Written with Ashleigh Campi, an organizer for Chicago Students for a Democratic Society, an editor for the Platypus Review, and a waitress.

When the Pope stands before tens of thousands and censures the most recent set of raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities as antithetical to a Christian moral sentiment, with its value for the integrity of family and community, many progressives across the country probably agreed. Why have the Pope and the media (indie included), declined to comment on the political questions raised by the raids? Last week I challenged the progressivism of some Democrats by questioning their commitment to the party base, the workers/unions. This week, I will offer a similar challenge, this time, regarding immigration.

Immigration is an issue that opens up political questions that move beyond the political imaginations of most liberals and leftists with a concern for social-justice and humanitarian issues. The current attack on undocumented immigrants, waged by the Department of Homeland Security, and enthusiastically taken up by much of conservative America, and state and local level law-enforcement, is one of the most reactionary and regressive political movements that this country has bred in decades, and needs to be recognized as such. Immigration is an issue that progressives need to take head-on, precisely because it necessitates a more politically meaningful response than those offered by the abstract ethics and political opportunism that guides too much of the liberal discourse today.

All of the immigration reform programs proposed hitherto effectively create a second-class citizenry, granting immigrants the right to work and contribute to the country’s economy, but denying them the basic rights of citizenship, and access to public wealth in the form of subsidies for higher education and healthcare. Despite the rhetorical use of ‘legalization’ used to describe these programs, the legal category of ‘guest-worker’ amounts to a glorified form of slavery.

Progressive elements of the immigrant rights movement and the labor movement are demanding full legalization for the 12 million estimated immigrants currently residing in this country. This would mean 12 million new citizens, empowered with the right to vote, and to participate in the d(D)emocratic governance of this country. Despite the obvious advantages of such reform there’s a surfeit of resistance, which takes many forms:

The corporate/business interests benefit from limiting the rights of their work force. They have access to a pool of completely flexible ‘guest worker’ labor without full rights, and businesses are saved from the bad PR and stigma of employing illegal immigrants.

There’s the classic, capitalist assertion that NAFTA and other free trade agreements are strengthening the participating countries. This is again is corporate propaganda- the free flow of capital by multinational corporations, allows the political and economic elite in the US to ally with the political elite in the developing world and drain accumulated capital to the international metropolis in US/Europe. This international phenomenon of immigrant labor movement is a result of the decimation of labor and progressive movements worldwide that protect the working class against the human crises that result from the aforementioned economic policies (I’ll again refer you to last week’s article).

The final form is that of the union. Despite the realization by many unions, that strength in numbers (incorporation of immigrants) is politically advantageous, some, unfortunately, have not overcome self-interest and economically ‘justified’ (though baseless) xenophobia.

What kind of society do we want? If we actually wanted inclusion, democratic participation and equality- if we wanted a truly progressive party able to govern all of us who live and work in this country, and thus create a more free society-we would demand full legalization and citizenship and the rights for all to organize unions.

Many establishment Democrats and trade unionists do not actually want this type of democratic opening, they want to protect their political and economic ground, which depends on the compromises they make with big business and industry lobbyists at the expense of the working class and the people whose interests they claim to represent. We need to tell our Party that the preservation of the status quo is not progressive.

For Further information: Listen to a recording of an Information session for organizers of the May 1, 2008 International Workers’ Day demonstration in Chicago  here