
              behind the new law, SB 1070? Capital�s 
              goal with SB 1070 is to control, not just Latino workers, but all 
              workers, it creates a reign of terror among a sector of the working 
              class -- Latino workers and their families. Big 
              business�s ultimate goal is to divide the American working class, 
              get both sides fighting each other, and drive down everybody�s wages 
              and standard of living in the process.  Arizona�s 
              new law is a milepost in making Latinos the sacrificial lambs in 
              capital�s efforts to divide workers and break their potential unity. 
              This potential unity of workers in America -- both immigrant and 
              native-born -- is based on their having a common destiny.  Migrant 
              workers the world over are people who have been uprooted by this 
              class of capitalists as it remakes society in the age of high technology. 
              They are an expression of the new class being created by electronics 
              in just the same way that the millions of native-born Americans 
              are being displaced from their jobs here in the United States.  Immigrant 
              workers pushed off the land when they could not compete with high-tech 
              U.S. corporate farming are facing the same enemy as American factory 
              workers who are being thrown out of their jobs by high-tech, computerized 
              robots. Both immigrant and non-immigrant are part of this new class 
              of dispossessed.  What 
              does capital gain? First, 
              it provides an opportunity for both sides of the false political 
              divide created by capital to vent their rage on one another, instead 
              of on capital itself, and deepens the rift between the two.  
 Second, 
              this Gestapo law in Arizona sets the stage for a "compromise" 
              immigration bill in Washington, which will give capital much of 
              what it wants.  While 
              the bill will offer immigrants now who lack papers a difficult and 
              costly path to citizenship, it will also most likely provide for 
              an influx of "guest" workers. And by establishing a new, 
              high-tech national work card, the law will create an important part 
              of capital�s new apparatus of control. Third, 
              the creation of this �guest-worker� peonage system will pull down 
              what remains of the decent wages and standard of living of native-born 
              American workers, while providing them with a scapegoat on which 
              to direct their wrath. 
 How 
              do we win? Keep 
              targeting the economic system that thrives on the migration of millions. 
               During 
              the U.S. Civil War, for example, the North could not have been victorious 
              if the farmers and workers who made up the Union Army had not come 
              to realize that it was not the runaway slaves competing for jobs 
              but the whole system of slavery that they had to destroy.  Today, 
              that�s exactly what we need to do -- turn the attack on immigrant 
              workers around and go after the economic system that thrives from 
              their plight.
 Across 
              the world, immigrant workers are the vanguard of a new class of 
              permanently unemployed and underemployed workers. To defend them 
              is to defend this new class, and to defend the future of every worker. BlackCommentator.com 
              Guest Commentator Laura Garcia is the Editor of Tribuno 
              Del Pueblo. Click here 
              to contact Ms. Garcia. |