Nativo López is president of the Mexican American Political Association. He was a leading organizer of the huge demonstrations for immigrant rights in Los Angeles on March 25 and May 1, 2006. He spoke on Saturday, June 24, 2006, at a panel discussion about the future of the immigrant rights movement at the Socialism 2006 conference in New York City.
WE START from the premise that no human being is illegal. Bert Corona, the legendary labor leader and immigrants' rights organizer and movement pioneer of the 1950s to 2000, originated this concept in relation to the fight for immigrants' rights in the early 1960s.
This is not just a moral and political position. It is, furthermore, a position premised on the role that all workers play in the process of production. It is premised on the reality that all workers create value-surplus value to be exact.
Value in this sense is never denigrated, maligned, or declared as illegal. It is never accosted, arrested, interrogated, judged, or deported. Value never dies attempting to cross the desert.
Why is it then that that which is produced by all workers-value-is embraced, valued, and appropriated by capital, but the workers themselves are maligned and denigrated?
If that which is produced by workers, immigrant workers in particular, is not deemed to be illegal, how can the worker be declared illegal?
They cannot be so deemed, clear and simple. Value is not illegal, therefore, the workers who produce surplus value cannot be illegal.
All workers produce value, and immigrant workers do so at a greater rate. So much is this the case that the capital value of the U.S. economy over the past thirty years actually doubled, yet the extremes of wealth and poverty are greater than ever before. Ninety percent of the population have not really benefited from the growth of this wealth, however.
This then becomes the premise for our demand for full and immediate legalization for all undocumented immigrants and full protection of their labor, civil rights, and civil liberties. It is in fact a fair trade, a fair exchange, my labor for permanent residence for me and my family-if that is my desire.
The immigrant does not need to wait for five years, and even less so ten, fifteen, or eighteen [as proposed in S.2611, Senate Bill 2611, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act] to obtain U.S. citizenship status, or as the phony compromisers of the Democratic Party and their auxiliary organizations and union leaders propose-a path to citizenship. What does that mean other than perpetual servitude?
Our premise is pretty simple and quite fair for the worker, capital, and society. The moment that the worker begins to produce surplus value he must be accorded permanent legal status. Hey, this is our version of free trade and fair trade. What say you?
The fact of the matter is that the term “illegal” is heaped on immigrant workers for the same reason that capital and its means of communication and education invented and perpetuated the denigrating terms of “paddy,” “kike,” “nigger,” “wop,” “polack,” “wetback,” and others, for the purpose of burdening this sector with psychological, legal, and extra-legal impediments to make the exploitation of their labor easier, and make the possibility of unity between all sectors of the working class more difficult.
This strategy is the equivalent of the denigration to which African Americans were subjected during and after slavery-the ideological underpinnings to justify the specific form of exploitation and impede and prevent the unity of working people.
The instrument of racism is used to impede unity of the class, but also to extract greater rates of profit-from both the specific sector of the class and the total class.
Capital can exploit African Americans or immigrant workers in the manner which it has because it is justified-why they are inferior, less than human, less than worthy, less than legal, in fact, illegal-as the argument goes.
This is peddled through the media, schools, churches, culture, art, etc., to create a false social consensus of truism that leads to a social acceptance or at least little or no resistance to the barbaric practices of capital.
This sector of the working class is a weak link and to this same degree the total working class is weakened vis-à-vis capital.
To the degree that the wages and working conditions for immigrant workers are depressed, the same conditions for all workers will be depressed.
All workers who assimilate the myths and lies peddled by capital about immigrant workers, and join capital in the denigration and subjugation of their class brothers and sisters, in effect, surrender to class collaboration and self-denigration, and therefore, undermine their own ability to effectively fight capital for their own class interests.
We are confident in our fight because we are clear about the character of the fight. We are confident, exacting, and uncompromising about our demands because they are based on a scientific understanding of the society within which we live. They are based on the interest of the only class who can free us from a burdensome and unjust social system. They are based on our knowledge that this is the only class which creates wealth, and is not parasitic. This is the only class which society cannot do without. The great working class of our country, which is multinational, multiethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-religious, multiracial, and is equally uplifted by both genders.
Brothers and sisters, the fight to defend the rights of all immigrants is a fight to defend our social interests as members of the working class, and therefore, it is the task of all of us-in our own way. Dare not allow anyone to call into question your participation in this struggle because of your race, national origin, religion, or ideology. It is just as much your struggle as it is mine, or as it is of our class brother or sister who just crossed the border in search of an improved social condition.
I have no country, no flag, no national anthem, no national religion, and yet, I have them all. For these reflect the inventiveness of capital to divide us and maintain its class rule. We must say that our country, flag, anthem, and cause is international and that our class is one-the international working class which knows no borders, and declare that the only thing that is illegal are the parasites who exploit workers, which society can do without.
An injury to one is an injury to all!!
¡Un daño contra uno es un daño contra todos!
