The immigrants may themselves be conservative. But their demands are radical.
This Saturday, more than 10,000 people gathered at Cadman Plaza, and then proceeded to march across the Brooklyn Bridge to Foley Square
The march was a testament to family values. Little children road on the shoulders of their parents. Mother daughter teams waived American flags. There were foreign flags, flags from Chile, Columbia, Peru, and above all from Mexico. But they were dwarfed by the presence of the stars and stripes, by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of American flags. There were parade sized American flags and American flags the size of postage stamps. There were American flags that fit on the lapel and one American flag that seemed half the size of a city block. There were even placards with quotes from the Bible.
So why isn't George Bush smiling? Why do illegal Mexican immigrants scare Republicans?
It has nothing to do with the fact that they're "illegal" immigrants.
Republicans have nothing against law breaking. They're rather fond of insider trading and companies like Enron. Lying to Congress, losing billions of dollars in Iraq, authorizing the NSA to spy on American citizens, it would probably be easier simply to point out the times when George Bush doesn't break the law. There are right-wing Republicans (like John McCain) who actually welcome the immigrants. They see them as a source, not only of cheap labor but as a potential pool of reliably conservative voters. If a high profile Republican were able to give all 12 million illegal immigrants amnesty and the immediate right to vote, I think it would be safe to say that the Democrats could kiss California goodbye for at least a generation.
But there's a problem.
This flag waiving, Bible quoting patriotic horde of Catholic immigrants were demanding something far more radical than "support the troops bring them home" or "impeach Bush". They were demanding something that would be impossible within the current political system, that labor be given the same freedom to move back and forth across national borders as capital.
This is a threat not only to the sense of privilege that white Americans have over people in the third world, it's a threat to a capitalist system that depends upon white Americans having a sense of privilege over people in the third world. It brings up a contradiction at the heart of the late imperialist stage of capitalism. On one hand, the ruling class wants to get its work force as cheaply as possible. On the other hand, to stay in power they need to keep the working class under a tight sense of discipline and control based upon greed, the illusion they could someday get rich, a sense of petty status, and fear of the racial other.
As the world becomes more integrated globally, people in the third world are uprooted and thrown into shantytowns, the level of social control needed to maintain the current economic and political system increases. Democratic capitalism must give way to the authoritarian national security state.
Indeed, the reaction to September 11th was breathtaking. In one day, with the deaths of 3000 people, George Bush went from being a punch line to the most powerful president in American history. He got everything he asked for, the war in Iraq, the quasi-totalitarian Patriot Act, the utter servility of the elites in the Democratic Party and the press. He ordered the NSA to spy on American citizens and it was done. He ordered the New York Times to hold back on reporting about it until after he won the election in 2004 and it was done. Even when his incompetence became obvious to the American people and his approval rating went below 30% in the polls, he kept his grip on the elites like a vice. When Senator Feingold (that naïve man who still believes we live in a capitalist democracy) proposed to censure Bush for the NSA spying scandal, pointing out, quite accurately, that the proof that he lied was right on TV, his Democratic colleagues almost tripped over themselves distancing themselves from the issue. And the press reacted with outrage, printing Republican talking points almost word for word from the press releases. Feingold had overreached. He had given the Republicans talking points for the election in 2006. He was a "rogue Democrat". Even after the American people became suspicious of George Bush's authoritarianism, the elites seemed to be on a different wavelength. For the elites in the press and the Democratic Party it was obvious. We needed an authoritarian state to protect us from "terrorists".
In other words, as the United States continues its transformation from capitalist, liberal democracy to authoritarian capitalist national security state, the American ruling class needs the Mexican laborers but it needs them under a tight system of authoritarian control, not as citizens who can organize unions, vote, and aspire to the life of middle class Americans. It needs them as a permanent caste of second-class citizens, guest workers just one step above slavery.
The draconian immigration bill that just passed the House and is coming up for a vote in the Senate has nothing to do with preventing terrorism or even protecting American labor. Indeed, the quickest way to protect American workers from cheap Mexican labor would be simply to give all 12 million illegal immigrants citizenship so they'd be covered under minimum wage laws and have the ability to organize unions and then to enforce laws against employers who higher workers at sub standards wages. HH4413 would do none of these things. Instead, it would criminalize the illegal immigrants and make it a felony even to help an illegal immigrant. And it would be the precursor to even more draconian legislation like repealing the first provision of the 14th Amendment and creating a permanent caste of guest workers who wouldn't be covered under existing minimum wage laws or environmental and safety regulations. This permanent sub citizen caste would then be used to put even more pressure on native-born American workers, to break the few remaining institutions and laws they have in place protecting them. Eventually holding camps for immigrant workers will be built so they could be detained when they aren't needed and released when they are. Mobility over national borders would be used as a weapon against American workers.
What Sensenbrenner and Tancredo didn't take into account was the reaction of the immigrants themselves. The Republicans had become so accustomed to getting what they wanted for so long, the elites in the media and the Democratic Party had rolled over so many times that it had almost become impossible for them to see it going differently. The last time there had been any significant opposition to the Bush administration had been on February 15th, 2003 when people all over the world marched against invading Iraq. But the war in Iraq had been planned years before and was all but unstoppable. What's more, most of the demonstrators who objected to Bush's "Shock and Awe" and to the destruction of Iraq and the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqis were not the people who were under the guns themselves. While the long terms plans behind the war in Iraq included the foundation of a permanent war mobilization and the suppression of dissent at home, most of the demonstrators on February 15th were still able to go home and bitch about it on the Internet or wait for the next election. The Mexican immigrants who poured into the streets in the spring of 2006, the 300,000 protesters in Chicago, the 500,000 in Los Angeles don't have this luxury. For the typical Mexican immigrant the specter of HH4437, concentration camps, racist vigilante Minutemen and deportation is all too real. Working for sub-minimum wage with no job security, being labeled as criminals and potential terrorists are daily realities so they came out in record numbers (the demonstration in LA was probably the largest demonstration in American history) demanding to be treated as full American citizens, demanding their human rights as workers.
Never had I seen so many people carrying so many times declaring themselves to be workers. "We're workers not criminals." "We're a labor force not terrorists". "America needs our labor." "We're part of the American economy". "Immigrants built America". White American workers consider themselves middle class, are ashamed to be thought of as proletarians. These proletarians wore the badge with honor. What's more, even the placards with Biblical quotes carried demands that struck at the heart of capitalism itself. "The land belongs to God" and not one can assume, to George Bush or Bill Gates or white Americans. "We trust God, not HH4437." If there were hundreds of American flags, there were also hundreds of placards calling for an end to racial discrimination. If there were passages from the Bible pasted on placards, then they had nothing to do with abortion or the denial of gay marriage and everything to do with the Christian ideal about not becoming idolaters of property and economics.
The immigrants may themselves be conservative. But their demands are radical.