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ROP Fall 2005 Newsletter

                                      A Movement United:

Strategic and Humane Reasons for Countering the Anti-Immigrant Right 

The People!  United!  Will Never Be Defeated!  That chant gets recycled over and over again from one issue to the next, but it still rings true.  But why is solidarity important?  And what does this call for a united movement mean in our organizing in Oregon today?  Beyond the very important fact that there is power in numbers and it will take numbers of people to make the changes that we want in our world, there is something deeper to solidarity.  Solidarity recognizes that the extreme Right is our common enemy and that when we unite to push back the Right, we advance more democratic space for multiple issues and groups.  Solidarity also builds bridges between people and struggles that acknowledge our common humanity – something that is at the core of the Right’s campaigns to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians, deny healthcare and human rights to immigrants, restrict funding for welfare and other services for poor people, and wage a war that has killed nearly two thousand American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children.  When we unite, we are recognizing that we are stronger together and that these issues are connected, but we are also affirming that all people deserve equal human dignity and respect. 

Today, there are multiple anti-immigrant groups that are springing up across the US as well as in Oregon and the Northwest.  This is not just a border issue.  In Washington state, groups are collecting signatures to get an initiative onto the November 2006 ballot that would deny undocumented workers access to healthcare and other basic human services that their taxes pay for.  If this initiative is successful in Washington, we know that it will not be long before we see the same thing in Oregon.  In Nevada, an All White People’s Party recently formed as an anti-immigrant response.  And in Oregon, the anti-immigrant group, Oregonians for Immigration Reform, recently hosted a Minutemen Rally in Salem and lobbied for numerous bills that would have created a second class status for immigrants.  Thankfully, most of these were defeated through grassroots efforts led by PCUN, Oregon’s Farmworker Union and CAUSA, the statewide immigrant rights network, of which ROP is a founding ally member.

It is important to know that the Right is not a single, organized group, but nonetheless, there are organizing forces at play and trends that we can be aware of.  And this is the way that the Right is working it.  They are trying to draw a line in the sand to separate documented immigrants from undocumented immigrants.  This divides the immigrant and refugee community into “legal” and “illegal” or good versus bad groups of people and attempts to split that community by offering limited benefits to one group while criminalizing the other.  It also does not acknowledge the common forces that drive people to migrate – war, globalization and “free” trade, and the role of U.S. Policy in all that – or the class inequities that make it essentially impossible for poor people to migrate legally.  The anti-immigrant Right is using arguments that claim to be based on economic and environmental concerns, but when we look at their proposed solutions, we can clearly see that their agenda is to scapegoat immigrants.  As they have in the past, the Right is again attempting to manipulate the legitimate concerns of working class citizens and the racist fears that lurk in the hearts and history of white America. 

But we don’t have to fall for it!  Our rural movement for justice is smarter, more strategic, more visionary, and more humane than that.  We can demand that our policies be respectful of universal human rights, including a right to healthcare and education.  We can advocate for immigration policy that is based in the reality that immigrants come to this country because there are jobs that need them and an economy that depends on them.  We can bring a picture of the global economic and political forces – chief among them U.S. policies – that drive migration and destroy local communities around the world.  And we can call for solutions that address the needs of people and communities rather than blame and dehumanize immigrants, queers, and the poor.  When we do this not only do we bridge the wedge that the Right is trying to drive into our communities, but we stand united with our brothers and sisters in whom our shared liberation rests.

For more information about organizing for immigrant rights in your community, contact ROP at amy@rop.org or call 503.543.8417.  For information on progressive comprehensive immigration reform, visit www.cirnow.org.