Fri, Apr 21, 2006 page9

• Migrant workers overcome their fears to bite back

  A migrant community that has always tried to be invisible has be invisible has become active -- and politicians have to take notice

  • By Gary Younge / THE GUARDIAN
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  Like a scene out of a John Steinbeck novel, shadows slowly emerged from tents and into the night in New Orleans City Park at the call of "Free food, water."

  "The church brings food and water on Thursdays," explained Mercedes Sanchez, standing beside the tarpaulin construction that is now her home.

  She paid US$3,000 to trek three days and three nights through the Arizona desert to get to the US. Along the way she was stripped naked by bandits and robbed at gunpoint.

  "When you walk through the desert you think you're never going to arrive," she said. "It costs a lot of money and a lot of tears."

  She was more than 1,600km away in Maryland when Hurricane Katrina struck. Shortly afterwards she heard that people were recruiting in New Orleans. She heard the call for work and, like migrant workers anywhere, she responded with a journey.

  Over recent weeks, Hispanic migrants have been flocking to another call -- not to work, but to arms. Throughout the US millions of Hispanics, in big cities and small towns, have taken to the streets to protest against anti-immigration legislation and for their right to stay in the country. Half a million came out in Los Angeles and also in Dallas, 300,000 in Chicago, 200,000 in Washington -- right down to 3,000 in Garden City, Kansas (population 30,000).

  Such numbers over such a broad swath of the country hold huge symbolic importance locally and globally. It has yet to be seen whether that symbolism can be translated into a political and electoral force with ramifications beyond this moment and this issue.

  Globally, the demonstrations mark the first example of mass resistance to the West's desire to criminalize migrant laborers and to fortify the borders against those trying to get in.

  The bill they were marching against would see a 3,200km fence built along the US-Mexican frontier, and all 11 million undocumented workers on the wrong side of it declared illegal and deported. In some respects, the border between the US and Mexico exemplifies the physical interface between the developing and developed world. The average wage is four times higher on one side.

  standing up

  But the tension exposed by these disparities is by no means unique to the US. It was present in the British elections last year, when Prime Minister Tony Blair stood before the white cliffs of Dover pledging to tighten immigration controls. It was evident in the Italian elections, where the center-left challenger, Romano Prodi, responded to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's anti-immigrant rants by saying: "You cannot need the workers during the day, then go and hunt them at night."

  Yet that is precisely what the West has been doing -- demonizing migrant laborers politically and targeting them legally, even as it depends on them economically. This has made anti-immigration legislation difficult to challenge. Not because migrants are hard to reach -- businesses find them easily -- but because they are difficult to organize as their fates are vulnerable to the whims of their employers and of the state.

  The result was a community that, until recently, was hidden in plain sight.

  "A community that had essentially been trying to remain invisible suddenly concluded that their invisibility was only making them more vulnerable," Frank Sharry, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, told the Washington Post.

  The sheer presence of so many Latinos on the streets was in itself a political fact to be reckoned with.

  "All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of people," wrote the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski in his book Shah of Shahs, about Iran's revolution.

  "They should begin with a psychological chapter, one that shows how a harassed man breaks his terror and stops being afraid. This unusual process demands illuminating," he wrote.

  And so it has been in recent weeks.

  Children walked out of school; their parents walked off the job.

  "The foreman said everybody has to show up today, but we came anyway. We have to march," Dionicio Morales, a bricklayer from Guatemala, told the Los Angeles Times. "There won't be any brickwork there today."

  One key difference between the US and western Europe is the large social crossover between documented and undocumented immigrants, making the latter less isolated. Roughly one in four illegal migrants lives in a family with someone who is legal -- so to attack them is to attack many Latino families. Another is the power of the US' assimilationist traditions and immigrant heritage. America has always been keener on immigration than it has been on immigrants.

  Immigration evokes the mythology of personal reinvention, social meritocracy, ethnic diversity and class fluidity at the heart of the American dream. Immigrants evoke hostility as people who take jobs and don't speak the language.

  This is not new. In 1886, the same year the Statue of Liberty was dedicated as the beacon of the "hungry, tired [and] poor yearning to breathe free," a mob in Seattle chased most of the Chinese laborers out of the city.

  But these contradictions, combined with a fierce sense of patriotism and often a sentimental attachment to "the old country," do provide more political space for a worthwhile immigration debate than is possible in Europe, which imagines itself ethnically pure.

  allegiances

  The marchers worked hard to occupy that space. In some cities demonstrators recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Throughout the country they carried banners stating "We Are America" and "Today we march; tomorrow we vote." If they do, they could reconfigure US politics.

  Compared to black and white voters, Hispanic turnout is low; but in terms of partisan allegiance it is more in play. US President George W. Bush picked up 45 percent of the Latino vote in 2004 -- a serious dent in those numbers could cost the Republicans Congress.

  So Latinos have got the politicians' attention; whether they will be able to keep it until election day is another matter. It would be premature to refer to this as a movement, but it certainly has the potential to become one. The diverse and dispersed grassroots groups that called the demonstrations in each city represent a pre-existing network that thrives under the Anglo radar. But the turnout took even the organizers by surprise -- in Los Angeles they had expected just 20,000.

  So we now know that this network can be mobilized on an impressive scale and with relatively few resources. But on what agenda and to what effect?

  Uniting against an immediate legislative assault on their communities is one thing; but finding the political consensus and organizational cohesion to rally round a program or plan of action is another. Calls for a national Latino strike on May 1 have already sparked division, with some claiming the organizers are overplaying their hand.

  For migrants were not the only ones mobilizing recently. One rightwing talk-show host called for them to be placed in the New Orleans Superdome and then shipped back to where they came from.

  But first they would have to finish the repairs to the Superdome. And it would take Hispanic laborers like Mercedes Sanchez to do it.
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