Not so fast supporting the Gutierrez Immigration Bill

[J. Mujica]

On 11/20/09, Mark Day <_mda...@yahoo.com_ (mailto:mda...@yahoo.com)
>
wrote:
Not so fast supporting the Gutierrez Immigration
Reform Bill! explore
all the options, says labor and immigration expert
David Bacon. Please read below:


Dear Mark --
More discussion and house parties could be an important part of
building a
movement for immigration reform that's based on human rights and
families,
rather than more enforcement and corporate labor supply programs.
Unfortunately, Gutierrez is proposing the latter, as he has done for
the last
several years. Jumping on his bandwagon is not going to get us what
we want.
I'm attaching a comparison of Schumer's and Gutierrez' most recent
proposals, since we're being told by the DC advocates that this is
what's on the
table, and this is what we have to live with.


In deciding whether to support the Gutierrez proposal, it's important
to
describe it accurately. Gutierrez calls for increased enforcement,
both on
the border and E-Verify in the workplace. That will result in the
kind of
firings we saw at American Apparel, and potentially workplace raids as
well. His proposal for an employment-based visa system for future
flows is
essentially the corporate program for contract labor, or guest worker
programs.


How many people would be legalized with Gutierrez' bill is hard to
tell.
First, he's not very specific about what the qualifications are. And
second, in Congress in recent years legalization proposals have wound
up
including huge fines, long waits, lots of disqualifications, and
other barriers.


Lastly, there's no proposal for dealing with the source of migration
--
NAFTA and the other economic policies imposed on countries like
Mexico, to
make it easier for big companies to make profits while displacing
millions of
people through increased poverty, agricultural dumping, privatization,
job
loss, and busted unions. Without some effort to fix this, imposing
more
enforcement will simply create more undocumented people.


If we want something that really represents what we want and know will
move us toward rights and equality, we have to build a movement to
get it.
Getting stampeded into bills proposing guest workers and more
enforcement,
with the justification that "it's the only way to get something now,"
avoids
the need to organize and fight for what we really want. This is the
same
way many DC advocates have tried to force the corporate labor
supply/enforcement bills as the only proposals for consideration for
the last few years.


An immigration system based on providing employers a labor supply,
with
enforcement to make workers participate, is what corporations want,
not what
we want. It's the same bad deal that was on the table in the
Kennedy-McCain bill, and the other corporate immigration reform bills
that died in the
last several years. Most of the draconian enforcement proposals
we've seen
implemented over the last several years were actually first proposed
in
those bills. They were then supported by the rationale that the only
way to
get legalization was to agree to them. That's what we're going to
hear
again -- in fact, we're hearing it already.


Why don't we fight for what we really want?


David