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Today, 120,000 foreign guest workers receive temporary H-2 visas established under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 for farm and other low-skilled work (H-2A for farm and H-2B for the rest), usually for three to nine months, under conditions similar to the former Bracero Program under which they were mistreated and cheated on entry, while here and on the way out in a cycle of abuse sure to be repeated if a George Bush-style guest worker program becomes law. Even professional workers are harmed under the H-1B program assuring they, like non-professionals, are marginalized and mistreated under a system where employers control everything, and workers are just indentured servants with no choice but to take it or leave it and go home.
Immigrant rights groups oppose the legislation, and the National Alliance for Immigrants' Rights wants full legalization for all immigrant workers in the country and a halt to all raids and deportations - provisions not in the compromise bill and unlikely to be added. Fear of arrest haunts the undocumented at a time when terrorism in the news trumps immigrant worker rights, especially Latinos (and Muslims) getting none.
That came out in a scathing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report based on thousands of guest worker interviews and dozens of legal cases documenting appalling abuses of vulnerable immigrants unable to get redress. SPLC's Immigrant Justice Project director, Mary Bauer, said: "Guest workers are usually poor people who are lured here by the promise of decent jobs. But all too often, their dreams are based on lies, their hopes shattered by the reality of a system that treats them as commodities. They're the disposable workers of the global economy." SPLC president Richard Cohen added: "The mistreatment of temporary workers in America today is one of the major civil rights issues of our time."
New Senate and House immigration bills will soon be debated including bipartisan legislation unveiled March 22 in the House by Latino Democrat Luis Gutierrez and Republican Jeff Flake. Sadly, it's little more than the usual "same old, same old." In this case, it's largely a rehash of last year's stalled S 2611 bill that rightfully is sure to mobilize immigrants' rights groups against it. It proposes a repressive guest worker bracero program with provisions allowing those qualified to get three year visas renewable for another three years after which workers would be forced to go home. To be eligible, immigrants would have to learn English, pass criminal and security checks and pay back taxes ignoring the fact that most all undocumented workers already pay taxes, give far more than they get back, and are honest hard-working people.
To get a green card then and be eligible for future legal residency (only for those arriving before June 1, 2006), they'd then have to go home (under the so-called "touch back" provision) and start again. They'd also have to pay a $2000 fine and prove to authorities they're model material enough to qualify to stay here. More than half the bill is even more repressive. It contains harsh provisions for stepped up DHS/ICE (paramilitary) border security above what's now in place with more manpower and a multi-billion dollar high-tech border surveillance "shield" now under construction. Other provisions include a mandated biometric system employers must use to verify workers have legal status while overall this bill, like the others from both Houses, contains a corporate wish list at the expense of undocumented Latino immigrants it wishes to exploit. In short, it's appalling and will surely be opposed on the streets en masse around the country in the spring and summer.
This proposal and others will be on the docket in both Houses for debate in coming weeks with final resolution planned for late spring or summer unless protest opposition delays it again or defeats it. Neither House version improves much over what stalled legislatively last year, and only mass civil rights protests like the historic ones in dozens of cities last spring have a chance to do it or find a way for real immigration reform benefitting people, not the special interests exploiting them with help from Congress and the administration.
Support for continued exploitation is driving the political process, even from unexpected places showing how long the odds are for legislative justice. It's coming from the National Council of La Raza, "the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States (working) to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans." NCLR reaches millions of Hispanics in and outside the country. It was founded in 1968 by noted labor organizer, community leader and author Ernesto Galarza who wrote about braceros being "indentured aliens" and prototypical "production (men) of the future" stripped of all political and social rights in what he called an "input factor" to suck worth from and discard. He and labor leaders like Cesar Chavez and others all campaigned to end the program.
His organization today, under President Janet Murguia, is now an apologist for corporate America lobbying for braceros at home like the ones they exploit around the world in a global race to the bottom affecting working people everywhere. In a February 11 Washington Post op-ed piece, she wrote her "organization and many (unidentified) Latino leaders (support) a significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration reform." Incredibly, Ms. Murguia denounced the original bracero program for its abuses while advocating a new version of the same thing now. It's no surprise because NCLR also supported NAFTA before it passed opposing US and Mexican labor and community-based organizations against it at the time for all the damage it would do now apparent.
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