President Bush on Oct. 4 signed a bill into law that pays for the construction of a 700-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The wall, called a “fence” by the bill, would run along stretches of California, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona The bill passed both houses of Congress in September.
The law calls for Homeland Security to assume control over all land and sea borders by deploying agents, satellites,
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Boeing Co. has already secured a $67 million contract to help construct the barrier—just a fraction of the billions of public funds that the project will feed to corporations. Although the law allots $1.2 billion for the wall, some experts predict it may cost as much as $9 billion. (Houston Chronicle, Oct. 3)
With this legislation, the government may be “testing the waters” after millions took to the streets and effectively killed the ultra-reactionary Sensenbrenner Bill, which would have turned undocumented immigrants and those who assisted them into felons.
The Mexican government pressed Bush to veto the bill, but he signed it soon after it cleared the Senate.
What’s really behind the wall?
The border wall is being touted as a way to keep undocumented immigrants from crossing the border—an argument that is not only racist but also untrue.
The Oct. 3 New York Times reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection believe that if a wall is built immigrants will simply cross elsewhere. Former custom agents have also pointed out that the rugged Arizona terrain makes it nearly impossible to build the wall.
One likely outcome of the wall will be increased suffering and death for those who attempt to cross the border from
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Increasing human suffering is acceptable, even desired, by a large section of the capitalist class. But if such a barrier could keep all undocumented immigrants from entering the United States, bourgeois politicians would have never approved it.
The capitalist class wants to continue to super-exploit undocumented immigrants. Their vulnerable status prevents many from organizing and demanding more rights and better wages. The government and employers use the threat of deportation as a weapon to ensure silence and compliance.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there were 7.2 million undocumented immigrants working in the United States in March 2005. That’s 4.9 percent of the civilian labor force. Most studies show that more than 12 million undocumented people currently live in the United States.
Immigrants, especially the undocumented, account for a large percentage of workers in agriculture, cleaning, meat packing, construction and other industries where work is both extremely demanding and poorly compensated. If anything, the ruling class wishes to extract even greater profits from immigrants.
In that context, the border wall is one component of the overall capitalist effort to further criminalize hard-working immigrants and deepen the anti-immigrant sentiment within petty-bourgeois and working-class sectors of the population. The capitalist class is attempting to pit citizens and permanent residents against undocumented workers by demonizing them as “illegals” who come here to “steal” jobs and social services. These are vile, racist lies.
The capitalists never point out the truth—that over $300 million in public money is diverted each day to fund the imperialist occupation of Iraq while social programs are starving for cash. The wealthy capitalists are the ones stealing from the U.S. working class.
It is not immigrant workers but capitalist competition that leads to economic crises, unemployment, and the neglect of people’s needs. Maximizing profits is all that matters under capitalism. It is in the interest of the entire working class—regardless of “legal” status—to overcome these racist attacks and mount a united struggle for workers’ rights.
