immigration

Millions experience the repressive nature of the U.S. immigration system on a daily basis, lifting its need for reform to a level of urgency. And fixing this broken program is integral to building the unity among U.S. workers that is required to challenge corporate America’s attacks on our wages, rights, public social services, and living conditions.

However, until recently, the Democrats and Republicans largely left immigration reform on the back burner except for campaign speeches and promoting more repressive measures.

Now a bipartisan “gang of 8″ senators and President Obama are promising some type of comprehensive immigration reform, likely to happen early this year. Why the change?

I recently visited Stewart Detention Center, a private immigration prison in Lumpkin, Georgia owned by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The country's largest immigration detention center, the facility has 1752 beds. Some prisoners are awaiting deportation, some are in legal processes to determine if they will be deported, others came requesting asylum from their home countries where they would be in danger if they returned. Some people spend weeks there, some spend years; the average stay is at least 45 days. 

Under the Obama administration, skilled foreign professionals like doctors and software engineers find dim hope in Emma Lazarus’s poetic lamp lifted “beside the golden door.” These huddled, high tech masses are, quite often, told by Washington policymakers to consider launching their careers in other countries.

One physician trained in South Africa, for example, recently applied for a visa to work in the U.S. Despite the shortage of skilled doctors in America, the Obama administration failed to grant him “extraordinary worker” status. For him, there will be no work at a pharmaceutical company, no hospital shifts, and no opportunity to start his own consulting firm.

Imperialist War, Mass Murder, and Torture, But Did September 11th Change “Everything”?

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By Steven Argue

Video

Video also available here: http://www.archive.org/details/ImmigrantsMarchAgainstHb87