I have had a few conversations on immigration through the years, and it
always impresses me how often Left leaning people waffle on this issue.
I just received a ZNet commentary that is almost a classic example of
hemming and hawing on the issue of the worker's right to travel freely,
live where he/she desires, and work without harassment from policing
agencies.       This is a standard of Left internationalism.

Yet the truth is, a standard of internationalism continually violated
and disregarded by Social Democrats and Stalinists, as well as
Capitalist governments and Right Wing vigilantes.

Let's take a look at this commentary by Vijay Prashad on behalf of ZNet,
and in praise of the AFL-CIO.       I think that the key arguement comes
in the beginning of the first paragraph...
______________________________
<The Hunt for Mexicans
By Vijay Prashad

On 16 February 2000, the American Federation of Labor-Coalition of
Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) which represents 13 million US
workers dropped a bombshell. Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson said
that 'the current system of immigration enforcement in the US is broken.
If we are to have an immigration system that works, it must be orderly,
responsible, and fair.' The AFL-CIO called upon the state to restructure
its immigration policy mainly to protect the rights of all workers and
to hold employers accountable for the exploitation of immigrants.>

comment-
(( So just what is being said here?       The answer is that -the
current system of immigration enforcement in the US is broken.-
according to the AFL-CIO.       And???     They want better enforcement.
And ZNet approves of this AFL-CIO goal as being somehow worthy.
The rest of the article goes on to justify support for better
enforcement.

What is left out here, is just what better 'enforcement' as envisioned
by the AFL-CIO hierarchy, ZNet, and presumably Ralph Nader and the Green
Party would consist of, other than "holding employers accountable" which
is a small part of the overall "cure" that these Left activists are
calling for.

'Enforcement' entails the use of police and military, law and identity
cards, to monitor workers as they look for employment.
'Enforcement' involves the increased harassment of impoverished people
trying to earn a wage, if they come from out of the neighborhood, so to
speak.

Calling for more pressure in enforcement to be applied against
corporations does not mitigate the fact that it is 'the Left' calling to
keep outsiders out, and insiders in.     It is a reactionary plea to the
State to protect native workers, and deny immigrant workers the right to
try to obtain employment.

It is a call for the US government to increase the measures taken to
curb entry of immigrants.    The fact that this is seen approvingly in
Naderite circles, precisely at the time that Clinton/ Fox are preparing
to do this under a guise of reform, shows how little value this campaign
actually has in advancing social consciousness.

It is a shameful call to further build a Wall to keep the poor contained
to the outside of US boundaries, even though the poverty of immigrant
laborers comes about via US manipulation and control of governments in
their homelands.     A very poor demonstration of solidarity or
internationalism.   Tony ))

 'Employers often knowingly hire workers who are undocumented,'
Chavez-Thompson noted, 'and then when workers seek to improve working
conditions employers use the law to fire or intimidate workers.'
Certainly, the net result of this policy is that the immigration law is
used to discipline the workforce. 'The law should criminalize employer
behavior,' the AFL-CIO noted, 'not punish workers.'

The AFL-CIO's position did not come from no-where. Over the past few
decades the presence of immigrant workers in the service sector has
increased in the US. Each year about a million migrants enter the US,
with about 40% from Mexico and Latin America, many of whom work in the
service trades. Of these only about 300,000 are undocumented migrants,
even though most migrants from the Third World report being treated as
undocumented even if they have legal papers. When the AFL-CIO took a
more radical turn in 1995, it was pushed forward by the unions of the
service workers (the current president of the AFL-CIO is John Sweeney,
who was previously the president of the Service Employees International
Union). Brave immigrant workers across the country have been at the
forefront of several organizing campaigns. For that reason, Warren Mar a
senior AFL-CIO organizer said that 'basically we feel immigration laws
should be broken. We should protect undocumented workers, we should
harbor them, we should not cooperate with the INS.' These are strong
words.

Two months later, on the US-Mexico border, a group of right-wing farmers
responded to this union thrust with firepower. In Douglas, Arizona, home
to 20,000 people, two brothers Roger and Don Barnett became the focus of
attention. Roger owns a 22,000-acre cattle ranch that abuts a part of
the 2100-mile US-Mexico border. Recently the Barnett Boys (as they are
called) have led a vigilante posse against those who cross the border
for myriad reasons. The Boys, some on horseback, but always heavily
armed, have stopped vans and trucks on the public highway to illegally
search for migrants. When they have found people, they 'arrest' them,
tie them up and radio the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
to send them back to Mexico. Why are they doing this?

Don Barnett said that 'when my brother bought his ranch five years ago,
it was pristine. Now it's a garbage pit. There's plastic, tin cans and
shit everywhere you look. Old blankets, cut hoses, cut fences. You name
it, illegals'll do it.' A member of the Arizona posse posted a note on
the Internet in mid-May, which said 'Let's keep out this refuse from the
Narco-State next door.'

But the illegal interdiction of human beings is not all that has alarmed
the governments of the US and Mexico. Since January 1994, 32 incidents
of violent vigilante action have been reported, 27 in Arizona alone. In
Cochise County, Arizona, in the last year private citizens detained
immigrants at gunpoint in at least 25 occasions. On 14 May, a
74-year-old man in Bracketville, Texas shot Eusebio de Haro. Mr. de Haro
stopped at Mr. Samuel Blackwood's home and asked for water. Mr.
Blackwood and his wife refused, and then Mr. Blackwood chased Mr. de
Haro and shot him in the leg. The Mexican migrant bled to death.

Two days later, ranchers in the Douglas area chased and shot at a group
of 30 immigrants, and one man was shot in the back. By late May,
vigilante squads have shot at least four migrants. This is no accident,
since the ranchers have circulated flyers that ask others to join them
in 'hunting the Mexicans for sport.'

The Mayor of Douglas, Arizona, Ray Borane was incensed by this attitude.
'It is demeaning to treat this as recreation,' he told the media. 'We
don't want to be filling up with militia types.' However, the border
region is already being flooded by the right wing. For example, the Ku
Klux Klan, the leading force of white supremacy, made its appearance at
a rally in Douglas in mid-May. 'What do you expect me to do,' asked
Roger Barnett at that rally.

'Give my ranch to Mexico? No way!' Barnett's position was bolstered by
support from Reform Party Presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan who
noted that the vigilante actions 'will focus attention on a bleeding and
hemorrhaging border. This is nothing less than an invasion going on down
there.' To characterize the migration as an invasion is a long-standing
trope of the US right wing. Some people are upset by the entry of the
right into this region. Alexis Clarie of Bisbee, Arizona, noted that the
right wing is 'inviting more and more people to come here and get armed.
Imagine, instead of sitting on your porch watching the sunset, sitting
there with a gun watching for trespassers. There's a lot of racism
that's growing by leaps and bounds.' Isabel Garcia, a member of
Coalicion de Derechos Humanos (Coalition of Human Rights) told the media
that the right wing has invited 'crazies to come in and hunt Mexicans.
It's at a real danger level.'

On 19 May, the Mexican Foreign Minister Rosario Green announced that
'the government of Mexico will use all the political and legal resources
at its disposal to guarantee that any violation of the rights and
dignity of Mexicans is investigated and, if applicable, penalized.'

The attacks, she said, are 'intolerant, racist, xenophobic actions
against Mexican citizens.' Mexico sought legal advice from Zuckerman and
Associates, a US law firm, as well as turned to the United Nations for
recourse. In response to Minister Green, US Secretary of State Madeline
Albright said that the Clinton administration is 'very concerned about
what has been happening in Arizona and we agreed that such behavior was
inadvisable and that violence against migrants was unacceptable. I think
it's very important that it be totally clear that vigilante justice is
unacceptable.' She blamed the 'intolerant expressions of some American
ranchers' for the attacks, but said that the US remains committed to
legal migration and to the humane and orderly management of our
borders.' The issue then remains about the maintenance of border
security, and not about labour.

Roger Barnett, also mainly interested in security, complains that he had
to become a vigilante because the US government is not doing its job
effectively. 'So far, the government has not dealt with the problem. It
lacks any formula,' he noted. 'They've put more US Border Patrol troops
in the area, but as far as stopping the problem, stopping the aliens
coming across my property, they haven't done that.' Since 1994, the INS
and the Border Patrol have spent almost $2 billion on making the
US-Mexico border a militarized zone. With over 8000 border patrol
agents, the INS claims that it cannot do its work without at least
20,000 of them, and an increase of the annual budget of $864 million.
The US General Accounting Office, which monitors the effective use of
governmental resources, concluded that 'despite the investment of
billions of dollars' the INS 'did not know whether the investment was
producing the intended results.' Since 1994 the number of agents have
doubled, and yet the flow of migrants across the border seems unchecked.
In 1999, the INS apprehended 1.5 million people, just a bit under the
1986 record of 1.6 million. As news of the Arizona vigilantes reached
Washington, DC, the US Congress rushed through an amendment that allowed
the US military to enter the border area. Politicians from the border
area opposed the measure, but they were overruled. 'Most of the people
along the border -- not all -- feel they don't want their border turned
into a military zone,' said Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona. But it
already has.

Intensified INS actions at certain points have driven migrants,
according to Minister Green, to 'increasingly harsher areas and this has
led to the loss of life.' Immigrants reacted to the blockades on
well-worn paths not by going back home, but by going around the INS
posts. These areas include southeast Arizona, where the recent fracas is
ongoing. Since 1994, the US National Commission on Human Rights
acknowledges that at least 450 migrants have died on the border mainly
due to hypothermia and sunstroke. Due to the harshness of the routes,
the migrants have sought out better guides (called coyotes) who charge
anywhere from $1000-1500 per person (it was $700 before 1994), and they
perforce seek assistance from people along the way.

Mild forms of help were often given in the past. 'The average rancher
has learned from his daddy and his granddaddy that the best thing to do
is ignore the immigrants,' said L. K. 'Buddy' Burgess (Sheriff of Kinney
County, Arizona). New residents 'are scared' of the immigrants and
'think that they have to apprehend them.' Richard Flores, a longtime
ranch worker said that 'the new landowners are doctors of lawyers from
Houston, Texas,' the big city in the orbit of the southwest US. 'They're
not used to being approached by immigrants, and some of them are
prejudiced.' Carlos Antonio Menjibar of Pueblo, Mexico, was one of 153
migrants caught at the border recently. 'We don't bother anybody,' he
said. 'We are peaceful. All we want is work.'

Indeed, the central question here is work, as put forth by the AFL-CIO.
Jorge A. Bustamante, president of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte
(Tijuana, Mexico) notes that most migrants are between the ages of 20
and 30, 'their most productive years economically.' The US government,
he notes, 'never wavers from defining undocumented migration as a crime
problem requiring law enforcement solutions' and has refused to consider
labour migration in negotiations of the North American Free Trade
Agreement of 1994 (NAFTA). Amitava Kumar's recent book <Passport Photos>
(University of California, 2000) reveals that about 300,000 Mexican farm
workers lost their jobs due to NAFTA, a crisis situation that leads many
to seek employment in the US. Besides, since it takes about $45,000 to
raise a child in Mexico, the Mexican workers seem to be offering a
subsidy to the US workforce. For these reasons the flood of migrants
cannot be checked by a fence and by gun power.

For many years now Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes has been saying much
the same thing about many of the 9 million Mexicans who live in the US.
'Without the contribution of Mexican labor, food scarcity and higher
prices would hit the United States and many services would go
unattended.' In addition, undocumented workers pay about $29 billion in
annual taxes, more than they get as social benefits. The cultural
presence of Mexicans makes them 'perfect scapegoats' for the US State
and society that prefer to target them than unemployment and inadequate
education.

Fuentes does not let Mexico off the hook. The workers send about $3
billion a year in remittances, a weighty sum for a country with fiscal
problems. The US, however, comes in for the sharpest attack. Because of
a lack of formal agreement, the US admits 'workers in boom times,
harasses them in crises and manipulates them in the name of sacred
borders, even if the price to be paid is a dangerous one: racism and
xenophobia. When will it be recognized that this is not a police
problem, but a question of bilateral flux in the labor market, demanding
responsibilities from both Washington and Mexico City?' Fuentes argues
that Mexico should invest in the regions that send migrants, a tall
order without the repeal of some of the harsher NAFTA provisions.

The US, he notes, 'should abide by the international agreements on
protection of migrant workers and admit, without hypocrisy, the benefits
of migration to the U.S. economy.' This is along the grain of the
resolution of the AFL-CIO, which asks for a marked change in US policy.
The bodies of the dead Mexicans are a testimony to the importance of
these changes.

Tony- one last  comment-
(( To use the bodies of dead Mexicans as an excuse to restrict access to
US employment still further is particularly vulgar.    What the AFL-CIO
Sweeney crew is saying here...... OK, immigration can be done at the
upper levels, but let's regulate it to death and make it next to
impossible for the lower classes to do.    Your Better-off can travel
through.     We certainly wouldn't call to restrict the right of the
Well-to-do to come and go, just our poor cousins from abroad.

And thus they say they want 'reform'.))