Immigrant Workers Show Way Entire US Working Class
By Steve Zeltzer

The historic massive mobilization of millions of immigrant workers in the last two months in the United States has been an important step forward for the US working class. The mobilization was precipitated by reactionary legislation that would have made more than 12 million immigrant workers illegal.

The legislation which passed the Republican Party controlled House of Representatives created a firestorm of anger and hatred by millions of immigrants and their children. The children of immigrants born in the US faced the prospect of having their parents criminalized although they have spent much of their lives in the US.

The demonstrations in April were also publicized and supported by the main stream Latino radio and TV media in the US.

This reflected a mass hatred of the criminalization policy of the capitalist parties in the US. Using the pretext of ‘fighting the war on terror’ both the Democratic and Republican Parties have spent tens of billions of dollars militarizing the borders and creating a racist hysteria against immigrant workers.

The mobilization of immigrant workers also comes against a backdrop of sharp attacks on the organized workers in the US. Millions of workers in steel, airlines and now auto have faced the looting of their pension plans, cutbacks of retiree and employed worker healthcare benefits and an epidemic of union busting.

In the face of this assault, both the AFL-CIO and the newly organized Change To Win coalition have launched no mass mobilization against the deregulation and privatization drive. The AFL-CIO and the CTW have also supported the massive funding of the border militization bills in the Congress.

While both federations have opposed legislation criminalizing undocumented immigrants in the US, unions such as the SEIU, UFWA and UNITE-HERE which are in the CTW coalition have supported a ‘guest worker’ program. His program would allow for millions of workers to be imported into the US for corporations such as Wal-Mart and agricultural bosses.

The AFL-CIO has opposed the ‘guest worker’ program but at the same time it supports the same Democratic politicians who are supporting these policies.

During the April demonstrations, both groupings gave logistical support including helping to get permits and supplies for the demonstrations. After the call for the May Day demonstrations, the unions began to declare that they could not back the May Day action since it would ‘violate the collective bargaining agreements’.
These unions have opposed fighting to commemorate May Day rallies and instead have counterposed a Workers Memorial day on April 28 and this is supported by the ICFTU.

Despite the pullback from the unions the mobilizations was successful and showed that even without contract or backing, immigrant workers were prepared to organize in the streets.
Already there are reports that auto workers and other workers have been encouraged by these actions and this will put further pressure on the trade union bureaucracy who are being seen by their members as incapable of taking the mobilization steps that immigrant workers have taken.

The struggle to organize these millions of workers into unions is also now on the agenda and these mobilizations have provided a powerful imputus for this possibility and the fight for a mass workers party that can programmatically represent both immigrant workers and the entire working class.