Ten thousand demonstrated in Boston on March 27 [photo: Eli Beckerman]

It makes simply being an undocumented worker in the United States a felony, and it makes it illegal for anyone—including teachers, social workers, firefighters—to help that person in any way. HR 4437 dismantles forty years of civil rights legislation and officially reintroduces Jim Crow into American law.

President Bush and Republican Senate “moderate” Alan Specter are sanding off a few of the rough edges and presenting their ideas as “mainstream.”

Sen.. Edward Kennedy has teamed up with that champion of civil rights, Sen.. John McCain, to push his version of a “guest worker” program. Kennedy’s bill will bring back the Bracero Program, which was used during World War II. Then, hundreds of thousands of

Mexican workers were shipped into the US to fill labor shortages as indentured servants, legally bound to the will of the US government and private employers. When the war ended, they were rounded up and herded back to Mexico, having been cheated out of a good portion of their poverty level wages.

Unfortunately, Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern has signed on, along with the American Chamber of Commerce, to a version of the new “guest worker” program. Given that SEIU has pioneered organizing undocumented workers and leads the fight for immigrants rights within the labor movement, this is a big step backwards and another tragic example of subordinating the interests of workers to what the Democratic Party leaders deem “acceptable.”

The one thing we can be sure of is that all of the proposals that are on the table now are bad news for immigrant workers and their families. That’s why 300,000 immigrants and their supporters marched in Chicago a couple weeks ago. That’s why 500,000 marched in Los Angeles this weekend. That’s why hunger strikers are camped out in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco….

For more information and a comparison of the current legislation, go to the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights: http://www.nnirr.org

Todd Chretien is a Green running for US Senate in California against Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Abridged and adapted from the original complete text at: www.Todd4Senate.org