Statement of the NY May 1 Coalition on
President Bush’s May 15, 2006 speech

Two weeks ago, on May 1st, millions of immigrants and their supporters marched in cities coast-to-coast demanding human rights. President George W. Bush responded to this call for justice by announcing on May 15 he was sending 6,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border. Bush also called for immigrant workers to be forced to carry an identification card just like Black workers were forced do so under the hated “pass laws” in apartheid South Africa.

This is the same President Bush who let Black people drown in New Orleans. The whole world saw how people were dying at the Superdome as Bush delayed sending in the National Guard with food.

Bush started his speech by putting an equal sign between the millions who have marched in defense of immigrant workers with the handful of racist “Minutemen” conducting vigilante patrols. This is like comparing civil rights marchers with the Ku Klux Klan.

The man in the White House actually bragged that six million women, men and children were rounded-up and deported during his presidency. This brings to mind the ongoing roundups and extraordinary rendition of Arab and Muslim people in the wake of 9/11.

Despite his denials, Bush wants to militarize the Mexican border. According to reports Bush will be asking for $1.9 billion to hire 6,000 more immigration cops, erect more walls and build more jails for immigrant workers and their children. This money could be used instead to hire 38,000 more teachers at a starting salary of $50,000.

Bush’s call for a temporary “guest worker” program would formally erect second class status for immigrant workers. It would revive the hated “bracero” program of the 1940s and 50s and serve as a weapon to smash union organizing drives.

The president also said that undocumented workers who have “worked here for many years” should be forced to pay a fine and “get in line” to be legalized. Like Rosa Parks, immigrant workers refuse to be go to the back of the bus. Instead of being forded to pay ransom, immigrants should be compensated for paying into social security as well as other taxes yet seeing few if any benefits.

Bush wound up by offering crocodile tears over visiting Guadalupe Denogean, a wounded Marine in Bethesda Naval Hospital who was born in Mexico. “He spent his summers picking crops with his family, and then he volunteered for the United States Marine Corps,” said the White House occupant.

That’s what millions of immigrant workers are good for according to Bush and his wealthy supporters: to pick crops and get maimed or killed in a colonial war for oil profits in Iraq. What should be made illegal is ExxonMobil ripping off every day $100 millions in profit.

The response of Democratic Party leaders to Bush is just as insulting. Senate minority leader Harry Reid actually attacked the Republican president for not deporting more human beings at the Mexican border.

In his response to Bush’s speech, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin echoed the president by denouncing amnesty and telling immigrants to go back to the line.

What the Democratic Party leadership shows is that human rights for millions of immigrant workers can be won only by more organizing and more struggle.

Immigrant workers and their supporters will not be intimidated by neither Bush or the likes of Reid and Durbin. This movement for justice will move forward to victory.