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<font size=3><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>May 18,
2006<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5><b>The Border War
Comes Home<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">Our
Lives are on the
Line</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>By JUAN
SANTOS<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">H</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>e looked squarely into my eyes. "So, you
see what's coming," he said.<br><br>
I was speaking with one of the core leaders of the movement for migrant's
rights, and had laid before him a sketch of a plan of resistance for the
nation's barrios, for the protection of people from the mass raids and
mass deportations that will result from new anti-migrant legislation
being birthed in Washington.<br><br>
"This is the calm before the storm; they're going to make it
tough," Professor Armando Navarro had told LA's La Opinion.
"They're talking about raids, deportations. In every barrio we have
to organize migrant defense committees, and get ready for civil
disobedience."<br><br>
The meeting we had just attended unanimously called for the rejection of
the so-called Hagel-Martinez "compromise" in the US Senate,
under which as many as 7 million migrants could face deportation. Such a
compromise would then have to be "reconciled" with House bill
4437, an even more extreme measure inspired by supporters of the
ultra-Right and the racist shock troops called the Minutemen.<br><br>
The House bill calls for the universal deportation of every woman, child
and man in the country without papers, for an utterly devastating
depopulation -an ethnic cleansing - of the barrio, and the destruction of
much of its cultural and economic life.<br><br>
The difference between the bills under consideration is the difference
between partial and virtually complete ethnic cleansing, and any
"compromise" between such measures will not change the racist
and quasi-genocidal nature of the result. A "compromise" can
only mean the deportation of millions and the legal stigmatization and
terrorization of millions more.<br><br>
Under international law, ethnic cleansing means the expulsion from a
territory of one ethnic group by another, and pertains to official
policies aimed at the forcible removal of a targeted group. The crime is
considered a form of forced emigration, deportation and
genocide.<br><br>
International law recognizes ethnic cleansing as a crime against humanity
when carried out in a time of literal warfare. The US war on migrants is
the moral equivalent of ethnic cleansing. It is a crime against
humanity.<br><br>
Fittingly, the Bush administration has flatly stated its intent to make
"enforcement" the cutting edge of its new approach to migrants,
and to prove the point it recently initiated the largest single mass
arrest of migrants in US history, and put a severe new focus on
penalizing employers, as well.<br><br>
Bush has already deported more people than any other president in U.S.
history.<br><br>
Since he took office ICE has deported some 150,000 migrants a year and
had deported 881,478 people through 2005, figures that do not include,
for example, the 1.2 million people who were arrested at the U.S.-Mexican
border itself last year.<br><br>
Now, in his Monday night speech, Bush has promised to fulfill one of the
Minutemen's most draconian hopes turning the border into a green zone,
a quasi-military zone occupied by forces of the National Guard, backed by
a super high tech "virtual" wall a wall more deadly, and more
effective, than a mere fence.<br><br>
And, in apparent defiance of the Posse Comitatus Act which forbids the
use of military troops within US borders - the House recently passed
legislation that, according to the Pentagon, "gives authority to the
Defense Department to assign military members to assist Homeland Security
organizations in preventing the entry of terrorists, drug traffickers and
illegal aliens into the United States"<br><br>
Migrant deaths at the border are expected to skyrocket, and the State is
already building mass detention centers for migrants. Bush claims he's
not "militarizing" the border. His claim will mean nothing to
the dead and the incarcerated.<br><br>
Every version of the so-called "immigration reform laws" now
under renewed consideration in Washington also authorizes and pays local
police to act as immigration agents and to oversee the deportation of
those they arrest, effectively adding a permanent quasi-military force of
650,000 for "internal enforcement" of immigration
laws.<br><br>
This is an example of the "middle ground" on migrants trumpeted
by the US's white colonial ruling elite: the state will combine mass
raids with the slow process of day by day racial profiling to eliminate
the migrant population. According to an ICE plan called Operation Engame,
they mean to deport every "deportable" migrant by the year
2012.<br><br>
In his Monday speech Bush said migrants are "beyond the reach and
protection of American law." Indeed, he means to get them in his
grasp, but their "protection" is nowhere on the
agenda.<br><br>
The plan is to control and terrorize the migrants who will remain in the
US, and to incarcerate and deport the rest. When that much is achieved,
the ruling elites will find themselves in a comfortable position to
continuously exploit the labor of a subjugated, highly controlled and
vulnerable ethnic under-caste, and they will have provided themselves
with the kind of ethnic scapegoat essential to the development of a new
US-style fascism.<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>False
Hopes<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>The hopes of millions of migrants
have been ignited by the recent wave of protests, and by the hope that
white America will find them with their white t-shirts and American
flags -acceptable, tolerable, even welcome.<br><br>
The shock will be immense.<br><br>
Migrants will learn in a brutal fashion that the concern of America's
elite has never had anything to do with surrender, white shirts, white
dreams, or any other indication of who, as people, migrants might be or
wish to be. The only concern of the ruling elites is their own need for
migrants as exploitable workers like the slave master of the Old South
they need their workers.<br><br>
There is another motive as well: today's elites also fear the very people
they need - just like any slave master. The fear is compounded by the
knowledge that today's master is not only an exploiter, he is also a
usurper: the land he thrives on was stolen from the very people he
degrades and dehumanizes with the epithet "illegal."<br><br>
And it's not just Republicans and open white racists who are afraid. It's
many "liberals," too. Ed Schultz, the liberal talk show host,
recently offered two factors as a bottom line on why migrants should
stay: "the economy needs them" and "they can make
trouble."<br><br>
The fear is so intense that, because of our mass protests, the worst
elements of the Sensenbrenner bill HR4437 were momentarily derailed
as different elements of the ruling class scrambled and bickered among
themselves to determine who will have the final say - to determine who
among them can assure the needs of their economy while averting the
threat that migrants represent to them all.<br><br>
With every passing day, with every demonstration, with each child who
prays each night that her parents can come out from the shadow of the
stigma of being hunted and despised, with each heartbeat of rising hope,
the noose around the neck of the ruling class gets just a little tighter;
the options contract.<br><br>
With each day, each hour, the danger for the ruling elites of crushing
the life and death expectations of migrants grows exponentially.
Politically correct or not, every American flag carried in the recent
mass demonstrations represents a rising, fluttering expectation, a sea of
expectations whose depths promise shipwreck for the State, when, as it
must, it betrays the promise of "freedom" and racial
"equality."<br><br>
The crushing of those expectations could lead directly to rebellion in
the streets, following the example of the recent rebellion of migrants in
France, and of the African American rebellions of the 1960s. When Martin
Luther King was overcome, when he lay dead of an assassin's bullet in
Memphis, a hundred cities burned across the nation.<br><br>
They burned because it had become clear to the African American people
that after more than a decade of struggle nothing fundamental in the
structure of oppression had changed, that the changes that occurred had
been mere surface changes, compromises, like the Hagel-Martinez bill
today, aimed at silencing them, not at transforming the conditions of
their lives or the oppression that afflicted them.<br><br>
The ruling elites have not forgotten for a moment the mass rebellion in
Los Angeles of 1992. Migrant neighborhoods were a focal point of intense
uprisings; the unity between Black and Brown was as palpably intense as
the flames that engulfed the city and utterly terrifying to all of
those whose daily task is to keep us down.<br><br>
As if to underscore the point, police were all but invisible in the
recent pro-migrant marches in downtown LA although over a million of us
were in the streets. But in Pico Union, where another million marched,
riot squads were visible everywhere, even until past midnight. Pico Union
was a storm center of the LA rebellion. Half of those arrested in that
period were Brown.<br><br>
Is it any wonder, then, that the rulers have taken pause for thought
about just how far they dare to go in the war on immigrants?
Sensenbrenner went too far with HR4437 he awakened the threat. Now they
must gauge a thing all but impossible to gauge: just how far<i> is</i>
too far?<br><br>
No one on either side of the equation knows the answer to that
question.<br><br>
One thing at least is clear no one in the white mainstream is going to
come to the support of migrants unless migrants themselves stop wrapping
themselves in the flag of the oppressor, and dare to stand up to
oppression and unless they are willing to polarize the nation against
their persecutors and defiantly challenge their racism.<br><br>
At the same time our demands must be made clear and millions must be
challenged to re-think their prejudices. That's exactly how the Black
movement for freedom did it, and nothing less will do. The
"problem," as one writer recently put it, isn't at the border;
the problem isn't with immigration it's that migrants are being
persecuted.<br><br>
And voting won't change that, no matter what the "We Are
America" coalition claims. A vote in November and face it, most
migrants simply aren't eligible to vote will change nothing for the
child whose mother or father is deported today. Even if the Democrats win
in November, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will take up the
question of immigration anew.<br><br>
No. The harsh reality is that the Democrats have supported extremely
draconian anti-migrant measures in their willingness to
"compromise" with the overtly fascistic elements of the
Republican Party.<br><br>
The "compromise" already accepted by the Democrats includes
mass deportations of up to several million people, the indefinite
detention of migrants without due process, the treatment of minor
offenses as "aggravated felonies" which would trigger harsh
mandatory detention and deportation, and of course, unleashing the police
as migrant hunters in a program of daily terror against our
communities.<br><br>
When the matter goes to the House/ Senate reconciliation committee, it
can only get worse. The Democrats are no more likely to repeal the war on
migrants than they have been willing to reverse their criminal support
for the unjust colonial war of occupation against Iraq.<br><br>
They will not relent unless we leave them no choice, unless, like the
forces of resistance in other places and other times, we make the
political price of continuing the war on migrants too high.<br><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>The Ultimate
Showdown<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>The National Immigrant Solidarity
Network says it clearly. "This is a critical moment for the
immigrant struggle."<br><br>
"We should brace ourselves," they say, "for the ultimate
showdown of the immigrant struggle soon, and we should mobilize ourselves
quickly to respond to the racist anti-immigrant xenophobia that will go
down."<br><br>
The group is calling for emergency community meetings to strategize rapid
response to a possible nationwide crackdown or attack on
immigrants.<br><br>
No matter what the rulers do, short of a general legalization, they will
present our people with unbearable choices, with an unimaginable grief of
separation; with the mass destruction of what is most sacred to us; our
families and communities.<br><br>
Will we allow the rulers of America to deport our children, 2/3 of whom
are citizens of their nation? Will we allow them to force us to leave our
children behind? Will we let our children live in fear that their parents
may not come home from work? That they will disappear? At what point will
the grief, fear and rage become unbearable, and uncontainable? At what
point must we say "ˇYa Basta!" ?<br><br>
Flying the American flag has disarmed us. It is not our willingness to
live by the rules that impresses the slave master his entire regime is
designed to ensure our compliance. What impresses him is our potential to
awaken, to shatter the framework, to throw away the
"rules".<br><br>
Flying the US flag means we don't understand the ruthless nature of our
enemies; it means a basic and unconscious allegiance to the idea of
getting ahead and doing so on the backs of others, an unconscious
allegiance to and imitation of the very foundations of the oppressor's
outlook and his control of us, and an implicit acceptance of his colonial
rule over stolen land and subjugated peoples.<br><br>
Our enemies want to split our allegiances, they want us to grasp at
individual chances for "acceptance" and "freedom,"
and to ignore the well being of our people as a whole. That, after all,
is the real "American Dream" private wealth and well being on
the backs of other, subjugated peoples.<br><br>
But we can no longer leave the fate of our children in their hands. We
cannot allow our families to be shattered and our dreams to be crushed.
We must refuse to live any longer in the shadows, refuse to live under
slavery in any form. It is time to take matters into our own hands, to do
once more what every migrant has already done just by crossing the border
make the decision to live, to survive together, no matter what they
throw at us.<br><br>
Let<i> them</i> deal with the ramifications of attempting mass repression
against a people in resistance here, while they face a similar problem
overseas. Let<i> them</i> worry about alienating Latin America and their
European partners in war and conquest. Let<i> them</i> worry about
permanently alienating the millions Black and White - who already
support us, and who understand that the powers that be are taking the
nation toward fascism. Let<i> them</i> worry what will happen when they
invade our barrios and workplaces in mass raids.<br><br>
Let<i> them</i> worry while<i> we</i> organize; while we create mass
networks of direct action and resistance. Let us truly follow the example
of the Black Civil Rights Movement and of the Black Power Movement that
followed it. The Black movement of the 1950s and 60s was a resistance
movement, one that both obeyed the law, and which, through civil
disobedience and other strategies, broke the law, as necessary, in
obedience to a Higher Law.<br><br>
Black people of that era laid their lives on the line for their freedom.
We can do no less.<br><br>
Let us put the slogan to the test: ˇUn Pueblo Unido Jamás Será
Vencido!<br><br>
Si, se puede.<br><br>
<b>Juan Santos</b> is an editor and writer in Los Angeles. He can be
reached at
<a href="mailto:JuanSantos@Mexica.net">JuanSantos@Mexica.net</a><br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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