Found at: http://www.yclusa.org/article/articleprint/1522/-1/325/
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Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides
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Top level
Issues & Ideas
YCL Resources
Past Actions and Campaigns
Immigrant Rights
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Author: Clara Webb
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Publishing date: 01.10.2003 00:00
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Doroteo Garcia works the night shift cleaning classrooms at Stanford University, one of the largest employers in California’s Silicon Valley. As a steward for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877, Doroteo has been active in his union’s efforts to lift janitors out of poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area, as part of SEIU’s national Justice for Janitors campaign. He is also involved as a community leader, organizing for amnesty and immigrants rights.
Doroteo Garcia works the night shift cleaning classrooms at Stanford University, one of the largest employers in California’s Silicon Valley. As a steward for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877, Doroteo has been active in his union’s efforts to lift janitors out of poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area, as part of SEIU’s national Justice for Janitors campaign. He is also involved as a community leader, organizing for amnesty and immigrants rights. In California almost a majority of this workforce is made up of Mexican immigrants—many of whom are undocumented. Last month Doroteo helped organize a delegation to a California State Senate meeting in Sacramento to advocate for proposed legislation which would expand access to drivers licenses for immigrant workers by allowing drivers to present alternate forms of identification rather than the Social Security Number or green card currently required. He sees the campaign as a fundamental issue for immigrants: “We don’t have the right to a driver’s license or a Social Security Number, but at the same time we pay taxes for social security that we’re never going to claim. If we work and pay taxes, we have the right to a driver’s license and to amnesty.�? Doroteo’s story is becoming more and more common, as immigrant workers have emerged as leaders and organizers in unions and community groups in the struggle for immigrants’ rights, a movement which is on the rise even in the face of the present anti-immigrant climate in the United States. The fight for amnesty, or to legalize the status of millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States, has been one of the primary demands of the immigrants rights movement.
At the end of September 2003 busloads of immigrant workers, union activists, political and religious leaders, students, and members of the business community will depart from nine U.S. cities bound for Washington D.C. on the historic Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride. In Washington, the Freedom Riders will lobby Congress for major reforms to U.S. immigration policy. The buses will then continue to Queens, New York, culminating in a mass rally in Flushing Meadows Park on October 4.
The Freedom Ride marks a significant turning point in a movement that has been growing for the past few decades. Drawing on the legacy of the 1961 Freedom Rides which garnered national publicity in the early years of the Civil Rights movement, the Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride will draw national attention to the plight of immigrants in the U.S., energize local organizing, and lay the ground work for future changes in immigration policy.
The Freedom Ride is founded on the fact that immigrants make vital contributions to the U.S. economy and society at all levels. While right-wing groups and politicians have perpetuated the myth that immigrants burden the U.S. economy by not paying taxes and reaping the benefits of public services, research has shown just the opposite. The National Immigration Forum found that immigrants add about $10 billion to the U.S. economy each year and pay at least $133 billion in taxes. On average, an immigrant family over the course of a lifetime will pay around $80,000 more in taxes than they will receive in local, state, and federal benefits.(i) An AFL-CIO article on immigration adds: “More than 25 percent of new entrants into the labor market are foreign-born, coming primarily from Mexico, China, India and the Philippines, and most work in low-wage jobs. In some areas of the country, 75 percent of the low-wage market is made up of immigrants working in jobs that are less attractive for native-born workers as real wages in the low-wage sector decline.�?(ii)
The immigrants’ rights movement has been on the rise for more than a decade, waging an uphill battle. Between 1993 and 1996, an anti-immigrant wave rode through the United States, making it possible to pass legislation like Proposition 187. Passed by California voters in 1994, it denied public services such as education and emergency health care to undocumented immigrants of every age. Two years later in 1996, President Clinton cut welfare benefits for legal immigrants in his welfare reform package. Towards the end of the 90s, Proposition 187 was eventually ruled unconstitutional and most of the federal welfare benefits were restored to immigrant families. Though largely gutted, Prop. 187 spawned copycat legislation in other states and in the U.S Congress. It also helped motivate a new and active immigrant rights movement to action.
During the economic boom of the late 1990s, the movement for amnesty and other campaigns to expand immigrants’ rights steadily gained ground up until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks altered the political landscape in the United States. Previous to September 11, campaigns like the immigrant driver’s license effort had made significant progress. President Bush and Congress had initiated discussions on a limited program for amnesty, and Congressman Luis Gutierrez was working to form more progressive amnesty legislation. After September 11, the immigration issue virtually disappeared from the federal and state governments’ agenda, as the terrorist attacks allowed Bush and the right wing to capture the political moment and shift national attention towards preparation for war. The climate also allowed the Bush Administration to crack down on civil liberties in the name of national security, endangering the rights of not only immigrants, but all people of color, youth and everyone living in the U.S. The USA/PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act further limited the ability of immigrants and foreign students to live, work, and study in the United States.
In this context, the timing of the Freedom Ride is not coincidental. As a long-term goal, the Freedom Ride aims to reverse the tide of anti-immigrant sentiment and build a movement that will impact the 2004 elections and beyond. Organizers hope that the Freedom Ride will put immigrant rights back on the agenda of politicians and in the consciousness of American voters. This is the necessary political groundwork for major immigration policy reform. In the short term, the goal of the Freedom Ride is not to pass a specific piece of legislation, but instead to set the stage for a broad grassroots movement to reform immigration policy. The platform of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride consists of four main principles: protection of civil rights and civil liberties; family reunification; legalization and a “road to citizenship�?; and the protection of rights on the job. The civil rights platform is a broad demand to restore and expand the civil rights of immigrants, which are denied due to undocumented status and were further stripped-away after September 11. Specific issues include ending the “special registration�? of immigrants from certain countries for so-called national security purposes, along with the denial of due process and legal counsel for detained immigrants.
The family reunification platform seeks to simplify and expedite current procedures. While immigration policy recognizes that family reunification is a basic right for immigrants in the United States who still have family living in their native country, the current process for reunification is weighed-down by bureaucracy, delays, and complicated procedures.
The road to citizenship platform calls for a policy that enables immigrants who have been living and working in the United States to change their status and become citizens with full legal rights. The current system criminalizes undocumented immigrants, while at the same time forces millions of immigrants to wait for years in bureaucratic limbo for the opportunity to change their status. For years, immigrants’ rights groups have argued that American immigration policy is out of touch with reality. Millions of immigrant workers have lived, worked, paid taxes, and raised families in the United States for years, yet they have very little chance of obtaining citizenship or legal residency. The legal status of immigrant workers has been viciously and unjustly used to exploit both documented and undocumented immigrants, in an attempt to drive down wages and working conditions, scare immigrant workers from speaking out, and undermine the potential for workplace solidarity across lines of race, ethnicity, and immigration status. Furthermore, immigrant communities in the U.S. have increasingly faced the threat of violence, deportations, denial of visas, and harassment in the post-September 11anti-immigrant backlash.
The rights at work platform is a response to current labor laws and a political climate which have given employers even more room to collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security. In November 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) was absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security and divided into two separate agencies—a move which immigrants’ and civil rights groups have vigorously opposed. In 2002, Social Security Agency (SSA) made a change in policy and started sending out “no-match�? letters to employers with the names of employees whose names did not match their Social Security Number. Although the purpose of the letters was confusing, they did not require that employers take action against workers but requested that their records be updated or corrected. However, because this was poorly explained, many employers immediately fired workers whose names were in the letters or took advantage by using the “no-match�? letters as a tool to further threaten, intimidate, or fire workers who were trying to organize a union.(ii) Labor groups and legal advocacy organizations want to reinforce protections for immigrant workers who organize on the job and rewrite the laws which allow employers to knowingly hire undocumented workers in order to exploit them, only to fire them or have them deported once they speak up at work.
Although the Freedom Ride buses will not depart until late September, local organizing and preparations have already kicked-off in most major cities, drawing media coverage and rallies of supporters. From now until September, unions, immigrant advocacy organizations, and faith-based groups are working to recruit bus riders, raise money, and build local coalitions around an immigrants’ rights agenda. Oakland, St. Paul, Seattle, El Paso, New York, Las Vegas and Columbia, South Carolina are among the cities holding planning meetings and kick-off events leading up to the bus departures.
The historic nature of the Freedom Ride is also due to the breadth of its sponsorship. After decades of long-standing anti-immigrant policies, the AFL-CIO—the largest federation of labor unions in the U.S.—made a historic change at its 23rd Biennial Convention in 1999. The Federation adopted a platform that included amnesty for immigrant workers, an end to employer sanctions, and a restoration of public benefits for undocumented immigrants. At the same time, immigrant workers and unions like the SEIU, Union of Needletrades, Textile and Industrial Employees (UNITE), and Hotel and Restaurant Employees (HERE) have taken the lead in major organizing campaigns across the country. Immigrants have become a key and growing constituency of organized labor. Sofia Lee, an intern for HERE in Oakland, made presentations to community-based organizations to fundraise and get endorsements for the Freedom Ride. She commented, “For me, it was inspiring to see that the labor movement has finally come around once again to include immigrants in its organizing efforts, recognizing that it’s not immigrants who are undercutting labor standards in this country, it’s the employers.�? Labor’s initiative in organizing the Freedom Rides represents a deeper commitment to realizing these goals and a cementing of the coalition between labor, faith-based organizations, and community groups in the immigrants’ rights movement.
The National Sponsoring Committee of the Freedom Rides includes Dolores Huerta, a cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, National Council of La Raza, National Immigration Forum, United States Student Association, United Students Against Sweatshops, National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, and the AFL-CIO as well as international unions like United Food and Commercial Workers, SEIU, UNITE, and HERE. The religious community is also playing a leading role in recruiting and organizing for the Freedom Ride, represented on the national sponsoring committee by the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.
The long list of endorsers also includes a broad range of immigrant organizations from the Asian and Latino communities, and community and religious groups ranging from chapters of the NAACP and the National Lawyers Guild, to the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the American Friends Service Committee, Catholic Charities,, and United for Peace and Justice. Prominent leaders from the Civil Rights movement, including Congressmen John D. Lewis and Rev. James Lawson (two of the original 1961 Freedom Riders), and Rev. Joseph Lowery are also involved as endorsers of the effort. As can be seen from the numerous organizations involved in this effort, the Freedom Ride has the potential to bring communities of immigrants, workers, youth, religious congregations, civil rights and LGBT activists together—proving the fact that immigrant rights is everyone’s issue.
Throughout U.S. history, immigrant labor, either voluntary or involuntary, has helped build the industries, schools, roads, railways, and neighborhoods of the country. Immigrant labor has always been the most quickly and easily exploited, making it harder for citizens and non-citizens alike to unite and demand changes at work, in local communities, and at the ballot box. The push to end the exploitation of immigrants and expand their rights to live, work, vote, and prosper in the United States is a fundamental goal of the larger working-class movement. Both the Bush Administration and corporate America want to use race, gender, and immigration status (among other issues) to divide workers and communities for their own profit. The Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride is an important part of the fight against this agenda, and to build a movement that will give all working people, native-born and immigrant, a greater voice in determining the direction of our country and having power over their own lives.
(i) http://www.iwfr.org/facts.asp
(ii) James B. Parks, “Recognizing Our Common Bonds,�? America@Work,
AFL-CIO http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/magazine/commonbonds.cfm
For more information check out these
web sites:
Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride
http://www.iwfr.org
National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice http://www.nicwj.org
AFL-CIO
http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/immigration/
National Immigration Law Center
http://www.nilc.org
Doroteo’s original quote in Spanish: “No tenemos el derecho de lisencia manejar o numero de seguro social. Incluimos que pagamos incuestos para un seguro que nunca vamos a reclamar. Si nosotros trabajamos y nosotros pagamos impuestos, tenemos el derecho de lisencia manejar, el derecho de la amnestia.�?
Photos courtesy of David Bacon
http://dbacon.igc.org
Clara Webb is a labor organizer and activist in northern California and a member of the YCL National Council
