*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- Full Citizenship Rights For All Immigrants!- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, dated April 27, 2007 in defense of full citizenship rights for all immigrants.

Markin comment:

In a country that has seen many successive waves of mass immigration from all corners of this earth the demand in the headline and as detailed in the article seems like the beginning of wisdom rather than the "red meat" issue that the right-wing yahoos have made it.

From The American Left History Blog Archives (2007-08) - On American Political Discourse – MR GORBACHEV (OOPS!), MR. BUSH TEAR DOWN THAT WALL-FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS (2007)

Markin comment:

In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

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MR GORBACHEV (OOPS!), MR. BUSH TEAR DOWN THAT WALL-FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS

SOME COMMENTARY ABOUT THE IMMIGRATION STRUGGLE AND A FOOLPROOF PLAN FOR SOLVING THE IMMIGRATION CRISIS.

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

Forgive the writer for taking a page from the late, unlamented Ronald Reagan’s playbook but with all this talk on Capitol Hill about walling in the Southwest I got carried away. The point however is that such a scheme as is currently proposed in the House version of the immigration bill is flat out crazy. And that, my friends, is a true political fact. No militant can support any of the immigration bills before Congress and if we had workers party representatives in Congress we would emphatically and loudly vote such measures down.

A few thoughts on the struggle for full citizenship rights for all immigrants.

As I write these lines there have been a couple of weeks of massive demonstrations for immigrant rights spearheaded by the Hispanic populations of the West and Southwest followed by a massive May Day boycott and further demonstrations. Noteworthy, in Chicago at least, were contingents of Polish, Irish and other nationalities. All these developments are steps in the right direction and points out the stark reality of immigration in America. In the final analysis all real victories for working people come from the streets not from the Congress.

Let’s face it, one way or another, in the near or remote past, almost all of us came here as immigrants from someplace else. I will confess that, as far as I know, my father’s forbearers were run out of England as horse thieves in the early 1800’s. My mother’s forbearers came over from Ireland on the ‘famine ships’ in the 1840’s. Thus, my family tree is a little shaky on what passed for green cards in those days. The point is that people generally do not leave their countries of origin without extremely good reasons to leave. Those who want to shut the door on immigrants here, unless their surnames are Chief Joseph, Red Cloud or Sitting Bull, should be very, very circumspect about their positions. In fact, let us check THEIR green card history. Sorry, even arrival on the Mayflower is not good enough.

It is particularly important that the last waves of immigration gain the same rights that those of us who have been here longer. This is especially true for working class people who have been victimized by the same divide and conquer strategy by the capitalists who run this government and the country. Let’s put the onus where it belongs, on the capitalist who do benefit from such policies. Immigrants do not threaten our livelihoods. Failure to struggle against the bosses does.

One aspect of the current bills is the ‘guest worker’ plan. Let us be clear- THIS IS INDENTURED SERVITUDE-and must be opposed by militants. It is noteworthy that the major labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Coalition as well as such an august figure as the National Chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean have expressed at least half-hearted opposition to this portion of the bills. They believe they are being progressive and pro-worker by such a stand. And such a position would be truly progressive- in the 1700’s. For militants today that is not nearly enough.

It is rather ironic that one of the most impoverished sections of the working class-Hispanics- is leading the struggle. This is not accidental, for many of the foreign born militants leading today’s struggles come from countries where they have participated in class struggles against their own boss class (and under less than democratic conditions, including loss of life). It is up to the American labor movement, especially the organized trade union movement, to lead the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants in its own self-interest and self-defense. Even a cursory look at the history of social struggles in this country demonstrates that to win any demands sharp class struggle methods are needed. Yesterday’s labor struggles to win union recognition in the 1930’s were not gifts but fought for in the streets, by strikes, sit-downs and other militant methods. The lesson-If you do not fight you cannot win. This battle can be won. Let’s win it.

The writer has been asked what type of immigration bill he would support. Well, I have a simple one point plan. Give each immigrant a local map, and depending on individual economic circumstances, bus fare, train fare or money for a car rental and head him or her to the nearest federal courthouse to be swore in as a citizen. Enough said.

FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL THOSE WHO MAKE IT HERE! NO REPRISALS AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS! DROP CHARGES AGAINST ANY ARRESTEES!

BRING MOTIONS TO SUPPORT THESE DEMANDS BEFORE YOUR UNION, STUDENT GOVERNMENT, POLITCAL ORGANIZATIONS OR RELGIOUS GROUPS. URGE A NO VOTE ON ALL CURRENT IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION BEFORE CONGRESS.

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Woody Guthrie's "Deportees"- Full Citizenship Rights For All Those Who Make It To The U.S.!

Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of Arlo Guthrie and Emmylou Harris performing his father's Deportee.

In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

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Markin comment:

Woody's words were written long ago but they definitely resonate today. This is a "no-brainer" for us- Full citizenship rights for all who make it to the United States!



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Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again

My father's own father, he wanted that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died

CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.

Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

CHORUS

A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?

©1961 (renewed) & 1963 Ludlow Music Inc., New York,NY (TRO)

*From "Boston Indy Media"- The Pro-Immigration Rights Protest And March In Boston During The National Governor's Conference

Click on the headlines to link to a Boston Indy Media post on the pro-immigration rights protest and march in Boston during the recent National Governor's Conference.

Markin comment:

While we radical defenders of immigrant rights do not really have a positive program on bourgeois immigration policy. We are not, after all, advisers to the government on immigration policy. We know what we do want- Full citizenship rights for all who make here. And we know what we do not want- anti-immigrant laws like Arizona's SB 1070 and the trickle of other such state legislative actions of that ilk.

From The "UJP" Website- Demonstrate In Boston Saturday July 11, 2010 At The National Governors Conference Against Arizona's Immigration Law SB 1070

Click on the headline to link to a post from the "UJP" Website-"Demonstrate In Boston July 11, 2010 At The National Governors Conference Against Arizona's Immigration Law SB 1070."

Markin comment:

Some issues, and this Arizona SB 1070 apartheid-like pass law is one of them, require very little explanation and very vocal opposition wherever and whenever possible. Boston at the National Governors Conference (where Arizona's governor and chief enforcer will be present)on July 11, 2010 is one of them. Massachusetts will also get attention for its recent anti-immigrant legislation, as well. We will be there.

*From "The Rag Blog"- Arizona's Crackers : 'Illegal is Not a Race'

Click on to link to a "The Rag Blog" entry- Arizona's Crackers : 'Illegal is Not a Race'

Markin comment:

Down With The Arizona anti-immigration law! Full citizenship rights for all who make it here (America). And by the way let's fight for some historic justice by giving Arizona back to where it belongs- Mexico. Then those Anglo rednecks in Arizona better start worrying about THEIR immigration papers!

*Activists Chain Themselves to Arizona Capitol to Protest Russell Pearce's SB 1070-Down With The Arizona Immigrant Profiling Bill

Click on the headline to link to a "Green Left News" blog entry concerning an Arizona (on the front lines of the immigration question) piece of anti-immigrant legislation now pending there. Down with this bill, SB 1070. Full citizenship rights for all who make it here!

*From Steve Lendmen's Blog- "Police Raids Against Immigrants"- Obama, Not Bush Style

Click on title to link to Steve Lendmen's blog entry, "Police Raids Against Immigrants". Some stories despite changes in presidential administrations, unfortunately, simply need a xerox to be updated.

Markin comment:

Now is a good time to raise that old slogan- Full Citizenship rights for all who get here. As always, those of us already here best not have our forbears' credentials checked to closely, no matter how far back we go in this country.

* Labor's Duty-Fight For Full Citizenship Rights For All Who Make It To America- The Struggle Continues- An Article

Click on title to link to informative article with a left-wing political perspective, from "Workers Vanguard",Number 942, September 11, 2009, about the Obama administration's insidious crackdown on 'illegal' immigrants on the West Coast that has not received nearly enough attention in the mainstream media, except, for the most part, as inflammatory remarks against immigration. In an almost totally immigrant created nation-go figure.

Markin comment:

I have mentioned , on more than one occasion, that our main struggle with the Obama administration today is over the question of its war policies, increasingly the troops escalations, and talk of escalations in Afghanistan. Although that is the main struggle today that we can get a handle on and beat Obama over the head with in more than a propagandistic way this immigration question, especially the wholesale deportations which have gone under under the political radar (except in those immigrant communities that are being ravaged by the policies), needs greater attention. On May Day 2006 and at other times the streets were filled responding to this situation. Today the streets are empty. More later.

Welcome To America?- A Review of "The Visitor"

DVD REVIEW

The Visitor, starring Richard Jenkins, Hazz Sleiman, directed by Tom McCarthy, Anchor Bay Productions, 2008

The quirky little film deals very nicely with the questions of one college professor’s mid-life crisis (a not unfamiliar problem to this reviewer and, I am sure, to the reader of this review and the audience for this film) and immigration in America in the post 9/11 world and various cross-cultural, if not multi-cultural concerns. As the story unfolds it seems that our professor craves some musical outlet to stave off those mid-life blues (and, additionally, get over his isolation due to the death of his wife). Presto- on a dreaded and fruitless trip to New York City as a ‘sub’ presenter at one of those never ending conferences that are central to and bedevil academic life he finds a musical muse, a Palestinian jazz drum aficionado, who also happens to be an illegal immigrant ‘squatting’ in the good professor’s apartment with his also illegal girlfriend.

Along the way the professor, through a fluke of bad timing inadvertently caused by him, learns the hard way the nature of the immigration problem, its seeming absurdities and its abuses. Hovering in the background is our drummer’s deeply concerned mother, a very fetching mother to be sure. The professor and mother form an ‘alliance’ to save her son from the horrors of the deportation process. To no avail and he is deported back to Syria. This deportation to Syria serves as a very useful metaphor concerning the plight of the Palestinian Diaspora and of the continuing non-resolution of the question of a Palestinian homeland.

Although, in the end, the only one who gets out with some resolution of his crisis is the professor we will not fault the creators of this film for that but rather the vagaries of the post 9/11 world, one George W. Bush and friends and a certain innate American xenophobia about immigrants- that is after one’s own ethnic or racial group has ‘made’ it to and in America. After viewing this film I have also become more confirmed that those who make it here to old immigrant-formed and built America should have full citizenship rights. Watch this film to see what I mean. Moreover watch this film for the taboo ‘romance’ between the good WASP professor and his muse’s sparklingly exotic mother. I am sure that it will drive every cultural and religious fundamentalist on both sides of the divide crazy. Good.

Full Citizen Rights For Immigrants- Amnesty Now!

Commentary

If one remembers back only two years ago to May Day 2006 when there were massive protests led by Hispanics in the West, the Southwest and elsewhere over the question of immigrant rights then one would have thought that we would have some justice on this question by now. That has clearly not been the case and mainstream politicians have fallen all over themselves to distance themselves from the mere thought of justice for such people (who moreover either do not or cannot vote, a mortal sin for any politician). There are political reasons for this, including the conscious policies of Hispanic politicians, and others who represent immigrant constituencies to not rock the boat in this august presidential year. This year the protests were rather muted and, in any case, were placed on the back burner by the overwhelming capacity of the current presidential political campaigns to suck all the political oxygen out of the air.

More ominously, since 2006 there have been any numbers of la Migra (immigration service) raids on factories in the Midwest and the South, including one this spring which netted over 400 immigrants at a meat processing plant and that nearly decimated the life of one town. The only rationale for such governmental actions is to tell those who are here illegally (and some who are here legally but want to in the age old tradition of America get 'uppity"- that is, defend their rights) that it is hunting season and they are the targets. Moreover, such actions graphically tell immigrants not to organize themselves for collective protection in such things as trade unions- or you will wind up back from where you came, one way.

There are a whole lot of issues that need to be resolved on the immigration question but no one, and I mean no one in mainstream politics is proposing any just solution to the question. All one hears about there days the need for more deportations, more walls and more cops. Oh, I forgot this gem- also a return to some form of indenture servitude straight out of the 18th century, as well, if some of the proposed legislation in Congress goes through. What this all tells me is that today militants should be proposing a general amnesty for all immigrants, legal or illegal, who have made it here. If anyone, including one Barack Obama whose life profile includes recent immigrant experiences, should in the great by and by propose such a scheme then we will support it. In the meantime the fight is clear- Full citizenship rights for all who make it here. We will worry about the green cards later.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard" Defend Immigrant Rights!-A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to "Workers Vanguard", dated September 14, 2007, for the article on the subject noted above.

Markin comment:

This issue is a no-brainer for leftists and for trade union militants who must understand that immigrant workers, many times, bring valuable class-struggle experience in their baggage. We need that experience as well in the international struggle we face, and which has become more important with the increased "globalization" of international capitalism.