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Immigration 7/25/06 12:30 AM Page 20 majority of immigrants to enter legally and safely. Most make the journey on foot, in makeshift boats or rafts, or in cargo containers, crossing expanses of desert, oceans, or rat-infested tunnels to get here. And some 1,954 have died along the U.S.-Mexico border alone between 1998 and 2004, according to official U.S. Border Patrol statistics. Once in the U.S., the most common jobs for undocumented immigrants are in agriculture, the "hospitality" industry, childcare, home and office cleaning, low-wage manufacturing, and transportation. Virtually all undocumented immigrants work. In fact, undocumented workers now constitute 4.9 percent of the U.S. workforce. According to the Wall Street Journal, immigrant labor in general is a net asset to the economy and a growth stimulator. A report of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform concluded that immigrants add about $10 billion annually to the economy due to the "increased supply of labor and resulting lower prices." For this reason, the federal government has approved numerous amnesty programs to afford legal residency to otherwise "illegal" immigrants. These programs date from as far back as the Registry Act of 1929, to the most recent example in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan approved a general amnesty for some three million undocumented workers. Most undocumented workers pay taxes through their employers. But these workers cannot vote and are not entitled to government benefits despite paying approximately $7 billion a year to Social Security and $1.5 billion a year to Medicare. In 2002, the National Labor Relations Board reversed previous law when it ruled that ing banner of "guest workers." The Bush administration, at the behest of industrial groups that depend on immigrant labor and in search of a domestic issue through which to show leadership, has taken up the mantle of immigration reform. The Bush approach has been to promote the notion of increased border security coupled with increased use of so-called guest workers—workers on time-limited, job-specific visas who pay taxes, but have no political rights. This position piggybacks and shifts to the right of the bipartisan McCain-Kennedy Senate bill. This bill, now dead, was supported by some immigrant advocacy groups and labor organizations associated with the Change to Win group that left the AFL-CIO, most notably the Service Employees International Union. It proposed to expand guest worker visas far beyond current levels, provide for legalization of some undocumented immigrants, build more fences, and increase policing of the southern border, while at the same time imposing heavier penalties on employers that violate immigration laws. Far to the right, Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner's House bill provides no path to legalization, would make the undocumented felons and also criminalize citizens and legal residents, including health workers, who render assistance to the undocumented, and fund more walls, fences, and policing along the border. When this reactionary measure passed the House of Representatives, it positioned Bush's version of "guest workers and walls" as the moderate approach. But while Rep Sensenbrenner and the Republican House You don't need to be an undocumented worker to be suspicious of a policy that calls for the already marginalized to present themselves for deportation, based on the slim prospect of reentry as a registered guest worker. undocumented workers are not even entitled to the basic rights and protections that apply to employees in all private-sector workplaces. Undocumented workers can be fired for speaking out against unsafe conditions, for protesting the unfair treatment of a coworker, or for supporting a union. Many a union drive has been crushed by the employer's calculated use of the weapon of last recourse—the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now called Citizenship and Immigration Services. A phone call away, the INS can easily remove through raids and deportation troublemakers whom the boss knows to have improper documents. The repressive impact of the INS on America's low-wage workplaces is immeasurable and only overshadowed by the devastation to families when a father or mother fails to return home from work in the wake of an INS raid. The U.S. is now a society in which millions work and contribute to the economy, but have no political rights. Even those who are working legally under temporary work visas, like many immigrant RNs, are subject to the whims of their employer-sponsor. South Africa was once condemned for relegating a whole class of people to secondand third-class social status based on race and place of origin. Similarly, the racist Jim Crow laws of the post-reconstruction American South denied African Americans basic social and political rights. The parallels between apartheid South Africa, the Jim Crow South, and policies towards immigrant workers in today's America are glaring. What is less clear to many is that proposed mainstream solutions to the "immigration problem" would institutionalize and expand a contemporary American version of Apartheid under the friendly-sound20 REGISTERED NURSE majority gave the sinking Bush administration a political life raft, they also unwittingly triggered a movement. The Sensenbrenner bill passed the House on Dec. 16, 2005. On April 20, the first mass march in protest of this reactionary bill took Chicago and the nation by surprise. Even organizers of the Chicago march were stunned by the more than 200,000 that took to the streets, according to police estimates. A de facto general strike of Latino workers halted production at dozens of light manufacturing and food processing shops and factories. Organizing then started in earnest. Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of people marched, rallied, boycotted, and struck in hundreds of actions across the U.S., most notably in Los Angeles where nearly one million people marched on April 25 with one clear goal: legalization for all undocumented workers. The culmination of this groundswell of activity came on May 1, when coordinated marches across the country brought together millions of people demanding legalization. This time, the call for a general strike and economic boycott in support of the demand was explicit. The day was a clear triumph for the immigrant rights and labor movements. By all accounts, the mobilizations were unprecedented in the history of the United States, with an estimated two million marchers in over 40 major demonstrations nationwide, according to mainstream reports. However, mainstream media neglected to mention the economic impact of the general strike and boycott. Only in Los Angeles, where the busiest seaport in the nation was shut down, did the Los Angeles Times grudgingly report that 90 percent of port truck drivers, them- W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G J U LY 2 0 0 6