In late January, ICE announced the formation of a new unit to expand the I-9 audits – additional agents dedicated to intensifying the “silent raids.” They will oversee the terrorization and persecution of millions of undocumented workers and their families and communities.
This continued persecution engenders an immigration policy that is subject to mob rule by right-wing “patriots.” It is driven by a media campaign to undermine the legal rights of workers. All workers.
We are facing a human-rights crisis of the first order. And in the U.S. as elsewhere, if everyone is not free, no one is free. Labor unions, community and social organizations, and immigrant-rights groups cannot simply continue politics as usual.
The leaders of many of these organizations have seen their responsibility as being to negotiate the terms of these “verification systems,” not to oppose them. Or they have been content with marching and symbolic actions.
This is unacceptable!
Over the last five years, we have marched and marched, in the hundreds of thousands. We have appealed again and again to the politicians – Democrats and Republicans alike. And still they refuse to address the human and moral issues.
The Chicago City Council recently passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on deportations – another symbolic action.
This is not enough!
The immigration system is broken.
It is destroying families and undermining workers’ rights. There must be a nationwide moratorium on all “verifying” and all raids. More than that – full legalization must be extended to all immigrants.
The Tribuno del Pueblo calls on leaders, old and new, and all concerned people to begin discussion immediately on a new plan for our movement. We encourage them to understand that an important order of business is to discover a way that we can fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the non-immigrants for our daily bread.
Only by making common cause with the whole of the working class will the whole of the working class take up our struggle.
We look forward to participating in these discussions and in the new strategy and tactics that will emerge from them.
