Immigrant rights after the election

THE HISTORIC election of Barack Obama is raising expectations among immigrants and their supporters nationwide for a reversal of the policies that have led to a virtual war on the undocumented population in the U.S.

During the campaign, Obama won support by taking a more sympathetic approach to the plight of the undocumented. For example, at the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza, he said:

When 12 million people live in hiding in this country and hundreds of thousands of people cross our borders illegally each year; when companies hire undocumented workers instead of legal citizens to avoid paying overtime or to avoid a union; and a nursing mother is torn away from her baby by an immigration raid, that is a problem that all of us--Black, white and brown--must solve as one nation.

As a result, Obama ran much stronger among Latinos than John Kerry did four years before. According to the Washington Post:

Turnout among Latinos--who tend to favor legalizing undocumented immigrants--increased by 30 percent from the 2004 presidential race. Two-thirds of the Latino vote went to Obama, compared with barely more than half for the 2004 Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.). And Latinos proved particularly helpful to Obama and other Democrats in the battleground states of Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.

The backdrop to the election was a growing attack on immigrants.

Undocumented immigrants have been rounded up and deported in ever-greater numbers by Michael Chertoff's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. In fiscal year 2008, ICE says it deported 349,041 undocumented immigrants, up from 288,663 the previous year.

Dehumanizing workplaces raids and arrests designed to further criminalize undocumented workers and undercut union organizing have increased more than 10 times since 2002. Images of trapped and chained undocumented workers separated from their children have generated tremendous outrage, with Obama acknowledging that the raids "terrorized" immigrant families.

But increased raids and deportations are only the sharp edge of the expansion of draconian state and local level attacks and restrictions on undocumented workers and communities since the defeat of Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner's 2005 bill HR 4437, which proposed deportation of all the estimated 12 million undocumented in the U.S.

HR 4437 passed in the House of Representatives, but was ultimately stopped from becoming law by the rise of a massive opposition movement in spring 2006. Nevertheless, since then, a bipartisan coalition pushed tougher enforcement measures into law, and the Bush administration stepped up targeting of the undocumented through ICE.

Life in the U.S. for the undocumented, especially Latinos, has become much more difficult.

The full impact of the right-wing racist backlash was brought home again when Marcello Lucello, a 37-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant, was killed this month in Patchogue, N.Y. A group of local teenagers have been charged with Marcello's murder. A prosecutor at their arraignment quoted the young men as having said: "Let's go find some Mexicans." Marcello worked at a dry-cleaning shop in Riverhead and came here 16 years ago.

As the New York Times wrote in an editorial:

A possible lynching in a New York suburb should be more than enough to force this country to acknowledge the bitter chill that has overcome Latinos in these days of rage against illegal immigration.

The atmosphere began to darken when Republican politicians decided a few years ago to exploit immigration as a wedge issue. They drafted harsh legislation to criminalize the undocumented. They cheered as vigilantes streamed to the border to confront the concocted crisis of Spanish-speaking workers sneaking in to steal jobs and spread diseases.

Cable personalities and radio talk-show hosts latched on to the issue. Years of effort in Congress to assemble a responsible overhaul of the immigration system failed repeatedly. Its opponents wanted only to demonize and punish the Latino workers on which the country had come to depend.

A campaign of raids and deportations, led by federal agents with help from state and local posses, has become so pervasive that nearly 1 in 10 Latinos, including citizens and legal immigrants, have told of being stopped and asked about their immigration status, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Now that the economy is in free fall, the possibility of scapegoating is deepening Hispanic anxiety.

AT A Palm Beach. Fla., campaign stop on May 22, Obama said, "A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There's a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it's not surprising that would happen."

Blame does belong to these blowhards who bash Mexican immigrants nightly with lies and utter myths, but culpability should go higher still. Every Bush administration-sponsored federal workplace raid has helped legitimize the idea that it is acceptable to attack Latino immigrants.

Recent indications from Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that they might favor curtailing raids brought the opposite response from House Republican immigrant bashers Peter King and Lamar Smith.

King, a former backer of the Irish Republican Army's armed struggle against British rule and now the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security, declared, "The last thing we should be talking about is ending ICE raids. We need more enforcement, not less."

Lamar Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, also weighed in, saying, "Instead of criticizing, the Speaker should be commending ICE for protecting American jobs by ensuring that they don't go to illegal immigrants, targeting identity thieves and holding employers accountable." Smith added, "I'm troubled that the speaker seems to be more concerned with the welfare of illegal immigrants than of the U.S. citizens who have to compete against them for jobs."

We should welcome the news that Pelosi and other Democrats are questioning the usefulness of federal raids. But we shouldn't forget that congressional Democrats stood idly by when Bush and Chertoff escalated enforcement tactics over the last two years. Worse still, Democrats have accepted much of the enforcement framework. And right-wing nuts like King and Smith will keep on pushing enforcement politics until they are challenged.

To end raids and deportations and win genuine legalization, we need to recreate the broad movement of millions that announced itself in every city and town across the country during the spring of 2006 The struggle of the undocumented must connect with the demands of the native-born for unemployment benefits, foreclosure relief, health care and union rights.

EARLIER IN November, several organizations announced plans for a massive immigrant rights rally on January 21 in Washington, D.C. As Jessica Alvarez, president of the National Capitol Immigration Coalition, said at a jointly sponsored press conference with the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM):

Our efforts were illustrated in 2006 with immigration rallies across the nation and here in the nation's capital. Since then, we have focused on citizenship drives, registering voters and getting people out to the polls. That made a difference in this election. Now comes our new, next significant act--a massive action January 21 here in Washington, D.C....

Today, we are inviting everyone who cares about the future of this country and who cares about all families in this country to join us in this celebration.

According to a Washington Post report, transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled "a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, abortion and other issues."

It isn't clear if, to start with, raids and deportations, Bush's use of Social Security no-match letters to crackdown on the undocumented and the E-Verify Program make the list. We have to make sure they are.

Stopping raids and deportations would be a tremendous victory and step forward for the immigrants' rights struggle. Indeed, the crushing defeat of McCain-Palin at the polls means we should go further and scrap the right-wing framework for "immigration reform" that many politicians accepted because of Republican dominance.

Border walls are part of the problem, not the solution. Undocumented immigrants who have endured racism, ICE terror, low wages and all sorts of hardships shouldn't have to pay fines for being here. And the AFL-CIO can use its new clout to reject employer proposed guest-worker programs and organize to include the undocumented in the battle for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

We should expect and be ready to demand much more now, not less--and understand that it will take a struggle to win. The selection of Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff shows why.

At the La Raza conference this year, Juan Salgado, board chairman of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, shocked participants when he said, "Congressman Rahm Emanuel said to me two weeks ago that there is no way this legislation is happening in the Democratic House, in the Democratic Senate, in the Democratic presidency, in the first term."

This is simply unacceptable.

To stop the raids and deportations, to stop the separation of parents and children, to make sure the undocumented do not become scapegoats and to make sure there are no more victims like Marcello Lucello, we need to build a powerful movement capable of marching, sitting in and disrupting business as usual.

We can't take no for an answer. And we should have an answer for all those who would tell us no: Sí Se Puede! Yes We Can!