["All over the country, immigrant workers are a big part of the
workforce. Theyre all part of a base that can force change. We cant
depend on political winds or what people tell us is possible. We have
to be tenacious for whats just and righteous."]
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ONLY A SOCIAL MOVEMENT CAN WIN REAL IMMIGRATION REFORM  
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David Bacon
September 29, 2023
David Bacon Reality Check
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_ "All over the country, immigrant workers are a big part of the
workforce. They're all part of a base that can force change. We can't
depend on political winds or what people tell us is possible. We have
to be tenacious for what's just and righteous." _

Marchers leave Petaluma on their 3-day trek to San Francisco, David
Bacon

 

At the beginning of the 1990s, Sahuayo, a small city of factories and
craftspeople near Michoacan's Lake Chapala, could not provide enough
work to support its growing population. People had been leaving
Michoacan for years, seeking jobs in the maquiladoras on the border,
or in the fields of California's San Joaquin Valley. But as the North
American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, the Mexican government
devalued the peso, and a new wave of Sahuayenses were thrown into the
migrant stream.

One of them was Patricia Garibay. Her sister and brothers had come
north, and at 16 she followed in their footsteps. But while Patricia
was able to get residence status, her siblings      could not.
"More than half their lives have been here - over 30 years," she says.
During that time they've been unable to return to Michoacan to see
their family. Her sister died here in El Norte, without papers. "Like
many others, our family was divided. If the law doesn't change,
they'll never be able to go back."

Garibay found domestic work in Sonoma County, and went on to care and
clean for families for the next 30 years. Media stereotypes may lead
some to believe that only the rich employ domestic workers. In a world
of privatized healthcare, though, these mostly-women laborers, like
Garibay, provide essential care for the disabled, for older women and
men with no families of their own, and for many who simply can't care
for themselves.  

According to Renee Saucedo, organizer of the Almas Libres domestic
worker collective in Sonoma County, thousands of women doing this work
in California are undocumented. Jen Myzel employs domestic workers
like Garibay, and is an outspoken advocate for them in marches and
demonstrations.. She believes they deserve legal status for the
valuable work they do.

Garibay and Myzel were among several hundred immigrant rights
activists who gathered at the beginning of August in Petaluma's Walnut
Park, in Sonoma County's wine country. After listening to a few
speeches and cheering on the local troupe of Aztec dancers, they set
off on a 3-day march to San Francisco's Federal Building. Their goal
was to win support for a bill that could make a profound difference in
the life of Garibay's family. "I'm fighting for them," she says.

HR 1511, "Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of
1929," is breathtaking in its simplicity. It just changes a date:
January 1, 1972. Today, anyone who entered the U.S. without a visa
before that date can apply for legal permanent residence--the "green
card. After five years as a legal resident, they can then apply for
U.S. citizenship. This registry process is contained in Section 249 of
the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the date has been changed
four times - from 1921 to 1924, 1940, 1948, and finally 1972. 

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_Lucy Madrigal came from Washington State, where she is a candidate
for city council in Mount Vernon, to participate in the march to San
Francisco._

Unfortunately, for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants
living in U.S. communities, only a tiny handful qualify under the
current registry date. That population is aging out. If someone came
to the U.S. just before 1972, at the age of 20, that person would be
over 70 now. From 2015 to 2019, only 305 got legal status this way.
"No one really knows how many have come since that 1972 date," says
Saucedo, who helped set up the Northern California Coalition for Just
Immigration Reform. "Ninety percent of currently undocumented people
is probably an underestimate."

Known as the Registry Bill, HR 1511 would allow anyone in the country
for seven years to apply for a green card. Instead of establishing a
new fixed date, a person could set the legalization process into
motion seven years after they crossed the border.

"Seven years recognizes that by then a person has shown they're rooted
in this country and community," explains Angelica Salas, executive
director of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Reform in Los
Angeles, which helps coordinate the national campaign for the bill.
"Seven years demonstrates a commitment," she says, "the same timeframe
that legitimizes a common law marriage."

Another activist pushing for the bill, Emma Delgado, a leader of
Mujeres Unidas y Activas (United and Active Women) explains, "I
haven't seen my children in many years because there is currently no
way for me to apply for legal residency." She called the family
separation produced by current immigration law "immoral."

The Petaluma-San Francisco march, organized by the Northern California
Coalition and supported by a handful of local immigrant rights
advocates, was one of a dozen around the country. People also walked
from Silicon Valley to San Francisco in a similar 3-day trek. Other
marches were one-day events. Some were followed by a day in which
immigrant workers stayed home from their jobs.

The cities that mounted marches - Houston, Denver, San Diego,
Washington DC and six others - all have large communities of
undocumented people. While the organizers' ultimate target may be
Congress, their immediate purpose was mobilizing undocumented people
themselves to act independently in their own interest. That makes this
movement akin to the huge immigrant rights marches of 2006.

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 _Alfredo Juarez, from Bellingham, Washington, marches with the
poster announcing the march for the Registry Bill._

"Our whole goal is to inform and unite our community," says Melanie
Laplander, of Latinos Associated Together Informing Networking and
Outreaching in Minneapolis, part of a network mounting these
grassroots actions around the country. Saucedo says she underestimated
the willingness of undocumented people to march for three days. "Eight
million people would get status with this bill," Saucedo explains. "Of
course, we want it for all 11-12 million, but it's the best we've seen
in decades. It doesn't pit people against each other by covering only
certain groups, and there's no exchange of legalization for E-Verify,
guest worker visas or beefing up the border."

Salas recounted a meeting of CHIRLA leaders in Los Angeles in the
summer of 2021, in which she asked people to raise their hands if they
would be eligible for legalization under the more limited proposals of
the last several years. Each time she asked, only a fraction of the
group indicated they might qualify. But when she explained the
proposal to change the Registry date, and asked who would gain status
if that became law, everyone in the room raised their hands.

The marches, like the registry bill itself, mark a change in the way
immigrant rights activists believe legalization can be achieved. For
forty years, immigration reform proposals have followed the pattern
set by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). That
bill contained a strategic compromise, intended to win over right-wing
Republicans and anti-immigrant legislators of both parties.

IRCA began the militarization of the border, leading to today's
private detention centers. For the first time, the law made it illegal
for an employer, like Myzel, to hire an undocumented person, like a
domestic worker. For people without papers, making work illegal also
made them very vulnerable to employer abuse. At the same time, IRCA
reinstituted contract labor visas. Last year, growers filled over
370,000 jobs with temporary workers brought to work in U.S. fields
using that system. In exchange, immigrants got a legalization that
ultimately allowed 2.7 million people to normalize their status.
Republican President Ronald Reagan signed the bill.

Every major comprehensive immigration reform bill since then has
embodied the same tradeoff: enforcement against the undocumented and
migrants at the border, plus more guest workers, for very limited
legalization. The tradeoffs sought to make reform palatable to fearful
legislators. Every such bill failed.

"Not only did we not get legalization," Saucedo charges, "but the
worst parts of those bills became our reality on the ground - raids,
mass deportations, detention prisons and divided families. Today we
have enforcement we never even dreamed possible in the 90s. How could
anyone expect to get a significant number of the undocumented to take
risks to build a movement, for proposals that were causing them
harm?" 

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 _Before the Registry Bill March starts out from Petaluma, immigrant
activists hold the banner at a rally calling for passage of the
legislation._

At the same time, disagreement in immigrant communities has grown over
proposals that would provide legalization for some people, but not
others. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an
executive order issued by President Obama, enabled students brought to
the U.S. as children to get a provisional form of legal status. Their
parents, however, remained as undocumented as ever. The failed Farm
Workforce Modernization Act sought to provide legal status for
farmworkers, and other bills promised it for essential workers as a
reward for their dangerous labor during the pandemic.

The compromise strategy began to fall apart when Joe Biden was elected
President. He promised a broad legalization during his campaign, and
progressives in Congress took him at his word. Salas worked with the
Biden transition team, putting together an agenda. The key was
changing the registry date, and she and her colleagues tried to get it
into Biden's U.S. Citizenship Act, without success. "But it was
important to show legislators a way to transform our system, and make
it humane and functional, instead of concentrating on incarceration
and deportation," she recalls

They tried again with the original Build Back Better bill. "It was
there, in the first iteration. If there had been a vote on it,
registry change would have passed. We were so close." But the vote
didn't happen. "Not only did everything fall apart, but registry was
used as the excuse for not going forward - that the bill wouldn't get
past the [Senate] Parliamentarian. Registry was stripped out
overnight. After the devastation of that moment, we knew we had to
have a bill that would deal with registry alone."

Some proposals called for "earned legalization," derisively referred
to as "parole" by many activists, in which undocumented people would
face a decade-long tortuous process giving people only a provisional
status, while eliminating millions of potential applicants. "We don't
want temporary programs," Salas emphasizes. "We want access directly
to green cards. There are more and more programs now with a
quasi-legal, temporary worker status, but we have to talk about the
longevity of our people's presence here. It's our country already."

According to Salas, three Congress members drove the proposals for
including registry - Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose, CA), Norma Torres
(D-Ontario, CA) and Lou Correa (D-Anaheim, CA). They introduced a
registry bill in July 2022, and reintroduced it as HR 1511 this March.
Today, that bill has 64 cosponsors, all Democrats. Two more joined the
day after the Petaluma and San Jose marches reached the Federal
Building. On July 27, 2023 California Senator Alex Padilla introduced
a companion bill in the Senate, S 2606.

"Anything you can do to convince lawmakers about the importance of
this bill is helpful," Rep. Lofgren told the marchers. "I appreciate
the walkers and all those who continue to fight for the rights of our
immigrant community. Count on me to continue the fight in Congress!"

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 _Members of a local Aztec dance group give the marchers a blessing
before they set out._

Supporting registry change makes sense in Congressman Jesus "Chuy"
Garcia's Chicago district, where 41 percent of the people are
non-citizens. "Nearly 300,000 of my constituents have lived and raised
families in the U.S. for decades," he says. "Updating the Registry law
will help restore basic safety and dignity for immigrants who have
been contributing to our communities for a long time."

In meantime, however, the undocumented especially face a growing wave
of anti-immigrant legislation. SB 1718, for instance, passed by the
Florida legislature and signed by Gov. De Santis in July, penalizes
employers for hiring undocumented people. It invalidates out-of-state
drivers licenses for immigrants while making it a felony for anyone to
give a ride to a person without papers. Hospitals must ask about
immigration status and detained immigrants must provide DNA samples.

Grassroots activists like Saucedo and Laplander believe that fighting
for the registry bill is a way to mobilize communities in their own
defense, giving them something to fight for as well as fight against.
"Politicians say they want to get rid of the 14th Amendment, and take
away the citizenship of our children," Laplander says. "The laws are
completely against us. Look at the barbed wire and inhumanity at the
border. We have to inform our people of the danger we're in, to unite
and protect each other."

For Saucedo, only a grassroots movement that starts in undocumented
communities will be able to defeat these attacks, and at the same time
force consideration of real reform, like the Registry bill. "It has to
involve public actions, three-day walks every month, civil
disobedience - that level of activity," she says, "to make the country
feel uncomfortable. Undocumented people have to share how their lives
are impacted, that no one should be separated from children or elderly
parents. We've learned from the labor and African American civil
rights movements that it takes great urgency and resistance and
sacrifice to make mainstream decision-makers shift."

Salas, with a long history of working inside Washington's halls of
power, challenges the idea that a Republican majority in the House and
weak support from many Democrats dooms the Registry Bill. "The more
people who are involved, the better chance we have," she urges. "Think
of all the millions of U.S. citizens who have immigrant parents, and
how many have had their fathers or mothers deported. All over the
country, immigrant workers are a big part of the workforce. They're
all part of a base that can force change. So, we can't depend on
political winds or what people tell us is possible. We have to be
tenacious for what's just and righteous." 

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_Renee Saucedo speaks at a rally at the San Francisco Federal Building
at the end of the march._

_David Bacon [[link removed]] is a
California writer and documentary photographer. A former union
organizer, today he documents labor, the global economy, war and
migration, and the struggle for human rights. His latest book, In the
Fields of the North / En los campos del norte (COLEF / UC Press, 2017)
includes over 300 photographs and 12 oral histories of farm workers.
Other books include The Right to Stay Home (Beacon Press, 2013).and
Illegal People (Beacon Press, 2008), which discuss alternatives to
forced migration and the criminalization of migrants. Communities
Without Borders (Cornell/ILR Press, 2006) includes over 100
photographs and 50 narraatives about transnational migrant
communities, and The Children of NAFTA (UC Press, 2004) is an account
of worker resistance on the US/Mexico border in the wake of NAFTA._

* Immigration
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* Immigration Reform
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* Immigrants
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* immigrant workers
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