The immigration struggle moved into high gear last year with the passage of Arizona law SB 1070 and the threat of copycat laws across the nation, especially in the South, along with the failure of the US government to pass immigration reform and the Dream Act. SB 1070 swelled the wave of criminalization of immigrant communities – both documented and undocumented—leading to racial profiling by the police, collaboration with ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and massive incarceration and deportation of the undocumented.
The movement organized to repeal the Arizona law, to stop copycat laws that have nonetheless passed in Georgia (HB 87) and Alabama (HB 56). Campaigns were launched across the country to opt out of “Secure Communities” (S-Comm) — the federal mandate for partnership of local and state police with ICE in racial profiling, detention, and deportation. Our demands are for legalization, a path to citizenship, and the human rights of all immigrants regardless of status.
Of the many questions confronting the growing immigration struggles two are critical: “Can we eliminate white supremacy and all forms of racism within capitalism?” and “Can we stop the attacks and violence against immigrants within capitalism?”
Anti-immigrant laws and ideology criminalizing the undocumented and unleashing racial profiling are a clear expression of white supremacy as practice, ideology, and law. White supremacy has been dominant and prevalent in US society from its origins in Indigenous genocide and the slave labor system to today’s increasingly economically polarized and racialized oppressive society.
Early US law on citizenship and immigration say it all. The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted citizenship to free white persons (women were included, but with restrictions). No Indigenous, no Africans, no indentured servants, no other immigrants or colonized peoples had citizenship rights. With the abolitionist movement heating up, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 denied citizenship and the very humanity of fugitive slaves as “free” blacks in the North, and criminalized those who gave aid and assistance to them. These laws are the model for today’s anti-immigrant laws.
The Page Act of 1875 excluded immigrants defined as “undesirables” — targeting Asian men coming as contract workers and Asian women. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act halted all Chinese immigration to the US, and was not repealed until 1943. These acts became law in a time of economic crisis, high unemployment, and reduced need for labor following the Gold Rush and completion of the transcontinental railroad. Like today, the content of these laws is to restrict immigration and to deport immigrants and their families already in the country because of the earlier need for their labor.
The struggle to roll back these laws at the state and federal levels are critical and must be ongoing. Each state and local struggle has to determine its own next steps. For those in Georgia, strategic discussions are happening.
These include discussions about the commonalities in our different histories and the lessons of earlier movements, such as Civil Rights, and what are the long term goals of our struggle.
The dynamism of immigration struggles reflects the fact that the politics of immigrant workers and those who work with them are deeply rooted in the objective conditions of their daily confrontation with the laws and enforcement apparatus of the developing fascist state — at federal, state, and local levels. This has led to an immediacy and urgency of action and commitment to intense and ongoing struggle to “turn the tide” of the repressive legislation and enforcement. It is bringing forth resistance and unity among the exploited, oppressed, and dispossessed.
