Many immigrant rights groups have correctly opposed various conservative and liberal legislation to "reform" immigration, unlike other nationalist and liberal reform misleaders. As one Lucha member pointed out at the candlelight vigil on Monday night, immigrant workers are sick and tired of having their loved ones used as a political football for various politicians to score points with their constituencies. However, many of these same groups have made an error: organizing support for the DREAM Act, which they see as a valuable tool to create a pathway to citizenship.
The DREAM Act is a ruling-class Trojan Horse. Immigrant rights groups say that it provides a path for immigrant youth to higher education and citizenship. This is one more valuable lesson in a key aspect of dialectical materialism (the scientific Communist understanding of the world): how essence is more important than appearance!
In appearance, the DREAM Act does indeed provide aid for undocumented immigrant youth to go to college and get their citizenship. However, in essence this worthless piece of proposed legislation is nothing but a racist back-door draft for hundreds of thousands of these working-class youth. As Fernando Suarez, whose son Jesus Suarez del Solar died in Iraq trying to gain citizenship, points out, "I see it as sort of a draft. . . . It's immoral."
The DREAM Act has been carefully constructed to ensure that out of the hundreds of thousands of immigrant youth covered by it, only about 1 in 20 would be able to use it for a college education. The rest would be funneled into the military.
This would be great news for the bosses--which is why even Bush rallied to revive the bill before its most recent defeat--because it would help relieve an enormously over-stretched army. Challenge-Desafio in July, 2007, reported:
Stalled by the rulers' bickering, Bush made a special visit to the Senate to get them to resurrect the bill. But anyone acquainted with it, and its many last-minute amendments introduced by both parties, would conclude that the chances of the bill passing in this session of the Senate are very slim, if not impossible. Then why resurrect it?
The reason is war. The Pentagon and the liberal imperialists hope that the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, one of the bill's provisions, could pass. They are counting on it to help boost badly-needed military recruitment for wider war. Even as Bush was on his way to Washington to help revive the bill, Bill Carr, Pentagon acting deputy Undersecretary of Defense, said, "Talk is already taking place to see if at least the DREAM provision of the stalled bill can proceed." (American Forces Press Service, 6/11/07) "He said the measure should become law because it would be `good for readiness' -- especially at a time when the military...is struggling to attract high-quality recruits." (Boston Globe, 6/16)
This provision from its very inception was hailed by the rulers, their politicians like Obama, Clinton, and McCain, spokesmen like Michael O'Hanlon and Max Boot from the Council on Foreign Relations, and leaders in the pro-immigrant organizations like MAPA, Lulac and the National Council of La Raza as a "humanitarian" bill enabling "non-privileged" undocumented students to go to college, who otherwise, (because of their immigration status) would be unable to. They all ignore or downplay the bill's military aspect.
There are some 350,000 undocumented minor immigrants who according to Carr, would serve in the short run, with "the bill applicable for an estimated 750,000." (Boston Globe, 6/16) "If you have been in the U.S. school system for a number of years, then you could be eligible to enlist. And at the end of that enlistment, then you would be eligible to become a citizen" (which may very well require residency first).
To earn citizenship these youth would have to serve two years in the military or complete at least two years of college. However, "amendments to the bill would render such students ineligible for some federal aid, including Pell Grants, and require colleges to enter undocumented immigrants into the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System." (Chronicle of Higher Education, 4/30/04) To entice legal residents and (if DREAM passes) undocumented youth to join the military, Bush has issued an executive order allowing non-citizens to apply for citizenship after only one day of active duty military service. But getting it takes a lot longer. Some soldiers, forced to do more than two tours in Iraq, are still waiting for their citizenship.
Challenge-Desafio reported later in October of this year,
The Migra (Immigration Customs Enforcement — ICE) and local police have been carrying out raids against immigrant workers and their families across the U.S. Under the pretext of "deporting criminals," these agents of terror break down doors of homes at 4:00 AM with guns drawn. They also search, arrest and deport workers at their jobs. In many U.S. counties, the open racists try to pass anti-immigrant laws to force immigrants to leave. This racist attack aims to divide and terrorize our class, laying the basis for sharper future attacks on citizens and immigrants.
Meanwhile, representatives of the racist liberal bosses are "defending" their wage-slaves. Recently a Federal Judge in San Francisco temporarily halted the sending of letters to bosses telling them to fire workers with non-matching social security numbers. New York’s Governor is proposing drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants. All bosses want to exploit and oppress all workers. The liberals want loyalty to U.S. rulers.
The top bosses need low-paid, patriotic workers in the U.S., especially for war production. They also need soldiers willing to kill and die in U.S. imperialist wars. The Pentagon is pushing the Dream Act. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plans to introduce it as part of upcoming military appropriations bills. He said, "This [Hispanic immigrants] is a potentially very recruitable group….The Dream Act will help solve the recruitment crisis we face today." (Wall Street Journal, 9/21) Only one in 20 undocumented youth are able to attend college, so the Act is primarily a military recruitment bill with a "humanitarian" cover.
In other words, the US rulers need the DREAM Act to win immigrant workers and youth to their agenda of increasing war and fascism. This includes, not least of all, the need to avoid the open reinstatement of the draft by tapping into a population of immigrant youth, ostensibly eager to gain citizenship even if it means proving their "loyalty" to the US by putting their lives on the line in its imperialist war machine. And Iraq isn't their only potential destination--they could also wind up patrolling the US-Mexico border, helping the military, Minutemen, and immigration services murder thousands of nameless "illegal immigrants" just like them.
It is perfectly understandable to see why there is such temptation to find a short-term solutions like the DREAM Act, even if it has plenty of problems. Immigrant workers, especially the undocumented, are under increasingly vicious, racist attacks by the bosses and their thugs in law enforcement. When you are trapped in a jail cell, it appears easier to fight for a bigger cell and more comfortable conditions when compared to the struggle to unite and destroy the whole prison. But this is again a matter of appearances.
It may look less difficult, but even the hardest-won reforms can be taken away again by the bosses faster than you can blink. Just like revolution, they take a lot of hard work and commitment, but unlike revolution, they don't produce the same end result. And in the meantime, while we fight for these dead-end reforms, how many more working-class lives ("immigrant" or "citizen") will be wasted in the process? In reality, the faster workers are won to understand that there is only solution to the life-and-death problems of the international working class, the faster we can halt this racist terror. That solution is to crush capitalism under the heel of international workers' power with communist revolution.
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