The Racist War on Immigrants: Jim Crow Goes Fishing

In typical fashion, the House Republicans have passed bill HR 4437 (the Sensenbrenner bill) that only a Klansman could love. It makes simply being an undocumented worker in the United States a felony, and it makes it illegal for anyone (teachers, social workers, firefighters, anyone) to help that person in any way. HR 4437 dismantles forty years of civil rights legislation and officially reintroduces Jim Crow into American law.

Now that the Congressional brutes have staked out the Fascist Right, President Bush and Republican Senate "moderate" Alan Specter are sanding off a few of the rough edges and presenting their ideas as "mainstream." Not to be outdone, the "me too" Senate Democrats are putting their own lipstick on the Sensenbrenner pig and asking immigrants rights activists to take it to the dance. Sen. Edward Kennedy has teamed up with that champion of civil rights Sen. John McCain to push his own version of a "guest worker" program. Here the word "guest" is used the sense of: "The United States is keeping over 500 guests in Guantanamo Bay." Kennedy's bill will bring back the Bracero Program, which was used during World War II. Then, hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers were shipped into the US to fill labor shortages as indentured servants, legally bound to the will of the US government and private employers. When the war ended, they were rounded up and herded back to Mexico, having been cheated out of a good portion of their poverty level wages.

Not wanting to be left too far behind, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has waded into the debate. Of course, she won't put forward any clear proposal of her own other than to endlessly repeat the nonsense that Mexican immigrants pose a "security threat" to American citizens.

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