Don’t Blame the Victim for the Crime! Mobilize to Smash Racist SB 1070 in Arizona

Fight the capitalists – Not Immigrants!

No Person is Illegal!

The Arizona anti-immigration bill (SB 1070), signed by Gov. Jan Brewer this past April, is a wake-up call to all workers and oppressed peoples throughout the United States.  It not only reveals clearly the tendency on the part of the bosses to resort to discriminatory, racist policies and demagoguery to shift the responsibility for the genuine ills and failures of their system off their shoulders (where it belongs) and onto the latest ethnic and national arrivals – blaming the victim instead of the perpetrator.  It represents a textbook strategic move on their part to sow hatred amongst the working class and the structurally and conjuncturally unemployed, rendering a collective resistance on the part of the exploited and oppressed inoperative.

The law states that if police have “reasonable suspicion” that a person could be an “illegal immigrant,” they can stop that individual and demand his or her identification without a warrant at a moment’s notice.  This suggests that any resident without legal documentation on his or her person can be charged with a criminal offense, defined as misdemeanor trespassing.  Furthermore, the law makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to work or seek out work, for anyone to impede vehicular traffic while picking up a day laborer, and for anyone to “harbor” an undocumented immigrant.

To put even more pressure on state officials to implement this law, any resident in the state of Arizona can sue state officials or agencies for failure to enforce.  It is also illegal for communities to declare themselves a sanctuary for undocumented workers.  Required documents include a drivers’ license issued by the State, a passport, or an official immigration document, e.g., a Green Card.  Since most people do not carry passports with them on a daily basis, any “suspect” who does not hold an Arizona drivers’ license, i.e., elderly people, young people, and people from a different state, can face arrest or, worse still, turned over to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) for questioning and potential deportation.

What makes this anti-immigrant law racist and discriminatory is the aspect of labeling people “reasonably suspicious,” providing the basis for stopping and asking for identification whenever authorities wish.  It is quite clear that racist judgments and profiling on the part of State officials, as well as other discriminatory prejudices – it will be people of Hispanic, African, Arab, and Asian descent hit by mass arrests not people of European decent – will take prominence.  The bill opens the door further to the development of, and validity to, groups like the “Minute Men” – a paramilitary, proto-fascist group that intimidates and detains Central and South-American immigrants as they attempt to cross the border into the United States primarily from Mexico – to increase the scope of their operations and influence.  Essentially, this law makes every person that somehow looks “foreign” a potential felon – carrying along with it all the racist baggage of history.

The bosses are undoubtedly seeking to capitalize off the depressed economic environment by forcing the working class to compete ever more ferociously with itself for the scant jobs available; even those with relative job security feel the pinch.  Everywhere, the capitalists are looking for ways to cheapen their labor costs in order to expand market-share and increase the flow of profits at the expense of their national and international rivals.  This, of necessity, means subjugating millions workers to their whims and priorities: pay and benefits cuts, working longer hours, increased intensity of work exacted in a given time, and mass unemployment.

Due in large measure to their precarious conditions of existence and tenuous legal status, migrant and immigrant laborers become a weapon of the bosses to put pressure on and depress the wages, living and working standards of all workers – a strategic move on their part to increase exploitation and, ultimately, to sow confusion amongst the working classes.  The result is the blaming of ethnic, racial, and national minorities for the loss of jobs, lower wages, etc.  Intra-class fighting becomes the means whereby the bosses divide and weaken any resistance to their rule.  It has a dual purpose for them: greater profits and a reduced threat to their position as social parasites living off the sweat and toil of others.  To overcome this systematic oppression and domination, we have to fight as a united class of people against our mutual class enemies.  If we fight together to ensure jobs and a high standard of living for all regardless of ethnicity, race, or place of national origin, we can rob the bosses of their greatest weapon against us: fomenting racial and ethnic strife.

Senate bill 1070 is not the working-class solution to unemployment, low wages, or immigration.  Quite simply, it represents just another weapon in the hands of the capitalists to scare immigrants and migrants for fear of arrest or deportation into submission, to prevent them from standing up for their rights in the community and the workplace, and, consequently, to suppress any drives toward unionization.  It will strengthen the capitalists and landowners and further divide the only modern class that can dispense with them entirely and pave the way for a future based on equality of all nations and peoples and without exploitation: the proletariat.  Mass demonstrations coordinating together in solidarity the demands of immigrants’ rights groups, the unions, organizations of the unemployed, and the socially oppressed – including the youth – can both expose the divisive nature of the bill and smash it.

• Down with the Arizona immigration bill and all racist laws directed against immigrants and minority groups!  Grant amnesty and citizenship for all who seek it!  Open the Borders!

• Stand and fight together against all forms of discrimination of migrants and immigrants!  Provide equal pay and equal democratic rights independent of citizenship!  Combat the race to the bottom!  Level up the standards of living for all workers regardless of place of national origin.

• Down with the call for a national language!  For the right of immigrants and migrants to use their first languages!  Provide instruction and paperwork in all languages in schools, public administration, and for receiving social services.

• Employment for all regardless of legal status!  For a massive program of useful public works to put millions back to work and improve social and health services, housing, public transport, and environmental conditions paid for by the capitalist state but run under the control of the workers’ movement.