What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Bush's Worst Appointment
Yet?
Read Jeffrey
St Clair's blazing expose of the new Interior Secretary nominee
, Dirk Kempthorne, and make up your own mind. Even in the dingy
history of Idaho's predators, Kempthorne stood proud as the dingiest
of them all. Now he's poised to seize his place in history. Will
he be the sleaziest Interior Secretary in history, sleazier than
Watt, fouler than Fall?
More on the great Israel Lobby debate! Norman Finkelstein blazes
a new path, asks "Are the Neo-Cons really committed Zionists?" "Bliss was it
in that dawn" Not in Michigan! Raymond Garcia describes
Dem governor's appalling plan to scapegoat youth and teachers. Plus the full print version of Virginia
Tilley's savage dissection on this website of the double-standard
onslaught on Hamas by the US and EU. CounterPunch Online is read by millions
of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely
by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
As George W. Bush called for sending
National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, a split emerged
in the immigrant rights movement over so-called compromise legislation
in the Senate.
The deal--named for its chief
negotiators, Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Mel Martinez (R-Fla.)--has
been sharply criticized among activists because it divides undocumented
immigrants into three legal categories and includes a guest-worker
program demanded by Corporate America.
Yet when Senate Majority Leader
Bill Frist announced May 12 that the stalled legislation would
be revived, several major immigrant organizations endorsed the
bill, including the National Council of La Raza, the League of
United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
The National Immigration Forum
(NIF)--whose top officers include the political director of the
UNITE HERE union, Thomas Snyder--issued a statement which declared
that the "Hagel-Martinez compromise includes the right architecture
for real immigration reform." The other main union on the
NIF board, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU),
views Hagel-Martinez as "a step forward," according
to a union spokesperson.
By contrast, Nativo López,
president of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA)
and a key organizer of mass marches in Los Angeles on March 25
and May 1, called the proposals "nothing less than a categorization
of the immigrant workforce into a bantu apartheid system,"
akin to the old racist system in South Africa. "[Immigrant
workers] will languish in those categories for years with no
absolute guarantee of legal status," he told Socialist
Worker.
Ana Avendaño, associate
general counsel at the AFL-CIO and director of the labor federation's
immigrant worker program, called the three-tiered structure "punitive
and inhuman. The fact that the national Latino organizations
and the national immigrant rights organizations have signed on
to it is very offensive."
Because of this support for
the legislation, however, Democratic Senate staffers will have
the political cover to slam the door on critics of Hagel-Martinez,
even as immigrant rights activists from around the U.S. come
to Washington for a national day of lobbying May 17. "They're
saying, 'You can lobby all you want, but the deal is done,'"
Avendañao said in an interview.
She pointed out that 85 percent
of immigrant children live in mixed households with citizens
and non-citizens--and that many of the low-wage workers who would
have to travel to the border to apply for legal status under
Hagel-Martinez would lose their jobs. "The bottom line is
that they need to construct a punitive program that doesn't sound
like amnesty" to get the bill through Congress, Avendaño
said.
* *
*
UNDER HAGEL-Martinez, undocumented
immigrants living in the U.S. more than five years could apply
to become citizens after six years, paying fines and any back
taxes, and learning English.
Those in the U.S. more than
two years but less than five could apply for status as guest
workers, but only after exiting and re-entering the U.S. at a
port of entry--a setup, critics say, for instant deportations.
The rest of the undocumented
immigrants--more than 2 million people who have come to the U.S.
in the last two years--would be forced to leave and could only
apply to return under the guest-worker program.
Hagel-Martinez could also put
immigrants at risk for deportation if they used false documentation
to obtain a job, immigration lawyers say.
And as Hagel and Martinez boasted
in a recent article, their proposals would sharply increase enforcement.
"The bill adds nearly 15,000 new Border Patrol agents over
the next six years," they wrote. "It dramatically increases
the number of immigration investigators (1,000), immigration
inspectors (1,250) and customs inspectors (1,000) as well. And
it authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to make important
improvements and additions to border infrastructure necessary
to secure the border."
Moreover, both the House and
Senate bills contain numerous punitive measures, as Dori Cahn
reported on the New American Media Web site. If passed, they
would lead to deportation of accused gang members who were not
convicted of any crime, expand the numbers of "aggravated
felonies" that would launch deportation proceedings, restrict
the right to naturalization based on past conduct, and otherwise
limit access to citizenship.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.