The immigration debate is currently stuck between two stubborn positions. On one side, conservatives argue for deportation for all migrant workers, an English-only country, and armed guards on our borders. On the other side are the middle-class liberals who cry for the workers, cry for their conditions, but would never take the steps towards helping them. In this essay I want to show how the conservative argument encourages racism and how it can lead to a further drop in living conditions for the American poor. Also I want to show how liberals cannot cling onto the idea of amnesty for all while still embracing capitalism and nationalism.

In Waukegan, a good portion of our Hispanic working-class has traveled to the country illegally. Immigrants are no different than us -- they do not have a natural urge to "steal" jobs from Americans. The media constantly parades images of undocumented peoples as drunks, rapists, or murders. In fact, the number of criminals is the same or higher for legal citizens. We hear about overcrowded housing, stolen identities, or uninsured cars. We hear about how illegal immigration makes a community more prone to gangs, drugs, or even terrorists.

The things which I've mentioned above are not exclusive to legal or illegal immigrants. Things like gangs and overcrowded housing are issues dealing with poverty, not immigration status. We can see this in the poor communities around the country which have been around for a hundred years. Driving without insurance is a crime not only for illegal immigrants, but also for all of us working-class people who cannot pay so much a month to a greedy insurance agency.

In Waukegan we have seen how the laws created against illegal immigration have effected the legal poor. Our low wages force us into the dark corners of a basement, later to be evicted for violating housing codes. In effect, we are being criminalized because there are not any well-paying jobs around. The same is true for driving without insurance in Waukegan, which leads to (on average) 800$ out of our pockets if we are caught. Why doesn't the law go after our local businesses who seem to think we can live below 10$ an hour?

Poverty is the leading factor of immigration into the United States. Many European countries help to build their neighbors' infrastructure to reduce the amount of poverty, thus reducing illegal immigration. Why doesn't the United States do this? Because we have an abundant source of exploitable labor, that's why! Because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) created in 1994 between the U.S. and Mexico, 2 million Mexican agriculture workers were forced out of work. After this, immigration skyrocketed into the U.S. . An estimated 28,000 small businesses were removed as large American companies (Wal-mart etc) were able to move in and offer lower prices to Mexico.

NAFTA, not content with lowering the standards of living in Mexico, has also has a profound effect on American workers. The amount of cars imported into the United States annually from Mexico has tripled. This is because factories (and with them, factory jobs) were moved to Mexico to exploit low wages and to bypass American unions. Displaced Mexican workers inevitably compete with American workers for the same jobs. Poverty, as we've seen millions of times before, forces a descent human being to settle for the most degrading jobs. American companies are able to make more profit from low-wage workers at the expense of legal citizens.

Is it ethical to pay workers so much less than their labor is worth just because of their immigration status? Why aren't the creators of NAFTA under fire for creating a larger class of undocumented, highly-exploited workers? The agricultural and much of the service industry has now been flooded with cheap labor. This exploits one section of the working-class for low wages (undocumented) and forces another section of the working-class (documented) out of their jobs.

The media uses the words "citizens" and "illegal immigrants" to pit one part of the working-class against the other. Lou Dobbs, a news anchor who calls himself a fighter for the middle-class, spews anti-immigrant news stories to push his xenophobic (a fear of foreigners) agenda. He has gone so far as to say that illegal Hispanic immigrants are bringing leprosy into the country, a statement proved false soon after he said it.

It is up to both sides of the working-class to see how they are being exploited. Immigrants need good wages and descent working-conditions in their own country, free of exploitation from American business. At the same time, American workers need to protect their jobs from their employers who would easily send them overseas. It is not a few migrant workers who are the problem; the blame has always rested in the hands of the economic decision makers.

Because we are dealing with Hispanic (mostly) immigrants, race has taken a huge part of this debate. In Waukegan and other poor communities around the country, poor Hispanic immigrants have been put into a rivalry with the existing poor Black workers. Because of this, we have seen Hispanic gangs and Black gangs pitted against each other. We have seen community leaders on both sides denounce each other. This is discouraging for any working-class organization, since it puts two of the most oppressed peoples against each other despite their common class. Those organizations who fight for one side are stuck in a situation where they can only demand small short-term changes. A Latino support group is stuck fighting for small gains (amendments to immigration bills, slightly increased wages, immigration lawyers) which have to come from the gains that Blacks have already made, and vice versa. Only an organization which is explicitly anti-racist (anarchist or anti-authoritarian) can fight for the immediate benefits for both groups while bringing the two together as a class.

A more urgent form of racism is that which comes from the conservative Right. Groups like the Minutemen are patriotic in theory but racist in action. The Minutemen conduct armed patrols on the American-Mexican border. By using words like "invasion," "army," or "plague," the Minutemen have created a militant anti-immigrant movement. They have recruited members of the National Alliance, an American neo-nazi organization. Many prominent leaders have been ousted as white supremacists. In Farmingville, a city with high immigration much like Waukegan, day laborers were taken to an abandoned building and were badly beaten. Much of the rhetoric and tactics used by the Minutemen have been repeated by racist groups over the last century. It is no wonder that they put so much time and money into telling the public that they are against "illegal immigration" and not foreigners.

One of the easiest way to spot racism in the "immigration control" movement is their support of the English-only bill. Most of these people hold the claim that English is the American language and that the country should only accommodate English-speakers. English is not, and never has been, the official language of America. The most extreme side is against other languages being spoken, much less on public files and signs. Embracing other languages helps to increase our own culture and bridge gaps within our class. Spanish advertising and papers are a trivial inconvenience at worst; applying English as an official language implies that European languages are naturally better. It helps to draw the line between Spanish-speaking Latinos and English-speaking Europeans.

Anarchists are concerned about recent reaction such as this because it leads to a stronger sense of nationalism in America. The legal working-class feels as if they own a country which needs to be protected; this places the blame away from their economic and political masters and puts it on their fellow workers. The middle-class, a privileged class who riots at the first sign of increased taxes, takes personal insult to the concept of immigration. This inevitably leads to things like the militarization of the border, where armed military units are stationed to intimidate / shoot the poor. Nationalism is always negative from an anarchist point of view. This is especially true of the working-class. It has always been the anarchist organization's task to reveal "borders" as imaginary lines on a map.

The economics of this debate are also negatively affected on both sides of the debate. If one side wishes to deport all illegal immigrants, who will replace the jobs left behind? There would suddenly be an increase in the poverty rate as Americans worked long hours for minimum wage. It would be impossible to give this new group of workers descent living standards as long as business demands low wages. Since illegal immigrants are often paid at a fraction of the cost of legal citizens, the amount of money that business puts into wages would skyrocket. Higher wages in the agriculture industry will no doubt lead to higher prices for fruits and vegetables. We would see incredible inflation that the poor and working-class Americans would have to endure.

On the other side, more liberal-minded people would simply legalize all immigrants. This would, again, force prices up, and Americans would be in the same situation. It has to be understood that American capitalism requires exploitable labor. Illegal immigrants are an endless source of this, and we are all living off of its benefits. In California, after immigrants abandoned their jobs, the government replaced them with prison labor. All over the country, as workers demand higher wages or put union pressure on a company, the business is moved overseas. Why would this be any different?

This movement, with its focus on borders and poverty, is a prime opportunity for class-struggle anarchists to radicalize their communities. As anarchists, we have very specific tasks while taking part in this movement:

1. Push a class-based analysis of the debate. While some focus on border control, we argue for workers' dignity. A class analysis reveals the fundamental flaw concerning exploitable labor and capitalism, and provides a platform for workers to organize internationally.

2. Reveal the inherent racism of the "deportation" side of the debate. While we can point at extreme cases of neo-nazis in the Minutemen, we should focus more on the Euro-ethnocentrism of the "English-only" laws and apathy for Latin-American poverty.

3. Provide arguments against the nationalist ideas which much of the anti-immigrant debate is founded on. When combined with anti-racist and anti-capitalist theory, anarchists can set the stage for further revolutionary action.

4. Build organizations and coalitions out of this movement to continue fights against racism, nationalism, imperialism, capitalism, sexism, and to secure the rights and dignity for peoples' all over the world. The momentum from this movement will be wasted if it is spent on single laws or are always reactive to the State.