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. |