They finally did it: The United States House of Representatives produced
"immigration reform" bill ( HR 4437) principally sponsored by Ohio Representative James Sensenbrenner) so vicious, so obscenely racist, so manifestly evil, that the most disenfranchised and intimidated community in the United States rose up against it. The House bill would designate eleven million undocumented "illegal" immigrants, a sizeable slice of the working population in many U.S. cities, not to mention fields and packinghouses, as felons. It would criminalize any act of assistance to them -not only by employers but by social workers, churches,
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non-emergency medical
facilities or anyone else.
Their children born in this
country U.S. citizens
under the Constitution -could be stripped of citizenship.
The response has been a
wave of mass marches and
now student walkouts,
spearheaded by thousands
of Los Angeles high schoolers in a movement reminiscent of the "blowouts" of
1968.
If anything it's an overdue
response, after years when
hundreds (probably thousands) of people have died of
thirst and exposure trying to
cross Arizona's Sonora
Desert, when tens of thousands are deported annually,
when a lunatic and previOUSLY obscure Colorado
Congressman has achieved
prominence by proposing
giant fences along both the • REVOLUTION • DEMOCRACY A Marxism for the Twenty-First Century Send your cheque to: Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU Sochit dudoch • he lourial or the fourth internatonal in britain Mexican and Canadian borders. Here in Detroit this past Monday (March 27), between five and ten thousand people marched out of the southwest barrio to the downtown Federal Building. This was not among the largest of the nationwide actions, but for this city it was al commous oulbouring.
We walked amidst a sea of flags, both Mexican and United States (in roughly a 10-1 ratio), with the leading chant being "Si Se Puede"
"We Can Do It," reminder of the slogan of the United Farm Workers but referring the defeat of HR 4437.
While Arab participation was much smaller (Detroit's Arab community is concentrated in other neighbor• INTERNATICNALISM
Read Socialist Outlook Previous contributors have included: Gilbert Achcar, Frances Curran, John Lister, Amancay Colque, Au LoongYu, Phil Thornhill, Eric Toussaint, Murray Smith www.isg-fi.org.uk immigra