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Photo Courtesy of United for Peace and Justice www.unitedforpeace.org
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Throughout U.S. history, immigrant labor, either voluntary or involuntary, has helped build the industries, schools, roads, railways, and neighborhoods of this country. 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 use race, gender, sexuality and immigration status to divide workers and communities for their own profit.
The current system criminalizes immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants. The YCL believes that a two-tiered society that differentiates immigrants from native-born citizens is unjust, undemocratic and harmful to our generation. 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 11 anti-immigrant backlash.
The YCL supports and is active in the fight against the Sensenbrenner Bill (H.R. 4437) that would seek to deport millions of undocumented workers, split up famillies, make it harder for immigrants to come to the United States and criminalize those that help undocumented workers. YCLers have joined the hundreds of thousands of people that have marched, walked out and protested for the rights of immigrants and to hault the attacks by the ultra-right against immigrants.
The struggle for immigrant rights is at the heart of the larger struggle to beat the right wing and the Bush agenda. The coalition that has formed to defeat the Sensenbrenner bill gives a real voice to working people, native-born and immigrant, and builds the power necessary for our generation to fight back against the right-wing attack and move our country forward. We believe that in order to defeat discrimination, exploitation and oppression we have to change the system that creates them, capitalism. If you want to join the struggle for immigrant rights, to end discrimination and oppression and for socialism, then you belong in the YCL.
We support legislation such as the DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented students in colleges and universities across the country to receive financial aid.
We believe that access to quality education is a right for all, regardless of immigration status.
We join labor, immigrant rights and civil liberties organizations in demanding the restoration and expansion of the civil rights of immigrants, which are denied due to undocumented status and were further stripped away after September 11.
We call for 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.
We call for a full amnesty 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.
We demand protections for immigrant workers who organize on the job, barring employers from firing them and having them deported once they speak up at work.
Finally, the question of family reunification strikes at the heart of our generation and we demand an end to the current immigration policies that separate and divide hundreds of thousands of families.
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